Weaving, Trying to Make Sense of my Time at the Bottom of this Planet, Occasionally Tending our Sisyphaen Patch
by the Goddess of Procrastination and Expert Forgetter
2008/06/10
Sometimes I Kick Myself Really Hard
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"A" indicates the location of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota; it's there today, and it was there in 1977, when I started college, on Snelling and Hewitt, on this map the blue square near the number 51, an inch above Midway Market Place but below the railroad line. Lalla Jones, a sophomore and a diplomat's daughter who lived all over Africa in her childhood, used to ask me at least twice a week if I'd like to join her in weaving. She went at least that often, if not more, to weave, and she loved it.
I was into boys, booz and a little bit of books back then; I was interested in weaving, but not just then. Sometimes I think "if only...."; sometimes I think it's good I didn't because I might not have liked it then (I was terribly impatient) and might never have picked it up again.
I just had a few Minnesota-things pop up in my life lately, which made me look up where the Guild is for the first time. I knew it was somewhere on University, but now that I look at it, I must have passed it gazillion times because I used to go to the University's Wilson Library to study, or to Dinkytown to socialize, and for a year I lived in an apartment two blocks from Dinkytwon. I don't know if I'll go back to those days again if I were allowed to; Minnesota's winters were brutal. But it is one of the periods I look back and feel nostalgic.
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2 comments:
Oh Meg,
The whole thing was there in 1984 when I started college and went to a miserable shop in Stadium Village. I made hideous stuff and was told I knit WRONG, but never could get what the problem was. I still feel yucky about that knitting time. There was a weaving store on the West Bank that stocked yarn that was always wrong for me. They had lots of HUGE, intimidating looms. It just looked like more than I could take on. More yuckiness.
Last summer, I took up spinning and went back to the West Bank Weaving Spot. BLECH BLECH, and MORE BLECH!!!!!! I saw a wheel in the window and knew I could get roving there in the 80's. Whoever worked there that knew SQUAT or more about spinning was not there the 3 or 4 times I tried to buy stuff from them. The yuckies did not go away.
Hang in there, it gets happy.
I saw a sheep to shawl demonstration in a neighboring state. Those kind women turned me on to the Textile Center and the Weaver's Guild. So happy now.
Sometimes, we have to take the detour to get to where we really want go to, it seems. Well, La Crumpet, we're now where we want to be, at least for the time being, yeah?
In terms of looking for the right material, THANK GOODNESS FOR THE INTERNET, I say, especially if you live in a small place like Nelson, even though there are sheep around me, (but not as many as you see in a calendar/book/postcard from New Zealand; Nelson is more fisheries, forestry and fruits/wine kind of place.)
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