Home | Howl at the Loom

On Thursday of last week, I had the honor of demonstrating weaving at Raven Hill Discovery Center in rural East Jordan alongside Lynne on behalf of the Lake Charlevoix Weavers and Spinners Guild. The occasion was a field trip comprised of the entire 7th and 8th grade classes of East Jordan Middle School – this age can be a tough crowd! An in-between age: in between responsibility and goofing off, in between naïveté and the knowledge of far horizons, in between confidence and insecurity – my friends kids were pretending they didn’t know me. And sharply, I remember how it felt to be awkward and misunderstood, in fact, I still often feel that way.

The deepest challenge of the day was in finding the level of each group as eight separate clusters of 10 or so kids spent 30 minutes with us over the course of five hours. Many of them had never seen a loom before and were hesitant to volunteer that they knew anything about weaving – a textile structure that most of us encounter every day. But once Lynne and I got going with interactive demonstrations on weave structure and giving students a shot at the loom (pun always intended), most of the kids began to warm up.

But after about 10 minutes, many of the kids who were not directly engaged would lose interest and become distracted – messing with displays and picking on each other (some groups faster than others). It was then that I realized I had an opportunity to call attention to… well, anything I wanted to, really, and see how it goes. (I might have prepared a syllabus if I had anticipated what I was truly getting myself into!) I began by announcing “so you guys,” in my best stage voice and to my surprise, they largely snapped to attention. I posited, “do you all know where the fibers we use for clothing come from?” Somebody said “cotton” and another “sheep” another said “cotton” and another raised their hand precociously and said “cotton” – they were getting my goat now and I laughed at the joke, but I wasn’t even going to try to delve into synthetics.

As we discussed fibers coming from plants and animals, and the processes that are necessary to transform these cellulose and protein fibers into clothing – I could see the connections being made in some of their expressions. It was interesting to them that cotton is grown, then cleaned, carded and spun, then dyed, then knit or woven, and THEN sewed on machines by real live human beings. Many didn’t know that machines cannot make clothing by themselves (yet). From my newfound soapbox, I contrasted our global industrial textile complex of shipping materials thousands of miles between countries in between each processing step (and not paying workers enough along the way) with the closed-loop textile system we have in our own small town of East Jordan.

Within East Jordan, we have shepherds, Stonehedge Fiber Mill for cleaning, carding, and spinning animal fibers, weavers and knitters, and garment makers – and not every small town can say that! We have the existence and larger capacity to accomplish locally what our global system of “efficiencies” accomplishes so inefficiently in terms of the environmental and human cost.

Upon conclusion, one student in one of the groups broke the silence when they began clapping enthusiastically – me and others clapping along. Another classmate informed me, “oh he claps at everything lol” and I said, “you know I don’t mind. My dad is a juggler and I am a bit of a performer myself,” so applause, genuine or not, can feel triumphant. And it’s presence, drawing attention to the the silence that had fallen over the room, told me the kids were listening.