Legacy

 

In this day of mis- and dis-information, starting up a new magazine is a vote for the future.  

Humans have been playing with string since the dawn of time.  The craft is vast, and broad, and deep.  To try to encapsulate the bones of the craft in a periodical is brave and bold, and honestly?  I wish I were 20 years younger so I could really dig in and participate more than I am able to do.

I have been around since the time of Interweave.  And by that, I mean the magazine.  I loved that magazine and was very sad when it went away.  I wish now I'd kept those magazines when I downsized my library.

In the Kickstarter video Jacey and Lisa say they want to collect as much information as possible and make WEFT a kind of 'encyclopedia' of weaving knowledge.

When they said that, I thought about the folk who have attempted this before - S. Zielinski, Elmer Wallace Hickman, Mary Black, Russell Groff (by publishing so many 'monographs'), Shuttlecraft (who also published monographs) and Heddlecraft (there are likely more, but those are floating around top of my mind.)

But things change.  Knowledge and understanding grows.  And I'm pretty sure that WEFT will find a place in the weaving world of value and add to the foundation of knowledge.  Small publications go out of print, or become difficult to find.  Or the information gets 'stale' because new innovations come along.

I well remember when I let my friends know I was buying an AVL with fly shuttle, dobby and auto cloth advance.  And how I would be told I could no longer call myself a 'hand' weaver.  Then when weaving software was developed and people who used it were 'cheating'.

But things change.  Acceptance grows, and look at us now...40 shaft computer assisted dobby looms, even small(ish) Jacquard mechanism looms, all part of the larger hand weaving community.

I think what excites me about WEFT is that they say they want to look deep into the rabbit warren of the craft.  Because if you don't know *what* you don't know, you don't know *that* you don't know it.

So, while not everyone will be excited about the deep dive that will happen in these pages, at least they will know that it exists.  And that is the first step to learning and understanding.

I, for one, could not be more excited.  

For my own particular deep dives, my books remain available at Blurb (Magic, Matrix, Intentional Weaver) and my ko-fi shop for my bio as a production weaver (and the lessons I learned, which is probably worth the price I'm asking for the pdf, all by itself!)

In the meantime, I have articles to write which requires some rabbit warren diving, some sample weaving, a lot of thinking and a bunch of wordsmithing.  I will have to be patient and wait until April 2025 to see what WEFT will contribute to the world of weaving knowledge.