Learning to Weave by Listening to Ghosts

We have stories of spinners and weavers and string magic deeply embedded into our consciousness. From the Norns and Moirai, or Three Fates, of both Norse and Greek myth who spin, measure, and cut the threads of our lives, to Princess Irene following a magic thread to safety, a gift hidden in a ring from her Great Great Grandmother. Briar Rose is called by an enchanted spinning wheel, Spider Woman saves the world from slipping out of place and taught humans how to weave, and the miller's daughter deals with Rumplestilskin for help with spinning straw into gold. The world over is brimming full with associated Goddesses, ritual knot work, and metaphor written right into our language, featured in song, even spoken during spiritual practices and meditations.

It was once commonplace for women to chant or pray while stitching, protective symbols and visual stories were sewn with colourful thread into traditional clothing, and the calm repetitive act of spinning and weaving lends itself well for falling into trance or otherworld journeys. Sailors have long used knot magic to bind or release wind. Cord cutting or burning, as well as various binding acts are powerful rituals. Some church groups knit prayer shawls to give out to those needing comfort during hard times, and I know a good few intentional fibre workers and wool witches stitching, spinning, knotting, and weaving their spells.

I have a memory of being very small watching my Grandmother weave on a loom that seemed to fill the entire room. I was fascinated and a little bit frightened. It felt larger than life, clacking in its complexity, and my warm yet enigmatic Grandmother had her back to me working the treadles with her feet and passing her shuttle back and forth, back and forth.
I'm not even sure she knew I was there. 
Many years later, I found I had inherited two of her weavings, an autumnal scarf and a great blanket shawl. They became treasures tying into this old memory, and are wrapped up with all of the feelings and impressions she brought me while I knew her.

Over time, ancestral wisdom finding, traditional skill learning, and personal heritage exploration became very important to me and often would remind of a quiet urge I felt to sit at a loom, no matter how far off and dreamy it felt. Throughout the years I had inspiring friends take up weaving, and projects began to form in my mind, though I knew it was still not yet time.

Shortly after most of us began a pandemic induced "hunker down" in our homes, a dear soul gifted me a table loom and out of curiosity for its history, I followed internet threads to a free mentorship initiative in the 1930s for Canadian farm wives, begun by the Searle Grain Company to help them overcome feelings of isolation and to support self-sufficiency.
I couldn't help feeling a curious synchronicity spanning across time while I entered into my own hermitage and hurried to build our "victory" garden. Living so remotely, our food security was particularly vulnerable. and self-sufficiency was top of mind.
Back then, travelling instructors bringing equipment and supplies came to farming towns for six weeks and community weaving circles were left behind, each promising to continue passing teachings free of charge in reciprocity for such a gift. Canadian made Leclerc looms were made available, linen was imported from Ireland and wool from Great Britain. A mail order system was established, national contests were held, and it was thriving until high gas prices meant women were suddenly unable to drive to weaving circles any longer. Our gas prices reacted similarly and the Leclerc loom I had been given may very well have been one from those times. I loved it up, but did not begin.

The following Fall, a handworking friend brought a floor loom for me to "loom-sit" while she was out of the country. It came disassembled but I was encouraged to fit it together and begin my journey. I looked at it often and thought, "In the dark of Winter I'll try."
But. I didn't.

Another year and a half later, a travelling Slavic witch visited our homestead offering to teach me to spin wool should I find some roving. While retrieving the roving, I was gifted a drop spindle made by a wood turner one province over. It had been passed from hand to hand with instruction it be given and used. It felt fortuitous, timely, and quite luck filled.
On my way home, a message came through inquiring if I would be keen to accept a floor loom... delivered the following day from the island we can see from our little bay. The serendipitous timing was not to be missed with spinning and weaving organically converging, as if the were Fates conspiring to kick my butt into action. I began spinning that very night.

The floor loom arrived not only set up, but also with a weaving project strung and begun! Everything I needed was included, a boat shuttle, a spool of the weft thread, extra heddle strings, a book and a home burned dvd.
No more excuses would be accepted.

I took a little time with her. Saining with herbal smoke, washing with Florida water, introducing myself. Old looms, like elder spinning wheels and used spindles seem imbued with story. Of their own travels certainly, but also of those whose hands have spent much time working with them. The weaving project that had been planned and meticulously strung here was set by a woman who owned it before the woman who was donating it to me.  I know nothing about her other than her work and this equipment she had used. Why she had to stop midway will remain a mystery. The wonderfully friendly woman who brought it to our cottage studio showed me where she had added her own pics to the pattern and confessed that much like myself, she too was brand new to weaving. Destined to move across the country, a loom and teacher were waiting for her over six thousand kilometers away, and so this one had come home to me.
It would take all three of us to finish this piece of weaving.

I spun more of the wool and as it was Spring garden tending time, ordered flax seed with the intention to learn how to grow and process my own fibre. I had my Grandmother very much on my mind, and so too vague remembrance of flax workers in my family heritage, which prompted a good read through of the genealogy books my Nana put together of her family tree research. My Nana and Grandmother had been best friends in college, were pregnant at the same time, then raised my parents together. While neither are alive with me today, they both felt to be nudging me along from beyond. Try this. Read that. Plant those seeds.

In the bag of accompanying loom accoutrements was a scrap of paper with six paired sets of numbers. Looking and looking, I saw there were six pedals on the loom, with twelves strings hanging down to be hooked up.
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I followed this impulse, did my best to hook them up accordingly, and sat down for my first passes with the boat shuttle. I didn't know what I was doing, but it felt glorious to be going through the motions. Feet feeling for where to step, the clacking of shafts lifting and dropping, a shuttle passing from hand to hand. I noticed things. If the working edge was wound too close to me, the beater bar didn't tuck each new pic of thread nice and close to the one before. I figured out how to tighten the warp when it felt a little slack by feeling about levers and cranks. Saw some of the shafts seemed to stick with a little resistance and learned how to repair the loom's ageing lever strings, each wound through holes and over pulleys as one by one, three of the four that lift each shaft suddenly snapped. I used up all the thread already wound on the shuttle spool while watching the fabric grow with a lovely weaving of threads.

It didn't even come close to matching the original pattern, but I didn't mind. As I held the shuttle in my hands I noticed how to lift out the bobbin and I rewound some thread I had been saving for years for this very moment. It felt very much as if the loom itself was teaching me, maybe too I was picking up on the intentions of the mystery woman who had begun this project. It felt as if each time I encountered something new, I was following nudges from somewhere unseen, perhaps my Grandmother was sending little signals, or the 13 Scottish weavers, spinners, and flax dressers I have so far found in my family history reading.

I tried adding some of my twice plied homespun wool, thick, plushy, and fast filling comparatively, full of the magic that can be felt when we learn something new and fall in love with it. Then reloaded the shuttle with a soft bright golden thread my husband chose from my saved stash. This long woven piece can be read much like a book. Each woman's additions and all of my learnings up to the clear point where point it suddenly occurred to me to use both my feet on the treadles and alternate moving across them from left to right with right to left. I am sure there must be more complex footwork too, but this inspiration shifted the simple pattern I had been making into a sweet scallop shell design. It felt like I was finally, really "doing it". It wasn't just exploring anymore and I let myself fall into a gentle awareness, listening for any more ghosts, while my body kept rhythm. Hands passing the shuttle back and forth, feet pressing heddle levers, first this one, then that one.

It took me a few more days to come to the end of the warp laid out on the loom. I didn't rush. I savoured. Took time to spin more wool, wrapping up the energies I could taste as I did so. Washed and hung the new skeins to dry, then wound them into little balls, ready to bring those flavours into tapestries, clooties, and other prayer or intentional workings.

When I did finish, and cut our three woman weaving off the loom, I was able to fully see the work of the two before me. Together, without even knowing each other, we had made a long beautiful scarf. I picked up the book that had come with and learned how to tuck in hanging threads from colour changes and bobbin refills, then on to twist a luscious long dangling fringe at each end. It is all very slow and careful work, made even slower for having no human teacher, but all the more exciting that way. I think the essence of these traditional skills, or maybe the ghosts of my ancestors, were tired of waiting for me to finally feel ready. If we keep passing over the signs we are given, sometimes they escalate until we move into action.

I am still daunted to learn "for real" with the precision needed for calculating thread counts and designing patterns. I only know a few basic terms stemming from encouraging weaver friends listening to me gush through this. Math doesn't come easily to me and I know it takes many days just to prep a new project before any weaving can begin. Miss-threading or miscounting can throw the entire project off. We don't even seem to have the right sort of thread for a warp to purchase in our little town. But I'm ready. And I can hear the empty looms and all those ghosts waiting for me.