L’shana haba’ah b’yachad

“And Miriam was a weaver of unique variety

The tapestry she wove was one which sang our history

With every strand and every thread she crafted her delight

A woman touched with spirit, she dances toward the light”

-Debbie Friedman, Miriam’s song

I’ve always wanted to have a fancy ceremonial matzoh cover and afikomen wrap but I’ve never found one that I really liked, so I decided to weave it for myself! The pattern I’m using is for placemats & napkins, but when I’m done weaving I’m going to hand embroider some Hebrew words onto them.

I’m using a pattern from handwoven magazine, so my finished napkins should hopefully look something like this

Pesach is my favorite holiday. It’s a joyous celebration full of family and song and food. It’s also a theologically rich holiday, with themes of freedom and justice, faith and courage. But most especially Pesach is about history and heritage, remembering our ancestors and teaching our children.

Your obligatory baby picture for the week is baby D clutching his toy seder plate

This year is my son’s third pesach, and our third year in a global pandemic. Our third year of fear and uncertainty and disconnection. I don’t have any plans for pesach at all this year, and I’m feeling really isolated. I’ve also been struggling to cope with my postpartum anxiety these past few weeks and I didn’t even manage to make a holiday meal for my little nuclear family tonight. All in all, today has been a hard day of not really celebrating my favorite holiday.

This kid loves matzoh!

But weaving is its own kind of connection, it’s own celebration, and I’m trying to lean into that. Debbie Friedman took a bit of artistic license in her description of Miriam as “a weaver of unique variety” but Miriam the prophet would have certainly been one of the wise women (along with the rest of my ancestors) who wove the tapestries to decorate the tabernacle while the Israelites wandered the desert. To this day we still weave our tallit and tie our tzitzit with techniques based off the descriptions of those textiles in the book of Exodus.

Here’s my yarn, the camera doesn’t fully capture to color which is a lovely deep blue violet.
It’s a Swedish linen, very stiff and intimidating to work with but will make a very fine finished product if I can pull it off.

Weaving is such a fascinating ancient handicraft, it’s the creation of a textile that exists at the peculiar intersection of pragmatism and beauty, of functionality and art. Almost every human civilization throughout history has practiced some form of weaving. It is a metaphorical and also very literal thread that binds the generations.

Here’s the entire warp measured out, it’s 280 threads, each measuring 4 yards long.
This is called the cross and it’s integral to getting the warp threaded on the loom, though to be honest I don’t really understand the mechanics of it yet.

So today, I took some time to wind the warp for a new weave, a connection to my ancestors, creating an heirloom piece of judaica that I can pass on to my children. A poignant beginning to this erev pesach; a tangible, tactile, commemoration of our heritage. The plan is to have this project finished in time for me to host a real seder in 2023– so l’shanah haba’ah b’yachad, next year together!

Here’s the full warp, ready to be threaded. Unfortunately, it used a little more than half my yarn (it was supposed to be exactly half) so I might need to end up buying one more tube.
  • Project: matzoh cover napkins
  • Medium: weaving & embroidery
  • Pattern: handwoven magazine design collection, volume 11, page 3
  • Material: bockens linen color #487, 100% linen, 16/2
  • Related Posts: warping-the-loom (part-1-of-2)

#Weaving #embroidery #newproject #Judaism #jewitch #theology

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One response to “L’shana haba’ah b’yachad”

  1. Warping the Loom (part 1 of 2) – The Owl Weaver Avatar
    Warping the Loom (part 1 of 2) – The Owl Weaver

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