String Adventures

The Schlow Library demo was Monday evening. This year’s adult summer reading program theme is “Get creative at your library”, and Linda has been scheduling artists to give talks. I was listed as talking about the sheep-to-sweater process, but I thought there might be something more exciting than talking about spinning and knitting to a bunch of spinners and knitters.

Instead, I set up a big display table with spinning, and dyeing, and knitting, but also examples of weaving and all the obscure fiber arts I can come up with. There are lots of those, you know!

The talk was very well attended for a summer week night, and people were very interested in what I brought, looking at samples, trying different things, and asking lots of questions. Linda brought down relevant books from the stacks to keep the library connection. I related fiber and textile production to food production: something that used to be integral to daily existence but is now primarily an industrial product in this country. People no longer understand where clothing come from. And just as many foodstuffs have been lost from the modern American diet, many methods of textile production have all but disappeared: sprang, naalbinding, tablet weaving. My audience were unaware of all of these, and just fascinated.

(More pics for the interested.)

Even more exciting in the string department: this. I will be giving a presentation on tablet weaving theory at the Textilforum in Eindhoven. Hooray! The trip has been heavily subsidized by my mother (thanks Mom!). But really, when everyone you mention it to responds, “You must go to that”, you start to think that they must be right.

Monday morning the ferocious monster and I were having breakfast in the courtyard (fresh-picked black raspberries, granola and yogurt), when I heard an odd noise overhead.

My patio table has a glass top, providing this alternate-universe version.