Yesterday, I made a new comic diary --

The front cover 
is a four selvedge tapestry
(woven hand spun coffee filters),
and the back,
a scrap of stiff cardboard
(it is nice to have something to lean on).

The paper inside
is Rives Lightweight printing paper.
It's got an odd texture for drawing
and is hard to erase thoroughly,
but I love that it is both thin
(I can get lots of pages in one book)
and highly absorbent
(I can slop watercolors and black ink
on both sides of every page
without any show through). 

This time, as the drawing says,
I decided to use a four needle
Coptic binding --
well actually it is a two needle technique
(one needle on each end
of each piece of waxed linen thread),
and I did it twice.
​Here is a link to the instructions
(thanks for the link Velma!),
which are wonderfully clear and easy to follow.

Not that I'm all that wedded
to binding perfection
(as you can see from the pics),
but it is fun to mess around.
Maybe next time.

I do try to draw in these diaries every day,
and with the decrease in size
of these last two books
(from 5" x 4 1/4" to 3" x 2 3/4"),
it's amazingly easy to fill four to six pages 
without even really noticing
(rather than than one or two as before),
so if I keep this up
"next time" could come fairly soon--
even with the extra signatures
I added onto this new version.

For comparison,
the big diary on the bottom 
lasted for almost four months,
while the one in the middle
won't even make a month and a half.

It could also be
that the smaller pages
have influenced my style.

Or maybe its the influence
of the tiny houses--
​though I'm not quite sure how.

What I am sure of
is that the portability of the smaller format--
now enhanced by the extreme portability
of this teensy pocket palette
filled with handmade watercolors
created by K. Jodi Gear--
makes it extra easy
to have my materials with me
no matter where I am,

or what I am doing.

Well in my world,
​it depends...

On what?
-- accuracy of my eye
--length of the warp
--current level of focus
--relative stretchiness of the weft
--attachment to selvedge straightness
​--mood of the moment
(in other words: does Sarah give a shit today?)

Generally I do.
Give a shit, that is.
Unless my selvedges are to be deliberately wonky
I like them to be as straight as I can get them
without making myself crazy.
(clearly a personal thing).
And like even spacing
and adjustable tension,
guide strings provide
a kind of invisible support
that makes this easier,
leaving me free
to sink into that amazing zone
that shape-building with yarn
​invariable demands.

Tapestry weaver or not
you're probably familiar with this state:
well trained hands working on autopilot 
active brain engaged in minute decision making.
It is a particular kind of bliss
that is most accessible for me
when other parts of the business
do not require regular attention.
​
My zone, in other words
​ is not a place for multi-tasking.

Say, for instance
a gal is writing a blog post
while scouring linen--
typing away-- 
focused on the words--
assuming
 she is fully aware
of the simmering pot--
except clearly not
because the flax
is now boiling over.
EEEEK!

Ok. All better.

ANYWAY,
​ when I'm thinking thoughts like this:

"If I use three warps to weave the r,
it will probably touch the i --
unless I move the i one warp to the right,
but then it will them bump into the stem
of the n --unless that is a little taller..."

I also don't necessarily have the wherewithal
to notice that the side is drawing in.
Guide strings help me to notice
​without really paying attention.

In the photo below, then,
can you see how that the gap
between selvedge and string
begins to grow larger
right below the word "min?"

It's not much in the great scheme of things --
a matter of about 1/16 of an inch or so--
but it IS visible, and if not caught
could easily have kept going.

Check out the ruler below:
in the middle of the photo
the selvedge edge is directly on,
or slightly to the left
of the 1/4 inch vertical red line.
At the top and bottom
the selvedge edge
is slightly to the right of that line.

It is a subtle thing to be sure,
hard to see when looking at the entire tapestry,
yet if you watch the string 
as you move down the photo below
you might see the selvedge
​dip to the left
and then go back out to the right
as you scroll by.

That little dip
(at least in my world),
was not enough to warrant unweaving,
but it was also not to be ignored,
and I was able to fix the problem
(slowly, over inches),
by making sure a little more weft
went into each bobbin pass.
Without the guide strings,
I might not have noticed
until the gap was wider,
and that would have bugged me
for a long time.

When I first heard about guide strings
(it may have been Archie Brennan who brought them up)
I recall feeling a little shocked--
maybe even dismissive--
"I should be able to keep my selvedges straight
without that sort of thing."
And on a tiny tapestry, 
I pretty much can
so I don't usually use them
on anything smaller than 5" tall.

The rest of the time though,
like practicing my concertina with a metronome,
guide strings provide the kind of invisible support
that make the ultimate work,
(tune or tapestry),
so much more satisfying.

ps . Linsey-Woolsey Tapestry Specs:
 warp -- Linen from Gist yarn and Fiber
sett: 9 epi
warping technique: Fringeless: four selvedge
 galvanized pipe loom (1/2")
weft--hand spun flax (strick from Taproot Fibre)*
--hand spun wool (spindle)
--indigo

*Just noticed when setting up the flax link that Taproot Fibre
is selling linsey-woolsey blends for spinning.
  Haven't tried them so have no idea what it'd be like,
but if you give them a try, do let me know.
Yet another approach to the combination of these fibers.

Last winter I wrote an article
for the Autumn issue of Ply Magazine

And now,
it is out in the world --
Hurrah!
​
As often happens,
while writing words,
I was also pursuing
(or following -- never quite sure),
an elusive idea
​that was ever dancing
just out of reach.

Reader of this blog that you are,
there is a good chance
that now, months later,
you will put two and two together,
and give the name linsey-woolsey
to the un-namable and mysterious idea 
 flitting ahead back then.
But of course the path winds ever on
(to paraphrase Bilbo),
and on the heels of my
post-article June and July
Linsey-woolsey weaving
and an August experiment 
with striped L-W yardage pictured above,
a Four Selvedge Linsey Woolsey tapestry
has begun growing on my loom.

(note: the utterly heavenly shuttle in the photo above
is from Bluster Bay Woodworks,
I found it at Blue Flag HandWeaving  in Sandpoint Idaho --
sometimes a tool is so utterly pleasurable
that it's impossible not to share...) 

Luckily,
just as I began to think
(as I often do)
that all these ideas
and permutations of ideas
were JUST TOO MUCH
I found
upon opening my copy of Ply
 an article  by the magnificent Judith MacKenzie
on the astonishing William Morris.
(yes, adjectives galore -- and well deserved, both).

There is so much to remark upon
about the wonders of William Morris
that I'm glad I don't have to
as Judith already wrote about him,
so I will confine myself 
to a couple of long sentences, 
about how his open-minded curiosity
and willingness to try just about anything that caught his interest
(often as not teaching himself seemingly archaic skills
as the rest of the Victorian world
went zooming forward on its capitalist,
industrial and mechanized way),
never ceases to thrill and inspire me.
Embroidery, natural dyeing, worker's rights,
block printing, fiction writing, architecture,
stained glass, font design,
socialism, fabric design, book printing,
hand woven tapestry,
the Icelandic language (so he could read the sagas
and then travel there)--
well I'm already breathless--
and there is still more--
but I'll let you find that out for yourself
(assuming you're not already a fan),
while I end this sentence
by saying  that somehow,
when my own curiosity
and the siren song of an idea just ahead 
seem JUST TOO MUCH 
(for heaven's sake Sarah, 
milkweed? A woven recipe? shirts? Comics?),
I think of Morris, 
who, I believe, would have no problem 
with any of it--
and certainly not the combination
of fiction, tapestry, hand spinning and natural dyes,
as happened the Rough Copy series I wove a few years go.

I bring these tapestries up right now
in this breathless and wordy way
 because of William Morris,
because I am once again weaving words,
and also because three of the 13 tapestries in the series:

Numbers  4, 5 and 12 pictured here,

will be in Aptos California
at The Cabrillo College Art Gallery
from 30 September through 25 October 2019,
and I wanted you to know
so that if you're in the area,
(and in the mood),
you could pay them a visit.

 I'll not be able to get there myself,
and the tapestries themselves
tend to be annoyingly close-mouthed
(or perhaps merely bashful)
 when they return from such outings,
(unless someone buys them
in which case I never ever know),
so I rely on the kindness of others
​to hear how it went.

In the meantime,
 it is time for me
to slow down this verbosity
and weave the word
Salt.

​It'll take all afternoon.

It is always amazing to me
how sometimes the simplest shift in technique
can change my whole feeling about a process.
Weaving in the ends in tapestry was like that.
Also, using a plying stick.
And one of the coolest things I learned in August
was  a new way to wind the cop
on a cross-armed spindle.

When I got my first cross-arm 
(a 9 gram Jenkins kuchulu) 
I learned what seems to be the canonical
over two under one, around and around
method of winding on (see photo above).
 It worked beautifully (once I got the hang of it),
and with it I have filled uncountable spindles.
The idea of (or need for), a different approach
 never crossed my mind.

Then in early August on a random Instagram Post
I glimpsed something rather different.
A woman was winding her cop
as though winding a ball by hand:
 a few times around one pair of arms,
 then on to the next pair, around a few times,
and on again to the next. 

No biggie, really,
and yet, for me, huge.

The cop looks quite different 
as it builds up around the shaft:
more of a square with the sides pushed in
than the neat little muffin I was used to.

It's not, however, the look of the thing
that matters to me,
but rather that this way of winding 
somehow adds a layer of comfortable ease
to the whole business of spinning flax
and I now find myself picking up
​ my willow distaff,
almost as readily as wrist distaffs
loaded with wool.

And that is a fine thing.

A fine thing indeed,
 since a truckload of milkweed stems
(potential compost from a native seed farm)
showed up at my house last week.
Once I get a better handle
on how to release the silky white fibers
hiding in that pile of stalks,
there is a good chance
that even more bast fiber spinning practice
is in my future.

But that is a story for another day.

Today, I just want to close
by saying thank you
for the lovely comments last week.
Your kind  words and good wishes 
mean more than I can say.
Spin on!

and also giving time
to the the myriad tempting ideas
that had been tickling my brain.
Luckily, many of those ideas
​had to do with spinning,
(which allows me to read at the same time),
except when I'm spinning flax,
(which means putting down my book),
or learning new tunes,
(which--usually--means 
putting down the spindle),
or sitting quietly in the shade
listening to the birds
with a cup of tea
(which means neither book nor spindle
​but maybe some knitting).
I had hoped to do some sewing
but then I'd have to put down EVERYTHING else!

Looking back at my daily drawings
I can see that holding my shoes 
while running barefoot,
is probably the only way
I managed to avoid the temptation 
of attempting to spin and run
at the same time.

And that it was likewise important
that the juice of the yellow plums
from our tree in the hell strip
is so sweet and sticky
that yarn, concertina,
and the current novel
could not be in the kitchen
while said fruit was prepared
for winter consumption.

Secateurs, too, 
are not yarn friendly--
though the now dry weld
will someday transform
unknown skeins
into spectacular yellows
(or greens with the help of indigo and/or iron).

On the other hand,
if she's sufficiently half-assed
while cleaning the house for visitors,

a gal can sometimes
carve out a moment 
or two
of elemental pleasure. 

​Dust? Whatever.
Water, coffee, salad, spindle and a book
at the same time?
Yes, indeed.

It will surprise none of you--
certainly not long time readers of this blog--
or anyone who has read
the post before this one--
or has happened to click 
on the word Handspinning
in the sidebar to the right--

that given a chance to make yarn
(as slowly as I possibly can),
​​or to make something with that yarn,

So yes --
though I did not get around
to making myself
a new pair of pants*
from those finally-too-worn-to-mend
sides-to-middled linen sheets, 
or learn all the tunes I dreamed of,
it  has been an exquisite
and deliciously yarn-centric August,
 at home on the Palouse.

I'm so glad
I didn't need
​or want
to be 
anywhere else. 

​
*And anyway,
I have plenty of Sarah-Dippity skirts to wear.
Many of this month's comics
indicate that  I wore the short wool ones
as often as the long one I made just for summer!

I plan/hope to wax verbose
in future posts
about the specifics 
of my August explorations
(not least, what feels like an improvement
in my flax spinning),
so stay tuned.

Due to unforeseen vagaries of life, however, 
I may not, for a time
be able to blog quite as consistently
​as I have in the past.
I'll still aim for every Tuesday,
but if  I don't make it
know that I'm probably making yarn,
drawing pictures of whatever is going on,
and will be back to tell you about it.

ps -- Remember, too,
that you can visit the archives
​(links on the right)
if you need more glimpses
​into this yarnish life
because really,
though every inch of yarn feels fresh,
I keep coming back
to the same old elemental bliss.

It has been said,
(generally by those who do not do it),

that making yarn by hand
must be incredibly relaxing --
perhaps 'almost' a meditation.

It has also been suggested,
once or twice,
​ or a hundred times,
(sometimes by the very people
who assume it to be meditative),

Me? I can't tell --
 indeed, I have a feeling
that my perspective
​might just be
 a teensy bit skewed.

week after week--

year after year.

Even when I'm not writing about it--

​(as I won't be for the month of August
since it is blog-cation time!)--

I'm generally adding twist to something or other:
a used coffee filter--
a dead leaf--
an idea--

so all I can say for sure--

is that though it is my job
(or perhaps because it is my job),

I love it more than I can possibly say.

ps. these blog posts have more on coffee filter yarn
-Coffee Filter Yarn 
-Indigo and Paper (includes links to people who really know what they are doing!)
-Somewhat Slanted-with coffee filters

pps. The store will remain open so you can download guides.
The Backstrap Dialogues Zine (paper version) will be available again in September

ppps Wishing you a lovely month wherever you are --
and whatever season it is there--
meditating or spinning or being bored
or perhaps all three at once.

See you in September!

I didn't intend to start a
​ Somewhat Slanted Sweater.
And I definitely didn't intend
to knit a cardigan.

Pullovers are more my style.
And I already had a knitting project
​for my June travels.

Except I'd just released the pattern,

​and my lovely mother
​had begun to knit one,

and, well... 

suddenly this delicious yarn
was asking to be a rectangle
instead of a square,
and I was adding buttonholes...
and what could I do but enjoy?

So I did --
And perhaps because I didn't really plan it,
the whole thing 
was a seriously good time.

Except, that is,
until the time came
to choose the buttons.
Nothing was right --
not a single button in the house--
not even those with lives of their own
on other garments.

I was about to start 
sawing rounds from a dead lilac branch
 when my disgruntled brain
saw the wisdom of sewing up the front
with a pice of string,
throwing the sweater in a tub of water
and going to have lunch.
​Maybe the problem was blood sugar.

The ribbon, alas, was not quite long enough,
but a few snips of some silk long underwear
(indigo dyed, long since worn to shreds
​and saved for some purpose I can no longer recall),
produced a flexible and stretchy cord
that somehow felt perfect.

The cardigan 
had become a pullover.

Here's the view from the top.

And from below.
(I do so love the swooping side seams).

My brain exploding with possibility,
I headed back to the drawing board.

Actually, most of the PDF is the same,
just 16 pages instead of 12.
The extra four pages include
info on knitting  bias rectangles
(for cardigans and rectangular  sweaters)
and two approaches to stripes
(for felting and non-felting yarn).

note--the first version of this sweater was striped, but I didn't talk about about the oddities of stripes on the bias in original pattern
so I've added a little info, mostly on spit splicing 

If you have already have the pattern
you can re-download the new version
using the link in your original receipt.
I'll also send everyone who already owns it
those four pages via email.
Just in case you deleted your receipt
or it doesn't work for some reason.

Everyone else -- the Somewhat Slanted PDF the store
is the new and updated version.

Oh yes -- and one more thing!
Last Saturday's Live Webinar
with Rebecca Mezoff was a blast --
an hour of tapestry immersion,
including post card discussion,
 a ton of great questions,
and a bit of ridiculousness
(including me pointing at the screen
that you can't see
and a too-close view
of the chest of my new shirt)
There was even the wonderful surprise 
of Michael Rohde popping in 
to talk about making
his SUPER tiny tapestry pipe looms.
You can watch the reply on Youtube
right HERE.

Wahoo --
my tapestry post card
made it to New Zealand!!!

After a mere three weeks 
and a giant ocean,
Sue reports that it got there looking good.

I love the postal service so much .

It feels extra great to learn this today
as I want to let you all know
that Rebecca Mezoff and I
are hosting a live webinar
this Saturday, 20 JULY 2019
at 10 AM Pacific time 
(that's 11 AM Mountain, 12 Noon Central, 1 PM Eastern and on from there).

Here is the LINK to register:

It was this Post Card project
and the perfection (if I do say so myself)
of using Four Selvedge Tapestry 
that prompted us to set up the webinar,
though we're open to all tapestry questions
so ask away --
either in the comments of this post
or on Rebecca's facebook 
(which I don't know how to access but assume, 
if you do facebook, you do).
​
I believe Rebecca is in the midst
of weaving her post card right now,
if not one of her marvelous diary tapestries,
so will be utterly in the mood.

As for me --
well, in addition to the joy
of having my post card arrive,
this Four Selvedge technique
 continues to blow me away.
Every time I think 
I've got a handle on what can be done with it
a new idea emerges.

Indeed, as many of you know
I'm a bit nuts about bringing tapestry  
​into my everyday life
not only as post cards
but also as 
books, boxes, bracelets
and other things to wear,
most of which
would not work nearly as well
without this warping/ weaving system.
​
What ideas do you have?
​What are you longing to try?
​Want to talk about it?

Me --I just tried a week at fiddle tunes camp
(with my concertina of course).

It was not exactly tapestry oriented,
but luckily I had my linen shirt with me
so could remain relaxed and relatively cool
as I struggled to learn
several new tunes every day--
by ear--
while 100+ lovely people of all ages
and a variety of instruments,
(mostly fiddles),
were doing the same thing
a few feet away.

Most of us had
three different teachers per day,
each teaching a different fiddle tradition,
with a different teaching style,
(and that is before adding electives).
Switching
from one approach
to the next
 was-- ah--
fascinating.
All three of mine were amazing,
and now and again,
(to my amazement),
I was​ even able to notice
how my brain responded
​ to each approach,
sometimes finding 
that the ones that were the hardest
(aka made me extra grumpy), 
made the most sense later on. 

Indeed, one of the best take-homes
(along with the once overwhelming
and now lovely list of new tunes),
was the joy of allowing myself
to try them all
while also noticing--
now and again--
what worked the best for me--
which often meant
not doing much of anything at all.
(My inner rebellious teenager knows way more 
than anyone gave her credit for ​back in the day).

Now that I am home,
the practice of being kind to myself
seems just as relevant,
so instead of madly warping a loom
to show you something new,

​

When I started weaving
the cloth for this shirt
I wrote about the pleasures 
of additive clothing construction
(building garments with rectangles),
and of how much I looked forward
​to bumping into my preconceived ideas--
whatever they might turn out to be.

Several weeks into said construction
it turns out I have quite a few
​preconceived ideas,
​not least:
 how the garment should drape,
how it is constructed,
​how it feels
how it fits
and how it should look.

As I mentioned last week
what I really want most
is to get this linsey-woolsey shirt on my back
so I can learn more about the 'feel' part of that list,
and thus continue to study the​ fascinating, ancient,
and sometimes deeply troubling history
of this combination of fibers,
from a yarn-centric point of view.

At the same time,
in order to put it through its paces
it needs to be truly wearable.

And in order for me to want to wear it
it has to be comfortable,
which, since I'm making it up as I go along,
means a LOT of trail and error.

The first version of the shirt
fit quite well in most areas,
but was, as the comic showed last week,
a little too right across the chest.
Though not actively uncomfortable,
there was an awkward bunching at the armholes
(there are reasons so many sewing patterns
have curved armholes....),
that I just couldn't live with.

Had it been all wool,
the close fit might have been OK,
but the linen portion of the fabric
makes it just a little too crisp 
for what I was trying to do.

After much basting and un-basting
and yanking and pinning
 to increase the shaping,
I realized I had two preconceived ideas
working in direct opposition:
--about fit (probably gleaned from sweater construction)
and
--about my love of woven rectangles.

Embracing the grid at hand
I decided to go bigger and add ease:
 two linen panels to the front,
and a peplumish 'wedge'
​made of graduated sections
of one of my linsey/woolsey samples.
(I did contemplate a knitted wedge for a while,
as per the Sarah-Dippity skirt,
but that is a garment for the future).

The additions made it
​much more comfortable,
and thus more wearable.
​
It is also made it less elegant 
(the lack of armhole lumps aside)
and meant that the garment
​is would no longer be fully hand spun.

And guess what?
Having it be entirely hand spun
was another of the preconceived notions
I didn't realize I had.

Possible Actions:
1-stop sewing to spin and weave matching panels
2-get over myself and keep going
so I can wear the garment already
3 -finish the shirt as is (#2)
and if the invasion of the non-matching
mill-spun yarn keeps bugging me,
make linsey-woolsey replacements.
???

A quick cloth review:
The first swathe of cloth 
had a two-ply spindle-spun woolen warp,
and a singles, spindle-spun linen weft.
Though traditional linsey-woolsey
seems usually to have a linen warp,
I chose to reverse it because:
1. I trust my wool yarn more than my flax
2. I wanted the cloth to be as light as possible
 (keep the linen as singles)
3. the wool was spun from dyed fleece
and thus is somewhat variegated;
if there were to be stripes
I wanted them to run lengthwise.

That said,
when I wove  the second (narrower swathe),
I  decided to try it the other way --
because, why not, right?
Stuff to learn.
So in the photo above
you can see the variegations in the wool weft 
and the slight shift in the grist
of the less well spun two ply linen warp
​ slightly to the left of center.
This cloth is, indeed,
slightly heftier than swathe #1.

For the actual weaving (backstrap loom),
it was easier to keep steady tension
with the unstretchy linen warp.
The wool warp was more forgiving.
In other words -- I love both.

In the spirit of Coptic tabby/tapestry experimentation
I also wove a small tapestry on each warp:
wool warp: linen tapestry ground with wool squares
linen warp: wool tapestry ground with a linen swirl.
The weaving of both was lovely
but truth to tell,
I prefer weaving tapestry
on a tensioned frame loom.
Next stop: Four Selvedge tapestries***
sewn into clothing???
​Talk about Portable Property...
(also, with individual panels
rather than fixed features of existing cloth
I could be more specific about placement).

Though the wool warp/linen weft is my favorite,
both pieces of cloth feel lovely.
​Finished (washed/fulled and pressed)
they are dense and light at once.
The wool fluffs out just enough
to keep it from being overly translucent,
and the linen lends a crispness 
that wool alone would not have--
though I expect the fresh pressed crispness
that you can see below in the sleeves,
 with relax and soften with wearing.

***PS: Quick tapestry heads up: Rebecca Mezoff and I
are planning a Four Selvedge Tapestry Webinar
on Saturday, 20 July at 10 AM Pacific Time (me), 11 AM Mountain time (Rebecca)
I can hardly wait!
Rebecca is such a blast to be around, virtually or in person--
fun, funny and always a total inspiration for me.
We'll definitely talk about using Four Selvedge Warping for the Post Card Project  ,
hopefully learn a  bit about Rebecca's Tapestry Book in progress,
and definitely leave room for  your questions
and other topics as yet undecided.
​Back with specifics (like how best to ask questions and register ), when I have them.
If you already follow Rebecca, you'll hear from her too.
In the meantime, you can also check out her Youtube channel and maybe watch a few of her France tapestry tour VLOGS, just to get in the mood.
The work she saw made me want to start tapping in some weft.

Truth to tell,
I had hoped to have
a finished shirt today.

Alas, I should have known better.
The path from fiber forward
(or any path I follow for that matter),
rarely runs straight
and is almost never speedy--
which of course is often the point.

Indeed, learning how to spin flax
with some degree of comfort
seemed more than enough
when this all began,
and it wasn't until this past April
that I began to get serious about linsey woolsey,
so why should the sewing part go quickly?

But wait -- no! 
I take that back.
I just typed "linsey-woolsey"
into the search box at the top of the blog page
and found that I wove some 
back when I was first learning
to use a backstrap loom--
cloth I later used
in an entirely different
​sort of experiment
in November 2016.
(that blog post written in hope, before the results were in).

Except, was that experiment entirely different? 
Wasn't that attempt to combine
​ backstrap-woven linen/wool cloth
with some kind of imagery 
part of the same endless quest 
as the coptic-inspired tabby/tapestry
​that keeps showing up in this project?

Well yes, I think it is--
even if I'm unlikely
​to throw an actual painting
(whatever the ground material)
into a tub of water and swish it around
​to soften it up before cutting,
as I have these swaths of linen and wool.

But I suppose one can be obsessed
with the juxtaposition of cloth and image
for decades and decades
and still ask a lot of different questions.
Right now, for instance
I want to know
​how  ​the combination
of linen and wool,
feels against my skin.

Historically, at least in the United States,
Linsey-woolsey has a bad reputation
and is often described 
as rough inferior cloth--
the combination of linen and wool
 highlighting  the worst
both of the materials,
and of human power relationships.*

* Plantation Slave Weavers Remember: An Oral History by Mary Madison
is heartbreaking, humbling and un-put-downable  (if that is a word)--
 essential reading for me as a white woman, a human being and a weaver.
The end of the book includes valuable background
on the textiles that are spoken of in the text,
as well as extracts from
The Politics Of Textiles Used in African American Slave Clothing,
a paper by Eulanda A. Sanders given at a Textile Society of America Symposium.

Linsey-Woolsey was also woven
by early American Colonists
and used in myriad textiles,
from clothing to coverlets
as a way to stretch
scarce and precious wool--
though usually not as a first choice.

Yet fragments Coptic cloth of linen and wool
unearthed by archaeologist Albert Gayet 
and exhibited at the Exposition Universelle de Paris 1900
may well have inspired
the wild and colorful paintings
of  Henri Matisse and his fellow Fauves
at the turn of the last century.

It's intense, actually --
all this history and judgement,
all this power and hardship
all this misery and mystery
​and pictorial delight
associated with 
this specific combination of materials
to which I am connected,
consciously and unconsciously,
willingly and abashedly, 
in ways both historic
and of the moment.
​
It's also fascinating. ​

And with all that I learn
and hope to keep learning,
with all the things I want to change
about the world we live in,
and all the ways I want to make all lives better
I am still 
a weaver devoted to wool,
and a spinner in love with linen,
 coming to this cloth
with spindle and shuttle
pins, needles, thread,
and curiosity. 

So here's what I know so far:

1. My chest is not quite as flat as I thought it was

2. Building with rectangles,
and basting before sewing
is a pretty great idea
when designing as you go--
or rather re-designing
for the third
(or maybe fourth)
time.

3. The combination of a fine wool warp 
(targhee/debouillet)
and singles linen weft
(spindle spun and well scoured),
​feels wonderful in my hands,
airy yet robust,
warm and cool and silky all at once,
and I very much look forward
to my future physical connection
with the weavers and wearers of this cloth
willing, and unwilling,
over the millennia. 

Back eventually,
​ with a shirt!