Weaving in love and memories

Perhaps I’ve failed to mention that I’ll be a grandmother. Grandmother? Is it really possible? Only weeks ago it seems we were coming home from the hospital with our little bundle. Days seem to tick past and it is easy to not notice their passing. Soon the day is gone, then a week, a month, a year.

Today a neighbor had a baby shower for Nora and it was one of the sweetest I’ve ever been to. We had civilized tea and cake and munchies. There were no party games, but we did have an activity in honor of the mother-to-be and her weaving family. Stacey selected a variety of ribbons, then cut slots around the edges of a piece of cardboard into which the ribbons could be slid. She slipped a ribbon into each slot along the top, then she passed the cardboard loom around the table, each person choosing a ribbon, and as they wove it into the growing cloth, a story about Nora, or motherhood, or advice were shared. Later, Stacey inserted our community weaving into a shadow box, a lovely memory of those who have been a part of her life, wish her well, and a memento of our afternoon neighborhood tea.

Hope and Patience

I feel that we've been waiting for today for a long time. I greet this day with hope, as many do. But, while I feel that President Obama is the right person for this time, I also know that there is hard work ahead. Not just for him, but for all of us. Change is often hard and takes time. Fixing what's broken will be difficult.

We as weavers and spinners are fortunate. Through our crafts we know patience We've puzzled out a threading error or put in countless hours spinning spider-web thin yarn. We've worked out our tangles and twists; we've found calm in the storm. There is power, control, in creating with your own hands, of forming something unique and personal. More than ever, I find comfort in my craft and hope you do as well.

The Tipping Point

My second weaving, woven at the home ec school in Iceland where I first saw a loom and knew weaving was something I must do. You could say it changed my life.

“In sociology, a tipping point or angle of repose is the event of a previously rare phenomenon becoming rapidly and dramatically more common. The phrase was coined in its sociological use by Morton Grodzins, by analogy with the fact in physics that when a small amount of weight is added to a balanced object, it can cause it to suddenly and completely topple.”
--Wikipedia

A few years ago this idea was applied to daily life in Malcolm Gladwells’ book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little Brown 2000). In it Gladwell argues that there is a point in time when there is a critical mass for change and when that happens it is unstoppable. He describes it as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.”

One wonders if the yarn industry credits the rise in popularity of knitting to the tipping point. It seemed that almost overnight every young woman had a pair of knitting needles in her hands. Knitting, obscure only a few years ago, is now part of the lexicon: “stitch and bitch”, “stitch and pitch”, knit nights, knit outs, knitting at the symphony, books and books and books about knitting. Certainly knitting had truly arrived, I mused, when shopping for a birthday card I found that right next to the funny cards about golfers were humorous cards about knitters.

Knitting has done more than start needles clicking, it has brought a whole new group of crafters into the fold. Some will continue to knit to their hearts content, others have begun to explore different crafts. This is what I think I’m seeing happening right now with weaving. I’m not saying it’s anything close to the weaving mania of the 70’s, but every day I sense that there is a movement in this direction. Of course, being the weaving enthusiast that I am, I’m waiting and hoping for the tipping point.

Truths and a Lesson

After 30 some years of weaving you think I’d know better. This is what I DO know.

Your mother was right, “Haste makes waste”.

Shortcuts almost always get you in trouble.

The six ‘P’s (Prior Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance--I’ve often inserted another word here for “pretty”, you can guess what it might be) help insure good results.

So, what you ask, was my “crime”? Not testing the color fastness of a yarn I used to weave a sampler for my upcoming rigid heddle pattern book. The reason I’m so disgusted with myself is that I should know better. What would have been a perfectly wonderful piece, ended up with splotches from yarn that ran. Because I was in a hurry, eager to get weaving, I didn’t take the five minutes (max!) to boil up some water, pour it into a white cup, and drop in a length of the offending yarn to see if the water stayed clear or turned a lovely (yuk!) shade of pink.

Here again, I come back to my mantra, “sample, sample, sample.” Oh, it gets you out of so much trouble. And take it from me, if you don’t know the yarn, if it’s red, purple, a dark color, or of uncertain origin, just take a moment to test it in some hot water—and make a cup of hot tea while you’re at it.

Learning As You Go

I’ve been weaving since 1971. If my math is correct (always a question), it means I’ve been at it for some 36 years (some years more than others). Over that length of time, you learn a few things. And keep learning—and this is what I love about weaving. Just a week ago as I was working on some samples for my class at Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference (October 5-8), I discovered quite by accident—great discoveries often happen this way, not to presume that I’ve made an amazing innovation, something that I’ll use henceforth.

I’ve made much jaw music about sampling. Bottom line: you sample to gain information. Eight inches is a good width for a sample, because it lets you know enough about how the fabric is going to behave in a larger piece than a narrower sample will tell you. I was warping with Harrisville Shetland 2-ply but ran out of the color before I’d achieved my 8” worth of sample width. To finish out what I needed, I used two other dibby-dabs of leftover yarn. What I discovered in the weaving was that these colors gave me more information about how the weft interacted with the warp.

Here are some of the samples from that warp. For easy reference, I’m storing them in clear plastic three-ring binder sleeves so that both the front and the back can be viewed. (Sometimes the “back” side is more what you have in mind than the “front” side.) Opposite the swatch is a page with the warp and weft information, draft (for harness looms) and threading guide for (rigid heddle looms), as well as my weaving record for that particular sample.

Keeping good records is critical. Even though you may think you will, you will NOT remember what you did. (I continue to learn this over, and over, and over.)