New posts - musings and writing

Lately I've been feeling like I've been disappearing into this little flat I share with my husband. My work, written, craft, teaching, theater, reenactment, etc., seems like it's fading into obscurity. Since I believe people don't ignore others on purpose, they just get caught up in their own lives and problems, it's my responsibility to put myself out there. If I don't put out more work of whatever sort, then I become one of those who rest on their laurels, and I can't do that. Hopefully, I don't come across as egotistical, but I also need my work to be seen - not for 'Look at me!!', but 'What do you think?', if that makes any sense. I hope these written forays into the world are points of conversation, learning, thought, or at least a moment of diversion.

I don't really remember a time when I was not writing, just as I don't remember not being able to read. I've been playing with fiction, poetry, essays, and personal philosophical vignettes forever. I remember showing a 75 page uncompleted fantasy story to a junior high teacher for critique. I think I was eleven. It was the first time I had someone say something actually critical of my work, which I found mildly hurtful, but also reasonable. Her comments made sense. But I also ascribe to the open-up-a-vein school of writing. I feel everything that I write deeply, and it comes from a place close to my heart. That's okay. Anyone that meets me gets the real me, warts, pain and all, if they are interested. Mostly I'm a happy person that loves people, but I've had a life.

This first piece is a poem I wrote for a talent display for my church with the theme of Faith Can Move Mountains. When I was approached to share my work, the organizers probably thought about all the textile crafts they saw me work on at various church functions. (That showed up as well.) The first 'images' of the poem came to mind during the conversation. What follows was read out during the performance part of the program. Before that, only my husband read my poetry. A few people asked for copies, and now you have one.

They say that faith

Can move mountains.

And when your faith

Feels like the energy of a storm,

all powerful winds

And the illumination of lightening,

Firm in the knowledge of

Who You Are,

Ready to take on

Any challenge

You believe it.

Then you realize the size

of the mountain

and look down at your hand and see

you are given

a teaspoon

and told

“There it is – Your Mountain.

“You can do this.”

Sighing,

you remove the

Scraggly weeds and thorns and

Small surface pebbles

With tender fingers,

Stopping occasionally to tend

The small cuts, splinters, and scrapes,

Eventually clearing a spot to

Work with the spoon.

It doesn’t take long to learn

That it is easier

to dig

On your knees.

Exhaustion sets in.

There doesn’t seem to be

A point –

Your small hole against

The entire mountain.

But you trust

There’s A Reason.

So you keep digging

Even though

Grains of sand,

Loose dirt,

And random leaves

Fall into your hole

Taking time and effort

To remove

Before you can

Continue.

Sometimes you lose the spoon.

Dropped in a moment of weakness,

Thrown in frustration

Or anger

Or despair

And no amount of searching

Can find it.

You scrabble in the soil – sometimes until your

Fingernails are torn and bleeding,

Because all you know is

The Mountain Must Be Moved

Though you have forgotten why

If you ever even knew.

Wiping sweaty hair from your forehead

You lean back on your heels

And the sight of the remaining mountain

Compared to your feeble effort

Brings tears to your eyes.

A warm, rough hand on your shoulder

Causes you look up to

Find yourself surrounded by people,

Smiling,

Their dirty, torn jeans

Worn at the knees.

Faces smeared with dust, sweat

And the tracks of

Long dried tears,

But clear-eyed and cheerful.

With a handshake

A quick hug

And a kind word

They hand you a new spoon.

“You’ve got this,” they say

As they turn back to their own tasks.

Encouraged, you take a deep breath

And keep digging.

Because you trust there’s

A Reason.

At times, the work seems

Easy.

The dirt is loose

And it feels like you have

A spade

Instead of the spoon.

“I can do this,” you think.

“The Mountain isn’t as

Big as my fear

Made it out to be.”

So you happily work

With a song in your heart

And a hand to help others.

Suddenly, you come across

A patch of granite that

Breaks the spade.

Winds whip dust and

Hair in your eyes.

You struggle to find the spoon again

Though you don’t see

How much help it can be.

As you look at

The small object in your hand,

A voice on the wind says,

“It has two ends, you know.”

You see the familiar tool

In a whole new light.

And you discover that

Somehow

The song in your heart

Stayed.

So you scrape and dig

Around the rock

Until you find the edges

Using the spoon to lever it out of

The mountain,

Letting it roll

Out of sight.

“That was a lot of work,” you think,

“But look how much bigger

The hole is –

How much of the mountain

Has been moved.

“You can do this,” agrees the voice.

You find the voice comforting

 So you learn to listen.

He tells you

True stories

Of those who came before –

Of their faith

Sweat

Hope

And tears.

And of the mountains they moved.

Slowly,

As your hands grow calloused,

Your back grows strong,

And the song in your heart

Increases,

You learn

Faith does move mountains.

Just not in the way you thought.

Me at Clontarf last weekend

A world wide phenomenon!

Just a quick note, because I really should be working on my thesis chapter on Living History groups as a resource for experimental archaeology.

I have another blog called warpweightedweaversquestionnaire, for obvious reasons.  (Its a questionnaire for any warp weighted weavers I can finagle into filling it out - research, you understand.)  I just checked the statistics for it, and it was very encouraging.  The site has had over 1000 hits, which is quite good for what it is.  It's the number of countries that people come from that look at the site which is fascinating.  Here's the list, so far:

US
UK
Australia
Sweden
Portugal
Russia
Germany
Spain
India
Brazil
Pakistan
Israel
Finland
Ireland
New Zealand
Canada
Phillipines
Netherlands
France
Norway
Malasia
Japan
Italy

I find this very encouraging!

Problems with looms in museums

Apparently, in spite of good intentions, blogging will occur only once every three months.  I'm really going to have to work on that.

I recently had to research and write a 5,000 word essay on a topic for my thesis that I had not really looked at: the historiography (what has been said in the past and why they thought that) of the warp weighted loom.  It was really interesting, but also a lot of pressure, because it was a backup plan to getting my PhD.  My panel didn't go very well, but they gave me another six weeks to do the new essay to see if I could be up to snuff.  I rather suspect the problem there is the differences in expectations between the American and the British systems.  We haven't been communicating well on the topic, because they didn't think to tell me (it's the way it has always been done) and I didn't know to ask (here are my expectations, does that match with yours).  Anyway, the essay is written and in, but we are still waiting for one of the advisers to weigh in with her opinion.

So...as part of the research, I was reading through Marta Hoffmann's book on the warp weighted loom, which is currently the only text that is more than a couple of pages long.  In one of her chapters, she was writing about the looms found in Norwegian museums, and discovered that most of them were sold by a man named Eilert Sundt, an antiquities dealer.  He would go to the farmhouses around the areas where the looms had been used by somebody's grandmother, buy them and then sell them to museums as antiques.  Most of the looms at the time were around a hundred years old, and nobody knew how to use them.  Also they had been taken apart and piled in the attic or barn for storage, so the set up was unknown though the reconstruction of the loom itself is not difficult.  None of them had a warp on them either, so neither the warping style of the looms nor the fabrics they had been used for were known.

Sundt came up with a solution to make the looms more salable.  Hoffmann reports that he had a local floor loom weaver weave up a foot or so of a textile that seemed likely, then moved it from a floor loom to the warp weighted loom.  This creates the problem of not only are the pieces not traditional or possibly even typical fabrics, the set up everyone is looking to for warping the looms is back engineered from floor loom techniques.

Personally, I don't really have a problem with this.  You have to start somewhere.  But it bothers me that modern weavers are not aware of this little difficulty.  Also, my prickly adviser got on my case for suggesting the single line of loom weights solution is a back engineered solution from a floor loom weaver's perspective.  That's fair enough.  But so are the other solutions, so where is mine wrong where others weren't?  I'm not trying to suggest that mine is the only way to do things.  I figure weaving is like any other craft.  People will find ways to do the work dependent on culture, desired outcome, physiology, and experimentation.

Anyway, its something to think about. 

'Chapter' for my thesis

I finished a piece of writing for my thesis that was sent to my advisers at 6:00 this morning.  Most of it was composed after midnight, which says something about my skills as a writer - I'm just not sure what. 

Oddly, they were expecting a piece on pin beaters, even though I'd only looked at a few from two archaeological sites.  I'm fairly certain that is not enough information to make any sort of definitive statement about them.  I chose to write on my preliminary findings from a questionnaire I devised for other people that work on the warp weighted loom instead, as that is a topic I have been thinking about for 10 or so years, so have a bit more to say even though there are only twenty one returned surveys at this point.  (All right, 25, but some of those have yet to be read.)

Now I just have to wait until Monday for my panel to see if I will get an MPhil and be sent home, or can continue with the research for another two years.  This week is gonna be a lot of fun, I can tell already.

apparently there are no such things as pin beaters...

Go figure.  I did go to the archives of the Museum of London.  There I saw ten 'thread pickers' or 'pin beaters'.  Eight were double ended, which is usually associated with the warp weighted loom, and two were single ended, which has been cited as evidence for a two beamed loom, a tool which I am not yet convinced was used...but that is another entry.

The Museum of London also had a microscope I could use, which was really handy for looking at detail that was hinted at from visual examination.

The double ended pin beaters all had a rounded, flattened end, kind of like the butt end of a pair of tweezers, and under the microscope that end looked sharpened like a razor blade.  But the sharpened section only covered about 1/4 inch along the very tip, which makes no sense for shoving between sections of warp threads to push weft threads up and between.  That sort of tool use would be further up the shaft of the 'pin beater', I would think.

The two single ended pin beaters were even shorter and flatter than the ones I saw at York.  And the tips were curved in a counter clockwise direction from the shaft of the beater.  I have no idea what that would be for.

I also examined a roughout (a tool that was tossed aside before it was finished, for what ever reason) and discovered that the tool used for bone carving left skip marks along the length of the pin beater.  These were not completely eliminated in the polishing process on other pin beaters that I examined.  However, it would be possible to distinguish these skip marks from wear from rubbing against thread because the thread would leave wear marks around half to three quarters of the tool, and the skip marks only go for about a quarter of an inch or so.  I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I can't really post pictures from the finds without permission of the museums.  I intend to run tests on my ww loom, with the warp thread covered in chalk like that found in plumb lines, to show where the wear marks would be.  It seems the fastest way to demonstrate proof of concept, as I don't have the time to weave a big enough piece to create the wear marks.

Next Thursday, I'm meeting with PWR and a gentleman named Steven Ashbury to discuss this.  He is apparently interested in combs.  I'm not really looking forward to this meeting, because PWR identified some of the single ended pin beaters, and this would negate her work.

I also went to a re-enactor's market and found a bone carver.  These people sold me a composite comb, and I found a single ended pin beater - which when I said 'I want that' the bone carver said, 'The Roman stylus?', which kind of confirms my thoughts on that subject.

I brought the comb home, and tried my wooden weaving sword, the bone comb, and a replica wooden comb I picked up in Leeds, and tried them out as weft beaters.  I discovered that I like the bone comb best for a beater.  The wooden sword has to shove through the stickiness of hand spun wool, where the comb slides right through it.  And the bone is better than the wood because it has more weight and is slicker.  It does make me wish I had picked up a bigger wooden comb with nice heft to it that I saw at the re-enactor's market.  I would like to have tried that comb out as well.