The knuckles of her hands were swollen and once subtle skin
wrinkled as she spooled off the thread from the spindle. Deftly
she twinned it around her index and little fingers so that it
twisted over and under like a simple cat's cradle. Finished she
removed the tiny butterfly from her fingers and rolled it between
her hands and taking the loose end she entered it into the taut
warp and continued weaving. She needed no drawdown or written
instructions as she pressed the treadles, changing the shed to
the pattern that she could see in her mind as clearly as any
full colour illustration. Below her hands she saw the finished
weave as it made its way over the front beam, down and around
the roller so that the early part was now hidden under what had
come later; except the outer edge of the selvage that was visible
at each end where it showed bright red, blue and yellow. The
structure at the start was a simple one up/one down plain weave.
The weaving was all colours and basic shapes free of intellectual
complexity and physical dexterity; and she admitted to herself,
a little bit rough. But it had been fun doing it.
When she had started there had been no plan, just a desire
to create. She knew the constraints of loom and warp so she made
it weft dominant so that she controlled the design. She no longer
remembered just where she became bored and decided on a bit of
variety, sending the weft over two, or three, then under a way,
adding strips of leno, tying Danish medallions, even adding supplementary
warps and wefts, She did however remember the shock she had felt
on looking at it after a break and seeing its chaotic nature.
She tried to unweave that part but the complexity defeated her
and she had to accept that it was now part of the fabric and
that to make major changes would result in the destruction of
the rest.
Chastened she subdued her colours and made a firm decision
to be more structured and controlled in future. Beautiful violets,
vibrant browns, quiet grays and resonant blues showed at the
exposed selvedges where she had followed her new directions but
it hadn't lasted long.
It was a friend who introduced her to a new thread, it was
strong, didn't fray under pressure, added a new lustre to the
colours and complemented the structure. Here the colours and
cloth assumed a new, deeper aspect as scarlets intermingled with
black and gold. It wasn't long before she tried plying both threads
together to produce two new and different fibres and for much
of the middle of the weave these four threads dominated. While
weaving this section she revisited her earlier mistakes and found
that some of them had not been total disasters and decided to
introduce some changes though in a controlled manner this time.
For the most part the changes harmonised but some had had not.
By this stage she had decided to accept what had been done and
to leave the mistakes in the cloth and remove them when the weaving
was finished, after all, some mistakes could be used as inspiration
later.
It had taken a long time to weave but it was almost finished,
through the castle she could see the warps tied to the back apron,
watch them advance towards the heddles every time the cloth was
turned around the front roller. She was glad, very glad, that
she had not given in to the impulse to cut the warp when the
new thread she was using ran out and she discovered it was a
one-off dye lot and no longer available. She had tried a couple
of substitutes but although they were nice they hadn't really
worked, thank God she had plied sufficient mixed threads to finish
the piece but without one of the original threads she had been
forced to subdue her colours again so that tans, ochres and quiet
blues predominated in the latter part of the fabric and although
this part was working well it was not quite as she intended.
As she wove towards the end her fingers and hands were growing
sore, her legs felt a little strained from treadling and she
was getting very tired but she did so much want to finish it
tonight. It was her best piece ever and she was ever so pleased
that it was almost done.