Weaverly

Last week, in going through a box of old clippings, I found a wonderful article from the Fall 1966 issue of Handweaver & Craftsman magazine, entitled SUMMER-AND-WINTER; Experiments With Four Blocks on Four Harnesses, by Mae Aldrich. The author, by the way, was founder of the New England Weavers’ Seminar.

In her article, Aldrich presents an unusual version of S&W in which the traditional 2 blocks, with tie-downs on shafts 1 and 2, are augmented by another two blocks with tie-downs on shafts 3 and 4. Block A is threaded the usual 1323, and block B 1424. Shafts 1 and 2 are the tie-downs. But when you add two more blocks, the tie-downs for the added blocks are on shafts 3&4, and block C becomes 4232, and D 4131. The trick here is that when going from Blocks A&B to C&D, or vice versa, a transition thread must be added (Incidentally, Donna Sullivan, in her book Summer & Winter: A Weave for All Seasons has some excellent information on this S&W variation. Used copies of her book are readily available on the Internet).

Now if the idea of 4 blocks on 4 shafts wasn’t strange enough, the addition of color to the mix really surprised me. On the left is one of my sample drafts shown with a structure-only drawdown (think black warp and white weft), and on the right is the exact same draft with color added to warp and weft! The underlying block pattern disappears and in its place is a virtual carpet of texture effects.

Here’s a close-up. Some day I’ll weave this. Meanwhile, if you’re curious about the draft, I’ve uploaded a similar version to handweaving.net as draft #81645. Enjoy.

I should mention that yesterday I took the morning off to watch the Formula 1 race from Monza, Italy, and was transfixed by the spectacle, but I also gleaned a bit of wisdom from the commentators as the cars were circling the track at 200+ mph. Here it is: “Catching up is easy, overtaking is hard”. I feel there’s some advice in there for us weavers, I just haven’t figured it out yet.

Who knows where these things lead us.