A MATHEMATICAL WEAVER ’ S NOTES AND GUIDE TO : Shaft Weaving and Graph Design , By Olivier Masson and Francois Roussel

The Notes that follow are meant to supplement, and not to replace, the translation of the book Shaft Weaving and Graph Design by Olivier Masson and Francois Roussel, hereinafter referred to as M&R. All quotes and references are to the translation. The Notes' organization is as follows: a summary of M&R's entire book is provided, summarizing and identifying book sections of interest to weavers and expressing my opinion regarding sections that are of less interest to weavers. This summary is designated Part One – Content Summary. It is followed by Part Two – Detailed Notes and Guide, which follows the organization of Shaft Weaving and Graph Design. Frequent page references are incorporated into the Notes so that the reader can more easily relate the Notes to the book. A reviewer of these Notes commented that Shaft Weaving and Graph Design reminded him of a book " Mathematics Made Difficult " , saying that this is " Weaving Made Difficult by Mathematics. " It is my hope that these Notes will allow weavers without a great deal of math in their backgrounds to get through this book. Many of the notes made will hopefully trigger some mathematical memories and help the reader to appreciate some of the connections between weaving and mathematics. Even if the reader feels completely un-mathematical and skips all the parenthetical explanatory math notes, much of what M&R wrote should be more understandable with the help of these Notes. Wherever I have made a " note " to the reader to explain or to supplement what is written in the book, I have used the format: [Note: explanation]. During the summer of 1999, several weavers provided support and specific technical advice, including Alice Schlein and Marguerite Gingras. Additionally, two weavers with very strong math backgrounds reviewed the Notes as I wrote them and made invaluable contributions to their clarity, while also catching many errors. They are Max Hailperin and Ralph Griswold. I am very grateful to both for the time and care they took reviewing this work. Many of the insights contained in these Notes are courtesy of Max and Ralph. And I must take all the credit for any remaining mathematical errors that exist herein. Finally, special thanks must go out to Janet Forrest, who was the very first person I found as anxious as myself to clarify this book. We have had several years of email …