A Passion For Weaving

Day 122: My grandmother set me on my fiberarts journey before I was old enough to attend kindergarten. She started me off with stem-stitch embroidery (oddly, not cross-stitch), and put me to work on pillowcases and linen handkerchiefs with the admonition, "Over four threads and back two." It was a lot to ask of a four-year old child and, although I couldn't achieve her level of expertise at that age, I was inspired by her own exquisite work to try. In the following years, she taught me to knit and crochet and to expand on my embroidery. By the time I was seven, I had made at least one knit sweater, multiple crocheted potholders and doilies, several embroidered dresser scarves, and I had gone on to explore needlepoint and crewel. Still, knitting was what drew me most, and by the time I was in my teens, it was my primary craft. After leaving high school, one of my first jobs was as an art-needlework consultant for a fabric store chain. It was there that I learned to tat. But I had only just cast off from the dock as far as the seas of textile construction were concerned, and the farther I paddled from the shores of its more commonplace forms, the deeper the waters became. At some point in my twenties, I reached the island of weaving, and was so taken with the plentiful fruits thereon that I established myself firmly in its community, having found my true home. Oh, I still visit all those other places: bobbin lace, smocking, macramé, marlinespike work, kumihimo, or anything which can be executed in thread, yarn or cord, but it is weaving which is my primary passion: passing a shuttle to and fro, watching a cloth develop beneath my hands, entranced by the simple, magical act of taking one thread across another to become fabric.