Historically Speaking…

I took a quick trip to Syracuse NY last Friday, about a four hour drive north west of me, to give the keynote address to the Syracuse Weavers Guild to help celebrate their 50th anniversary as a guild.  I was honored they asked me, and I took some time earlier in the week to look through some of my extensive archives to see what kinds of stuff was happening in the weaving world in 1960.  Wow, was I in for a good time.

First off, I had all four issues of Handweaver and Craftsman from 1960.  What a wealth of information and a complete time warp!  I had the best time leafing through the articles, and the ads, and the society pages (including the wedding announcement of one Mrs. Osma Gallinger to a Mr. Tod.  Mrs. Gallinger, author of many weaving tomes, and director of Creative Crafts in East Berlin PA, was to be married in Massachusetts, hosted by her daughter.  The announcement goes on to say that since Mrs. Gallinger would be moving to Coral Gables Florida, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Manning, president and secretary of the newly formed Central Pennsylvania Weavers’ Guild will be taking over managing Creative Crafts, which we all know today as The Mannings…).  Who knew?

Anyway, I loved seeing ads for the Structo Loom, and the Peacock loom, both are sitting in my studio today, the Peacock Loom was advertised for a mere $11.50 F.O.B. Waupun, WI.  The clothes, the yarn ads, the articles on Peter Collingwood, Dorothy Liebes, Marli Erhman, and Jack Lenor Larson kept me reading for hours.  And who knew the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act was passed effective March 1960 requiring that

…All yarns will be identified by fiber content, which will help the weavers to a great extent in labeling textiles.  However, sewing threads and handicraft threads are exempt from labeling…

I gave the lecture Friday night, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and the journey to the past, of course we ran out of time, one of my faults, once I get started, I have been known to run over…  Saturday I presented a half day workshop for the main guild meeting, one I haven’t done recently, so it was a bit of a treat as well.  The topic was “What to Do with Leftovers”, not of course limited to scraps of handwoven fabric, but ways to use  all the piles of scarves and dishtowels we seem to amass.  For a hands on project, I brought a pile of stuff, and everyone made post cards from scraps of handwoven fabrics, some art papers, Ultrasuede scraps, some sequins and confetti, and a photo or saying.  The whole postcard was covered with an acetate sheet from a book cover, stitched on with a sewing machine.  I set out Saturday afternoon for home, and drove straight through for four hours, unpacking, and by Sunday morning, I was worthless.  I had plans to catch up all day Sunday, I managed to clean the kitchen, and then crawled back to bed with my book and my happy bag and stayed there the rest of the afternoon…   🙂

In other news, I worked feverishly all week trying to empty my loom of the scarf warp I put on before I left for Sievers in August.  I kept thinking how hard could this be to knock out four scarves.  I felt like I was swimming through Jello.  I just couldn’t get a rhythm,  and the hem stitching at both ends of each scarf seemed to take hours.  I’m getting faster, but this is painful.  Now I remember why I never wanted to go back to production weaving.  This is a good exercise for me, even if I end up turning down an opportunity to sell my scarves at the Santa Fe Weaving Gallery.  I put on nine yards, for eight two yard scarves.  On a small floor loom, there shouldn’t have been much loom waste.  Yet I was about a half yard short.  I don’t know where the missing half yard went, but I spent all of today figuring out how to squeak out the last tiny bit of warp on this run of scarves.  I actually spliced in a dummy warp, which isn’t so difficult, but this is the second time this year I’ve had to weave to the splice, which is incredibly painful and laborious.  The little knots get caught on each other as they pass through the heddles, and I had to basically hand pick each weft shot for about 20 inches using 10/2 tencel.

But I stayed with it, out of pure stubbornness, I was going to get four full length scarves from this warp if it killed me.  I long ago realized I was losing money on this venture, but that wasn’t why I agreed to do this.  So I wove to within a couple of inches from the splice, and then hemstitched the top of the last scarf, just about three inches from the reed and the first splice, and I’ll cut off the scarves and wash them and see what I actually did on Thursday, since I’m getting a well deserved mini break, I’ll be in NYC all day tomorrow with friends.  So the moral of the story here is to put on enough warp to begin with, duh, I’m planning next time to put on a twelve yard warp for five scarves.  Stay tuned…