Making Choices

 

hand position for the Harrisville brass threading hook

Weaving is full of choices to be made.  As a new weaver, they want to know what to do.  Experienced weavers already know what to do and frequently new weavers will simply do what their friend/mentor/teacher tells them without knowing that there may be another way, perhaps a 'better' way (for them) to do the job at hand.

So it was with me.  I learned how to use an 'ordinary' threading hook to thread the loom and because I didn't know of any other way to do it, I kept doing it that way, using the tool that had been shown to me.  And I continued to thread the loom that way for about 20 years.

Until.

Until I saw a different way, using a different tool.

As soon as I saw Norman Kennedy demonstrate how to thread with the Harrisville brass hook it was like the heavens had opened and the heavenly choir sang an hallelujah.  I asked where I could buy such a hook and someone said the weaving shop below us carried them.  I immediately scooted down to the cash desk, asked to buy a hook.   They happened to have two.  I would have taken both but my fellow guild mate, seeing me dash out of the weaving room had followed me.  She wanted one as well.  She said that if *I* wanted one, she knew *she* needed one as well.  I reluctantly handed one of them to her and bought one.  I later bought more, bringing them with me to sell when I did workshops and demonstrated to the class how to use it.

When you don't know *what* you don't know, you don't know *that* you don't know it.

I was already fast at threading, but using this new tool and technique, I nearly doubled my threading speed.  It was well worth going through 'beginner mind' and the fumbling as I learned to do it.

My greatest hope is to not just tell people what to do, but make them aware that there are usually several ways to accomplish the task of weaving.  There are multiple designs of looms, hooks, processes available.  If the student doesn't know they exist, they cannot decide if something else might work better for them.

And so I keep telling people - find out!  Look for other sources.  Other 'experts'.  No one knows everything there is to know about how to take threads and make cloth with them.  

Change one thing, and *everything* can change.  If something has changed, figure out how to change with it.  Adapt.  Experiment.  Explore.  Above all...LEARN.  

Seek out other teachers.  Other experts.  We have all had different life and weaving experiences.  Maybe what they figured out is appropriate to you.  Or not.  But it might be to someone else.  Knowing there are other approaches means you can help new weavers decide what will work for them.  Or not.  But until they know of the other ways, processes, tools, they cannot make an informed choice.

I show this technique and others in my class with the School of Sweet Georgia (The Intentional Weaver, named after my book of the same name.