From hand to hand

1.

If you scroll up to this blog’s header on the homepage, it is right there on the left-hand side, with a pink-and-white project on it. All I knew about the loom when I first brough it home was that (1) it is an Ashford prooobably made in the 80s, (2) it is much larger and heavier than I’d planned for, and (3) it would need some TLC before I could put on my first warp.

Number (2) means, like a humongous piece of furniture that dictates how the rest of a room is arranged, it is impossible not to notice as soon as you walk into the space, is the centre around which all my other tools and materials are organised, and will stay in that one spot until we inevitably move apartment. Number (3) was how, that night, I ended up pulling an all-nighter for the first time since my uni days. Per the description by my friend Azrah (of FleeceFolk Diary) of my whole crafting ethos, I have excellent use of my free will; aimed with screwdrivers (one flat-head, one Philips-head), rust remover, rags, sanding blocks, and a B&W printout of an Ashford assembly manual for what looked most similar to the loom I was looking at, I took the whole thing apart, down to all 603 metal heddles.

When I had wiped off all the accumulated layers of dust and cobweb on the castle, I noticed these very small dents in the wood, all lined up in a row. A quick flipping of a lever confirmed my thinking that, yes, the dents were created by the bottom of the levers hitting the top of the castle, when the weaver had raised and lowered the harnesses during weaving.

The dent marks brought my mind to another thing I knew for sure about the loom, shared with me during the quick ten-minute chat in the parking lot; (4) it was originally purchased by another weaver who taught Debs multi-harness weaving, from whom Debs then bought it second-hand. I’m the third person to have put a first warp on this loom. Of course, I messaged Debs on Facebook with an excessive number of photos of that first warp, to let her know the loom is in good hands.

Not planning to dent the wood further, plus wanting to soften the noise when the levers are flipped, I put small rubber dots over the marks. But every time I look at the loom, I remember that they are there.

2.

When you browse this blog, many of the photos you see will have been taken using this small Nikon digital camera. In 2016, before my first flight to Sydney from Hanoi, my grandpa (Mum’s father) gave it to me. I took lots of photos with it my first several months here, then my attention wandered elsewhere and it stayed unused on a cabinet shelf. Truthfully, me taking the camera out of its case a couple months ago, during a hyperfixation-induced house clean, was what finally pushed me to start this blog. I’m not sure why, but I immediately wanted to bring it into my world of fibre crafts. It just feels right.

If the photos on the original memory card were any indication, Grandpa bought the camera in 2009. There were photos of me and my little sister from that year, plus flowers, balcony plants, and family outtings. The LCD screen is starting to show white spots where the liquid display thingo has aged and stopped working. But the metal housing is still hefty, and I adore the old-school time and date stamp on the photos it takes.

3.

My first blog post on here was spurred by an unexpected gift from a local spinner–a bag of mystery teal fibre. It was given to me with the only expectation being that it would eventually be spun up by someone.

4.

I’ve been elbow-deep in sheep fleece, in no small part thanks to my friends Louise (of louise.made.this on Instagram) and Azrah. We exchange sandwich-sized ziplocs and big binliners full of the stuff, flood a group chat with intel (an Azrah-ism) about shearing days at different farms, and brainstorm ways to work with different breeds.

That led to my one designated basket for fleece in my Craft Nook being joined by a giant Muji jute bag, then pillowcases stuffed with wool being stacked on top of the basket and the jute bag when they hit capacity. That, then, led to me pulling everything out to reorganise the whole system plus to tuck in pieces of felt doused in lavender oil to deter bugs now that summer is here. That, finally, led to me realising how many of the labels I’d put in the bags of fleece contain the line “gift from <friend’s name here>”.

5.

I joke often that I was born high-strung and anxious, as evidenced by how I learned to read very early so that I could soon read the news and know how messed up the world is. I, surely like many other humans with even haft a heart and brain, have days where the world with all of its current off-its-axis-ness and genuine evils feels overbearing. On days like that, like it has been every day this week, this month, this year, I think of the parts of the same fleece that are in my friends’ stashes, or the marks on the castle of a loom.