Taking off One of my Hats.

I don't know if its true of all creative people, but I'm sure this will resonate with a few. We are often multi talented. I sew, I knit, I crochet, I quilt, I garden, I decorated my own house and reupholstered some of my furniture. I bake bread and make jam. And at one point I thought I could weave.

My husband is a terrible enabler and after I bought a very small hand loom to make cording and belting, he scoured the internet and found me a loom. BOY did he find me a loom.

This is a 72 inch Leclerc Nilus.  A piece of furniture. An example of fine craftsmanship in solid maple. A very respectable 4 harness loom.

True to my nature I thought, " I can do this". It doesn't look that hard. I will admit there was a VERY STEEP learning curve. And this is where the stubbornness I was born with kicked in. I was determined to master this (using the term MASTER loosely).
And I did.

My first piece off the loom was made into (hold your breath here) PLACEMATS. Rather nice ones. I use them, I like them.......................................................................but I don't need any more.

Plain old basket weave was nice, but a little boring. So after finding and falling love with some very expensive silk yarn, I thought I'd make a piece of cloth. Full width, in an interesting pattern, a huck pattern. It too was nice.

There is a pattern here. These are " nice ". Not great. It didn't feel great and probably to a veteran weaver they aren't great, or even nice. That's when I realized I wasn't enjoying myself.
I had rearranged my life, my living room to include weaving and this piece of furniture haunted me every time I walked by it. It didn't call to me, it mocked me. It took me a whole season to realize I just didn't WANT to weave.

At first my husband didn't believe me. It wasn't until I started offering this loom to my friends and guild members, that he saw I was serious. I wanted my living room back. (It had ended up there because that was far as we could get it into the house without completely dismantling the whole thing.)

Believe it or not I couldn't give it away. The weaving movement has modernized so much and there are newer, smaller and more portable looms available. People simply don't have the room anymore. All I wanted in return, was to realize monies spent in fully outfitting the old girl. This is still a very active company in Quebec and parts are still readily available.

Then my niece came into the picture. She Knits. She Spins. And she lives in this great old stone house in eastern Ontario that just cried out for her to complete her WOMAN CAVE with a loom.

YES.

So this old girl is now on her way to Perth Ontario, where I expect it will be petted and appreciated more then it was here. I look forward to seeing her work on her blog.

Tales of an old Stone house   mymillhouse.blogspot.com

I don't regret a minute I tried to devote to this craft, but I realized I was just a little too old and creaky for this rather vigorous activity. My time I spend creating with fabric is just too precious to be splintered further than it already is by another demanding craft.

I wish her well. I know she will be much better than I.
(But that's what successive generations are for, Aren't they?)