Island Weaver

Do you have someplace that you consider your heart-home? A destination or a community or even a region, that isn’t where you live your day-to-day life, isn’t even necessarily someplace you’ve ever actually lived long term, but is nonetheless “home”? I’ve got a few of those places; Camp Celo is one (where I spent my summers as a kid and worked through my teen and young adult years). Another is Bryn Mawr College, the mothership, which will always be home. More broadly, the Appalachian mountains as a region are my home, and I’ll always be a little sad that my little family has settled (likely permanently) outside of those mountains–but at least they are only a couple hour’s drive away.

Well this summer, my family and I travelled somewhere new. A little island 7 miles off the coast of NH, called Star Island. My wife was attending a conference there, but for me and the kids it was a rather idyllic island vacation. Now, I’m not generally a beach person, and I’m not sure that Star Island is ever going to truly rise to the status of “heart-home” for me. But our week on that island and immersed in the community they’ve cultivated was pretty incredible. And I’m really quite proud of the art I created while inspired by that beautiful place.

It came unfinished and unassembled, and I treated the wood with Danish oil before assembling

First of all, I want to introduce you to my newest loom: It’s a tiny rigid heddle table loom, and I love it. “Rigid Heddle” essentially means there’s less moving parts controlling how the warp thread moves up and down to make space (called a “shed”) for the weft thread to pass through. A rigid heddle loom can pretty much only do plain weave, none of the fancy patterns that require multiple shafts, and I was worried that I would find it boring to work with. But it turned out to be quite the opposite! I found the simplicity of doing plain weave on a tiny loom really freed me up to be creative with my use of colors and textures to create something really interesting and unique.

It took me about 3 hours to warp the loom, in the lobby of our hotel
I used a new technique, direct warping, to measure my warp as I threaded it onto the loom
Here’s the warp fully threaded, right before I wound the front beam to get ready to weave

My goal was to create a simple, plain woven baby blanket for a coworker who is pregnant. And I’m absolutely still going to gift the finished project to the pregnant mom and baby at our office celebration for her next month. But also, this project took on a life of it’s own and became so much more than “just” a plain woven blanket for me. For the first time, I didn’t follow any pattern and I didn’t have any plan. I just sat down at the loom with a selection of yarn and let my hands (and the island) guide me.

Babydoll is modeling the blanket!
The woven cloth was in one long piece, so the finished blanket has a seam in the middle

The finished result is far from perfect. I struggled a lot with tension and so the selvedges (edges) of my cloth is a bit puckered. I erred when cutting and sewing the cloth into the blanket, so one side of the blanket is longer then the other. There’s a few gaps and weird crooked bits. But I love it. And weaving felt like I tapped into my creativity in a way that I haven’t managed in a very long time, allowed myself to be inspired by the waves and the dunes and the salt-sea breeze and just make art. I’m honestly thrilled with how it turned out, imperfections and all, and I hope my colleague and her baby love it as much as I do!

  • Featured project: Sage Blanket
  • Medium: Weaving
  • Pattern: freeform
  • Materials: 7 different skeins of Stash yarn, variety of colors and fibers,
    • Estimated cost of materials: nothing purchased new for this project, but probably about $50 worth of stash yarn
  • Started & Completed: July 2024
    • Estimated time to Complete: 25 hours
    • Estimated total cost (labor at $25/hour + materials) if commissioned: $675

#Showcase #Doneisgood #Alwayslearning #Stashbuster #Hearthome

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