Spinning Yarns and Weaving Tales: Old Joe's Story

I believe I mentioned previously that I knew looms, that they were these huge, complicated contraptions; little did I know they made these torture devises in economy sizes. The day after we got our tabletop loom (lovingly handmade by artisan woodworkers in the state of Oregon), I sat down to thread the machine. At this point, many of you who are experienced weavers can begin to chuckle, because as it turns out I knew nothing about looms and even less about threading one.

 

So I dug out the handy-dandy instruction book, and lo and behold, you have to know a little about weaving to follow along. I learned my little loom had a cloth beam, a back beam, a warp beam, a breast beam, two shafts with heddles, a beater with reeds and a castle. 

 

At this point, all of this meant very little to me, I just wanted to thread it and start weaving. So I did. I got out some #10 crochet thread, because it was at hand and I thought why not, cut my lengths, threaded the reeds and the heddles, tied it around the warp beam and the cloth beam and tried to send the enormous shuttle through the shed.

 

Needless to say, my shed was more like a root cellar and climbing down into the loom, fighting to get into the shed and fighting to get it out the other side, left me wondering how anyone could possible enjoy this activity. I made several more passes this way, thinking if my shuttle were only a baby version it might slip in easier, there had to be a better way.

 

We were sitting in a small circle, with many onlookers, but few brave enough to lend me a hand. Old Joe spoke up at long last. Joe doesn’t talk much, and we’ve all heard his same old stories dozens upon dozens of times. But this time was different. He had been watching me stretch the brightly colored yarn across the loom and he had a story to share.

 

“It was seventy years ago,” he said, “We found a loom out in an old barn. My brother and me. It was before the war; we had to spend the summer with my Uncle Joe and Aunt Myrna. They lived on this old scrub farm out in the middle of nowhere. They had chickens and dogs and cats running around everywhere. We had been there an hour and had done everything there was to do. Uncle Joe and Aunt Myrna had no children of their own and they were old and mean, and the house was very unfriendly so we decided it was best to stay away for as long as we could. It quickly became our routine to get up early, even before the sun was up, find some bread or slice of pie and head out for a day of exploring.” Joe scooted closer, his old eyes studying our new tabletop loom.

 

“Uncle Joe had about 600 acres. He had few head of cattle and a prize-winning garden. We knew better than to play around the garden, so we kept adventuring further and further out. And that’s when we found the barn. It was old then. We knew better than to go in, but we did. There was piles and piles of stuff cram-packed into every nook and cranny and forgotten corner. Tires, machine parts, furniture, rusted and worn out pieces of this and that, but upstairs, in the loft, under a heavy blanket was the loom.

 

“It had some parts like yours,” Joe said, “and some string that was rotten to the touch. It didn’t work anymore. God knows how long it had been there. We didn’t stay around to play with it. If it had been Aunt Myrna’s, it was there for a reason and we didn’t need to invite trouble from her. I was afraid of what she’d do if she found out we had found it, so I never asked about it.”

 

“You think it’s still there?” I asked sitting on the edge of my seat.

 

“No,” he said, “that barn’s been gone a long, long time.”

 

“That’s too bad,” I said, “I would like to have seen it.”

 

“I think you got it threaded wrong,” Joe said. “That’s why you’re having so much trouble with it.”

 

And it was true. I hadn’t taken my threads around the breast beam or the back beam and I was having one heck of a hard time trying to get started. All I could do was hang my head and cut the warp free. And that’s how I got the rat’s nest, but that’s a story for another time.