Today a blog reader, Rodrigo, managed to translate a dye article of mine to Portuguese. It’s great when we can share information across other languages. It’s now up to me to do a similar job in reverse! Rodrigo uses the google translator which seems to do a good job combined with some knowledge of the language. I like to use this tool on the many Japanese sites which are so full of creative textile ideas, too. When I’ve translated these, the translation is rather direct and provides an insight into the cultural sensitivity of the language which I find fascinating.

I find that my Australian English is becoming too economical on words. Why say something in 100 words when you can say it in five. This all started when I wrote “The Australian Weaving Book”. When writing the instructions I wanted EVERY word to count as a valid direction, so that a re-reading of every sentence would accurately and concisely illustrate the technique. Succinct writing has always been my goal.

I recently bought a book by Proust, the French philosopher, to help me expand my five words into 1000 words. If you know of Proust, he could take the process of cleaning his teeth into a full scale novel. This is the magic of the written word….luckily we have a visual textile to take some of the word excess.

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