I recently borrowed John Mullarky's excellent DVD on card weaving from my guild library.  I was inspired to get out the weaving cards, probably untouched for 20 years but I knew exactly where they were.  I returned the DVD to the guild today and decided to buy some more cards.  They didn''t have any with 4 holes but did have some with 6 holes so I bought those.  I knew I would need help to use them and also knew that some/all of Peter Collingwood's books were available on line.  I looked it up on Google and started to down load what looked like a good source.  Before I knew it I had messages that my computer was infected and my web browser had changed and there were pictures there from websites I know I never need to visit.  I tried to fix it myself but had to admit defeat and ring the guys who look after the work computers to get them to sort it out.

I have since had a look at Handweaving.net where they have the Collingwood rug weaving and split ply braiding books but not the card weaving one.  I expect that weavers are all nice people and that weaving sources on the web are usually safe but obviously I have been lulled into a false sense of security.  I thought I would post this here as a warning to others and hopefully might prevent them from having the same problems

Comments

Andrew Kieran (not verified)

If you know the website that gave you the infected file, that would be helpful.

 

I believe some of collingwood's books have been released from copyright but not, as far as i know, the card weaving book

Sara von Tresckow

Collingwood's Tablet Weaving is still in print and available from weaving shops - I have copies at our store.

 

ReedGuy

Sometimes what appears to be sources of free books is nothing but trojan and virus infected files or executables. If you look at well known weaving repository sites and folks like Sara that run shops online, your safe.

louiseinoz

Looking at my browsing history from yesterday, I think I got to the site via http://docs.google.com and http://dlr8847.simple-files.info .  But having spent most of the morning getting all the work computers to talk to each other again after yesterday's problems, I'm not planning to re-visit those sites to make sure