Playing with Other People's Toys

Recently, Caitlyn got a weekend with her grandparents and met her grandmother's Saori loom. Sharing the results of her explorations was the very first thing she wanted to do when we arrived on Sunday evening to collect her. Then, because she was *that* excited, she insisted that I meet the loom as well.

I may have spent the rest of the evening weaving.


I had a small lap loom when I was a kid, and I remember generally liking weaving with it. I didn't really pursue it beyond that, never really figuring out what to do besides repetitive stripes or how to make something larger than the roughly piece-of-paper-sized fabric the lap loom could produce. Maybe I would have done more with it if I'd had an amazing yarn and fiber stash. Acrylic yarn circa 1985 was, well, somewhat less than inspiring.

Lianna's loom is larger than a piece of paper and her fiber stash is a thing of beauty. I wove this rectangle (table topper? oversize placemat?) spontaneously, with no real planning, guided roughly by a sense of "this yarn might look nice next to the one I was just using." Eventually the spectrum nature became obvious and I ran with it. And because Lianna's fiber stash is not boring worsted weight acrylic yarn but full of colors and textures of all sorts (yarns! strips of fabric! fuzzy! smooth! fringey! barely twisted!), the resulting fabric is interesting and diverse. It's "freestyle" weaving, with no plan and no rules.


I can see the benefit in such an activity for someone as rigidly organized as myself. The reassurance that something nice can happen when there is no plan, no checklist. I probably need more of those reminders.

Perhaps I'll have to arrange a weaving weekend for both Caitlyn and myself.