Whenever I see my two young kids playing around my weaving looms, throwing a shuttle, or trying to beat a weft, I wonder how much of this will stick. How much of this will be memorable to them when they are grown?
My first exposure to weaving was a plastic Fisher Price toy loom that I had as a kid. It was remarkably sophisticated for a toy loom. It had a lever that I could flip to change a shed to weave plain weave—basically like a frame loom with a heddle bar. I recall warping it up with some white acrylic yarn and weaving enough cloth to make a small purse. Feeling satisfied with my new-found weaving skills, I put the loom away under my bed where I kept all my other experimental crafts, like a latch hook rug kit of a tiger face, fun fur I had collected to sew Beatrix Potter-inspired stuffed animals, and a small yarn stash.
“You Need to Learn To Weave”
One craft lead to another and for many years, through elementary and high school, I knit and sewed my own clothes. After years of knitting with whatever leftover yarn had been destashed to me, in my mid-twenties I started to get curious about the yarn I was knitting with. Exploring the construction and composition of knitting yarn made me interested in spinning my own yarn, so I joined the spinning class at Place des Arts, an arts education space in Coquitlam, just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. The class was held over ten weeks in a small room that was packed full of weaving looms and spinning wheels. I distinctly remember my spinning teacher giving me a gentle nudge during one of our evening sessions and saying, “You need to learn to weave.” Surrounded by these magical and mysterious floor looms week after week, I finally let my curiosity take over, and I signed up for a weaving class.
Featured and second images by Greta Cornejo, all other images by Felicia Lo.
