Yesterday, I took my copper pipe loom ashore to warp it (far too bouncy onboard for such a task). Bob rigged up a brilliantly technical, Rube Goldberg arrangement for clamping the edge of my loom to a picnic table. It involved two clamps, a length of webbing with a small clasp at one end such as is used for tying things to the roof of a car, and then a length of plain webbing and length of line (nauticalese for rope).<\/p>\n
Can you see that Bob attached one clamp to the picnic table and then used the 2nd clamp to attach the corner of the loom to the first clamp. \u00a0So clever…. To minimize the torquing of the loom he has the car webbing running from the long bar of the 1st clamp to the other end of the picnic table. \u00a0The 2nd webbing is bracing the bottom corner of the loom to the picnic table. All finished warping. \u00a0Then I sat down for a bit to space the warp threads evenly and weave a header that will support the beginning of the woven tapestry. \u00a0Does it look cold? \u00a0It certainly was! \u00a0The wind was blowing about 30 mph and the resultant wind chill was very un-tropical!<\/p>\n Here is the cartoon I\u2019ll be using for this project. It\u2019s the final line from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, and it happens to be a favorite with our younger son as well. This tapestry is for him. In this photo I am measuring for possible border sizes.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in my inbox yesterday I found a message from a friend alerting me to a post on Weavetech that she knew I\u2019d be interested in reading. Now that internet is not a \u2018given\u2019 for us I have dropped the daily digest format, so I would never have seen this post without the \u2018heads up!\u2019 from my friend.<\/p>\n It turns out there is a new book out by Oxford Press about two subjects very dear to me: ancient Greece and weaving. Being a Greek student in college is what led me to weaving in the first place– 40 years ago. It was the connection between text and textile that brought me to weaving, and now 4 decades later a few people are looking at the connections between the words for various parts of early Greek ships and words used in weaving terminology. And now that I spend such a great deal of time living onboard my own little vessel (though not a ship) I am naturally curious to learn more about these findings.<\/p>\n The book is originally\u00a0in German, and published by an English publisher (Oxbow) with a division in the US.\u00a0\u00a0You can find it online here.<\/a>\u00a0 Surely it must also be available in English, especially since the title is translated –I am certainly counting being able to order an English translation.<\/p>\n Weben und Bewebe in der Antike: Materialitat–Reprasentation–Episteme–Metapoetick What I got to read, through the post on WeaveTech, is an article taken from the book, written by Marie-Louise Nosch and published on a website called www.academia.edu<\/a><\/p>\n Though I could not find the article by searching that site (maybe you will have better luck), the woman who posted on WeaveTech sent me a pdf. I\u2019d like to post it here, but will first find out if I need permission for that. Stay tuned. It is a compelling study of the words for various parts of a sailing and rowing ship being the same as words used in both spinning and weaving. Since textile production is an older technology, it is presumed that the words used in ship building and \u00a0sailing terms were borrowed from textile terms, due to textile\u2019s prominent connection to ships, ship building, and the act of sailing or rowing.<\/p>\n And on a calmer day Bob and I took a walk on the pristine beach at Great Harbor Cay.<\/p>\n![\"2-10-16a](\"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2-10-16a-001.jpg\")
<\/a>It was quite an engineering feat, and in the end, I was able to warp the loom all by myself while Bob walked to the market on the island. With my spool of seine twine in a bucket and tensioned by going over the brace of a picnic table nearby, I was able to use one hand to keep the tension on the warp while making wraps of warp with the other hand. I was done in less than hour!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>(Texts and Textiles in the Ancient World: Materiality–Representation–Episteme–Metapoetics)
\n<\/em>Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer (Author)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n