Author: Jennifer Lackey

This week’s “on the loom/at the wheel” includes a bonus, Thanksgiving week! (when I was too stuffed like a turkey to doing any blogging…this blog is a demanding taskmaster when there is pie to eat…)

Last week I finished the most orange of orange scarves.  Let this be a lesson to all ye who shall shop for bamboo yarn using computer monitors.  I seriously thought this would be a lovely red when I ordered it.  What? Yes, I’m too trusting.  I still like it though, even if the colors are intense.  We’ll see if anyone else does…

I also think it looks pretty with the other scarves I have finished!

THIS week on the loom is yet another scarf, but lest you start to feel bored…it’s NOT A TWILL pattern!!  I’m doing something new to me.  I’ve seen M’s and O’s woven, even helped a student create some napkins in a simple 4 shaft version, but have just never woven it myself.  Situation rectified!

I love it.  Super interesting.  The other side is just as cool, maybe cooler (it might be that the scarf is being woven upside down…again…but I’ll never admit it).  I always suspected I’d like this structure (and apparently, I’m very clever in my suspicions:)  Can’t wait to see it off the loom and after a nice bath:)

“I can’t remember why I left so free, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to see, but I can sure remember where I come from.”

-Hazel Dickens “West Virginia, My Home”

Home is where your people are, where you feel a deep abiding sense of peace, where you rest; it can be anywhere.  I’ve always said that and I’ve always believed in the intangibility of home.  But I also have a decidedly strong connection to a physical place, the beautiful hills of home.   I wasn’t able to travel back to West Virginia this week (and there are definitely days I can’t remember why I left) but I always do know where I come from.  And perhaps because it is a literal place, the lovely physical keepsakes that I hold close to me are one way I stay connected to where I come from.

My uncle recently let me have my paternal grandmother’s old singer sewing machine.  My mom gave me a fringe twister for my last birthday (because I’ve become obsessed with these little bamboo scarves).  Add one of the handmade lamps my Papaw gave me years ago, and you have my homey finishing spot. (That’s my grandma as a little girl by the way:)

I come from people who made things with their hands.  I’m home when I make things with my own.

“But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice.

I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new ones.

Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

– Anne of Green Gables

I take comfort that there might be a limit to the mistakes one weaver can make since, like Anne, I also seem to keep discovering new ones!  But there’s this one mistake I just can’t seem to stop making!  This week’s what’s on the loom is lovely!

I really like this pattern and the yarns I’ve choose.  There’s only one little, (and it is little, so that’s something:) problem – I’m weaving it upside down…again.  Someday I’ll remember to double-check whether the pattern is a sinking-shed or a rising-shed one and set up my loom accordingly.  In the end, it doesn’t really matter to the final project, which side of the cloth is facing me as I work, especially when the back is also pretty,

but it would be nice to see the actual pattern as I work.  Mistakes are there to help us learn and the life lesson take away on this one is, of course, enjoy your view of the journey even if you can’t quite always see how beautiful the finish will be.

Click:  BALL OF YARN  for your new Christmas List addition!

Ridiculous, I know.  But it’s part of their “everyday objects” collection so it’s not pretentious, right?  I actually have a soft spot in my heart for Tiffany’s thanks to the film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and if they asked me to spin silver for them I probably would.  Although they need to know, I actually spin gold (now, who’s being pretentious!).  But I do, I really do – all spinners do.  There’s something magical and deeply satisfying about taking one kind of material (random fuzz:) and transforming it so completely to another kind of thing (thread!).  The beauty is that while it’s a whole new thing, it still retains elements of the original material too.  Wool stays warm and springy, while cotton stays cool and soft, even though they’ve just become golden threads that will be knitted or woven into “everyday objects” that are priceless to me.

Does everyone begin their blog with “I don’t know what to say…”?  Probably, so I won’t (although I kinda just did).  Of course, it isn’t really the beginning.  I did start a blog, way back in 2009 when it was a cool, new thing to do.  I made all of three entries.  You know you want to go look.  I’ll wait…it won’t take you long!

first try

So, cake aside, I’m excited to begin documenting my fiber work in a more public way.  As a long-time member of the Ravelry community, I find the thought of posting my teaching, weaving and spinning here in the wilds of the internet, where potentially unsympathetic eyes might wander along, a bit daunting but also amazing because I do want to share with those who aren’t necessarily a part of the fiber community.  Fiber arts are so ancient and yet so lost to many folks today who only interact with thread and cloth in a really cursory way.  Our virtual lives often overshadow our material existence or tangible interaction with the world around us.  I’d like to help people change that.  Of course, the irony of doing that through a blog and website, the virtual most virtual, is not lost on me.  SO, if you are here, dear reader, stop right now and look down at the clothes you are wearing instead of at this screen.   Look closely at the threads and fibers that form something you have invited into your most personal space, wearing on your body.  And know that while machines have taken over the creation of these garments, human hands still know how to do it.  Your hands could learn.  To quote one of my most favorite lines…

“tho’ industrialism has now won almost complete victory, the handcrafts are not killed and they cannot be quite killed because they meet an inherent, indestructible, permanent need in human nature.”  – Eric Gill