Details, Details

 

various aspects of cloth construction - diagram from The Intentional Weaver

As I go through my resources, scrape together my thoughts, generate the slides for the Power Point (PP in future) presentations for the study groups, I am reminded over and over how much fine detail there is in weaving.  Or any hand craft/technology, for that matter.

(I kind of get exasperated with modern day writers who loudly bleat that our ancestors didn't have 'technology'.  Yes, they did.  It just doesn't meet 21st century assumptions about what technology is.)

In terms of weaving, human beings have been playing with string and sticks for a very long time.  One article I read recently is pushing that to around 40,000 years ago now.  

That very first stick?  That - *that* - was technology.  It was a tool, and it required skill to use it.

Since then the technology has been refined, changed, re-invented.  And the production of string/cloth has also been refined, changed, re-invented.

Now, making string/cloth by hand is seen mostly as quaint.  When I first started weaving people were perplexed about why I would want to.  I mean I could walk into a store and buy pretty much any kind of cloth I wanted or needed.  Why would I want to make my own?

That, dear readers, is personal to every person who gets a loom and picks up a shuttle (or spindle/wheel).  Interested in my story - check the very beginnings of this blog from 2008.

The realization I'm focusing on right now is how complex, how detailed, how layered, the technology has become over the centuries.  Just comparing the different kinds of looms - and there are lots of them - makes me realize how clever human beings can be.

As a piece of engineering, a countramarche loom is pretty fine, as is a computer assisted loom like the AVL or Megado or any number of other looms I could name.

diagram from Marianne Straub's book

Voila, the 'guts' of a countramarche loom are a wonder to behold.  Sticks and string, all held in a finely tuned balance.

Almost everything there is about weaving is based on a spectrum from beneficial to not beneficial.  I won't say good to bad - bad is a judgement made when something doesn't work out - I've moved too far to either end of the spectrum until it 'failed'.

Each PP is an opportunity to stop, reflect, refine my own thinking about how cloth comes into being.  It is a chance to wonder anew at the complexity that is possible.  And to remind myself of just how little I know in the grand scheme of things.