Pins And Needles: Over And Under And Over And Under And...
...Clay was no better. As the rest of the class turned out rabbits and tea cups and flat little faces with the features all nicely in place, I never progressed past snakes. So, it was a ho-hum afternoon for me when Miss Jackson, my fourth grade teacher, began a new art project...
Art was not Gloria MacKay's favourite subject, yet she eventually found a form of artistic expression that brought her much pleasure.
For more of Gloria's generous words please click on Pins And Needles in the menu on this page.
Art was not a favorite subject of mine, although I remember it well. I created fairy flowers from penciled in crosses (three to a page; small, medium and large; no more, no less). The teacher was so structured a kid couldn’t sketch in so much as a fallen bud in the bottom left corner. I know. I had to start over.
Clay was no better. As the rest of the class turned out rabbits and tea cups and flat little faces with the features all nicely in place, I never progressed past snakes. So, it was a ho-hum afternoon for me when Miss Jackson, my fourth grade teacher, began a new art project. She passed out packets of straight pins, cardboard and yarn. “We are going to weave pencil cases this week,” she explained. "Don’t touch a thing until I say so."
First we pushed the pins half way into the top of the long edge of the cardboard, exactly a fourth of an inch apart. I thought my thumb would fall off. "Remember, the warp runs up and down and the weft goes over and under across the warp," Miss Jackson demonstrated. "Although," she mused,"in the olden days weavers referred to the weft as the woof." Two boys at the back of the class began to bark, but were silenced by a withering glance.
Next we wound our yarn around and around the cardboard, hooking each strand over a pin. We were "warping the loom" explained Miss Jackson. I alternated inch-wide strips of red and white, connecting the yarn in knots as small as my fingers could manage. She sniffed at my lumpy attempt and let me know the other boys and girls were using only one color, did not have to tie knots, and were already done. Finally, received permission to go on.
I began to weave: over, under, over, under. Again, I striped my yarn red and white, red and white; soon a checkerboard pattern began to unfold. Miss Jackson slowed down as she passed my desk, but this time she let me alone. When I was done I pulled out the pins and slid my pencil case off the cardboard loom.
It was amazing! Red yarns and white yarns passed each other like soldiers on parade, but where the colors merged there was pink; squares and squares of pink. Not knowing anything about the theory of color I could not even have guessed I had the power to turn red and white into pink just by going over and under. I only knew that my pencil case was beautiful and I loved it.
That was the beginning and end of my weaving. I kept my pencil case wrapped in tissue and I never thought of making another. When my sons brought their art projects home from school I would tell them about the pencil case. When I passed a knitting shop I delighted in the colorful yarns festooned over the walls like fields of blowzy flowers. When I went inside I felt faint rumblings inside me. I held strands of yarn together, winding them around my fingers like a nervous child twisting her hair. I wandered through fabric stores looking and touching but never buying so much as a remnant. Why was I there there? I hated to sew.
The rumblings got louder. Finally, through a fog of red and white and pink I heard a voice shouting, "Weave, you fool! If not now, when?" That was the day I became a weaver even though it was not until six months later I had anything to show for my efforts.
I almost walked out of my Beginning Weaving class the first evening. We had to sit on the floor; as the instructor and all the other students dropped gracefully to the hardwood, my knees creaked and I almost sat on someone’s lap. Most of the women, very young women, were textile majors in college; I listened in to discussions about hue, tints and values. twills, tabby and overshot. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I was a misfit, again.
To keep up with the class I gave up sleeping. I tore off tangled warp and threw it. I cried in the middle of the night and drank black coffee. I served canned soup and Ding Dongs for dinner and forgot my son’s dentist appointment. The magic of weaving had undone me. But the result of all this was a miracle — a crisp woolen table runner in beige, brown and rust. My classmates and my instructor — not Miss Jackson, of course, but a teacher is a teacher is a teacher — were amazed, and so was I, just as I had been with my pencil case so many years before.
These days I have a room filled with nothing but a loom, a bench and baskets of yarn. My family, from time to time, refers to it as my loony room. They might be right. Every loony has a tune and weaving just happens to be mine.
