S5 E15 Inkle & Band Weaving with Andrew Bryson

In this episode of The SweetGeorgia Show, host Felicia Lo interviews Andrew Bryson, a passionate weaver and teacher, who shares his journey into the world of inkle and tablet weaving. Andrew discusses his background in fibre arts, the intricacies of different weaving techniques, and the importance of overcoming the fear of starting a new craft. They discuss the freedom that comes from pursuing creative passions without the pressure of commercial success, the cultural significance of weaving across different societies, and the need for a shift towards sustainable practices in fashion. 

Takeaways:

• Andrew Bryson has been weaving for about five years and has a deep respect for historical weaving techniques.
• He emphasizes the importance of sharing knowledge within the fibre arts community.
• Inkle weaving is a form of band weaving that is warp-faced and often involves hand manipulation for patterning.
• Tablet weaving is more complex and allows for a variety of techniques and patterns.
• Both inkle and tablet weaving can be as intricate as multi-shaft loom weaving.
• The loom is just a tool; the creativity comes from the weaver's choices.
• Starting with weaving can be daunting, but it's important to overcome the fear of making mistakes.
• The value of the process and learning in fibre arts is often overlooked.
• Materials should not be treated as too precious; the experience of creating is what matters.
• Balancing a full-time job with a passion for weaving requires intentional time management.
• Pressure on creativity can stifle artistic expression. Creative freedom allows for exploration without constraints.
• Weaving is a universal cultural practice; these techniques are vital for cultural preservation. Historical techniques connect us to our past.
• Learning traditional crafts cannot be replaced by technology.
• The fast fashion culture lacks sustainability.
• Repairing items is a growing movement.
• Engaging in fibre arts fosters community and creativity.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Weaving and Andrew Bryson
• 1:41 Andrew's Journey into Fibre Arts
• 5:22 Understanding Inkle and Tablet Weaving
• 12:20 The Complexity of Weaving Techniques
• 16:11 Overcoming the Fear of Starting
• 19:53 Valuing the Learning Process in Weaving
• 23:12 Balancing Work and Weaving Life
• 25:01 The Freedom of Creativity
• 27:33 Weaving and Anthropology: A Cultural Intersection
• 32:14 Connecting with History Through Weaving
• 37:28 The Value of Traditional Techniques in a Modern World
• 41:10 Sustainability and the Shift Towards Slow Fashion
• 45:23 Exploring New Techniques and Future Projects

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to The Sweet Georgia Show. I'm Felicia Lowe, your host. Today on the Sweet Georgia Show, we are joined by weaver and teacher Andrew Bryson to explore the intricate world of inkle and tablet weaving. He has been passionately exploring the fiber arts and weaving specifically for the past many years and has discovered a deep interest and respect for the history and techniques of these textiles. He is learning and preserving a lot of historical weaving knowledge, and thankfully, he's also very enthusiastic about sharing it with the fiber arts community. We are currently in the process of of working with Andrew to develop some ankle weaving courses for the School of Sweet Georgia that I hope that you will enjoy. So today I wanted to introduce you to Andrew and his work through this conversation. So welcome, Andrew. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the Sweet Georgia Show. Now, you and I, we've only had the chance to chat very, very briefly on Zoom before. But I know that Greta, our education program coordinator at the School of Sweet Georgia, she spent a whole weekend learning ankle weaving from you. And so she was the one who made the introduction. She says that we should meet and we should like learn more from Andrew about ankle weaving and band weaving and all these things. So we're really, you know, I'm really looking forward to getting to know you and learning about more about what you know and what you've been interested in and your background in weaving. So can you tell us just to start off with a little bit about yourself, your background and how you discovered weaving in the fiber arts? I'm

SPEAKER_03: 1:41

Andrew Bryson. I've been weaving now for about five years, but I've been doing fiber arts now for about 12 or so. I initially actually got into fiber arts. My grandmother was a big knitter way back when. When I was little, my grandmother taught me how to knit and to sew and to quilt. And my grandfather taught me how to like build boats and do woodworking and things like that. And I've always been interested in making things. So I've always had hobbies around like, you know, origami or building things, building model planes, stuff like that. And I was bored and I needed a new hobby and I hadn't done anything fiber related since I was like 10 years old and I went to Michael's one day and went for a walk and I ended up picking up a book on crochet and some yarn and that took me down a whole path for you know almost yeah well until now but yeah 12 years or so and then just during the pandemic my i've always been interested in leaving the technology behind the weaving like the looms and how it's done it's made always been fascinating to me and i also have an interest in archaeology and anthropology i initially went to school for that but that doesn't go anywhere so i end up going to school right into like going to business and doing other not-for-profit work um But I get, yeah, there's always this interest in weaving. So my partner kind of picked up on it and bought me a loom for Christmas in 2020, just randomly. It was a 36-inch rigid heddle loom, which is huge. And then as something as a brand new weave, like that new thing to play with, I was like, I don't know what this thing is. I don't know how to do it. But YouTube became my best friend. And online schools, actually, I ended up joining the School of Sweet Georgia as well as a few others just to start like, how do I use this? this thing. and that i got hooked like i've been non-stop weaving since um i ended up my daughter moved out and her room has now become my weaving studio i have a floor loom i have three rigid heddle looms and i have uh three ink looms and two band looms that i've made myself like i've built my own and i just um there's something about building making my own things, like being able to, you know, take the raw materials and you build it and just create some amazing things that be able to play with the technology of it. Like it's, it's old technology, right? Like weaving, weaving technology. It's the basis of our computers. It's, you know, it's, it's so far back in history that we don't even really know where it comes from. It's so old. Um, and I love, I love that about it. Like I just, I love all those aspects and there's so much to learn. Like I'm just, yeah, always learning stuff. I started with rigid heddle and somehow i just kind of fell into ankle weaving and band weaving as kind of the things that like i joined a couple of local guilds so i'm a member of the vancouver guild the greater vancouver uh weavers and spinners guild i'm also a member of the courtland weavers and spinners guild and i um i'm getting a little bit of feedback sorry um Yeah, so I, you know, there's tons of people, amazing weavers, and they're making all sorts of beautiful things. No one was really doing ankle weaving, and I kind of gravitated that way and then learned about the history and kind of the historical pieces of it, and I was hooked on that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

For some of our listeners who might not know what ankle weaving is, I mean, I tried to look into this a little bit myself. Last summer, the people, the folks in our School of Sweet Georgia got really excited about the idea of learning ankle weaving. And so they sort of formed their own little mini study group. And they're like, oh, they all got looms. They all figured it out together. They were all working through it. And they were so excited about it that they got me excited about it. And I went out and I bought the loom. I even assembled it. But then I never wove anything on it. And I think that, you know, there's terms out here. There's band weaving, there's ankle weaving, and there's tablet weaving and card weaving can you sort of describe and break down like what are these different kinds of weaving how are they different from maybe rigid heddle weaving maybe multi-shaft weaving that maybe people are a little bit more familiar with can you very easily go from a rigid heddle to all of a sudden an inkle loom and like what is inkle like what is that word

SPEAKER_03: 6:23

so that's a lot of big questions with a lot of answers so um so what is inkle i'll start with that so so the term inkle uh we're not actually sure where the term inkle comes from, but it seems to come from another word, which really means Lincolnshire green tape from the 16th century. It's an old, old English term, which really inkle weaving or inkle means band. So it's inkle weaving, card weaving, backstrap weaving, like all those things. Essentially what you're making is a, it's a warp faced band, typically anywhere between, well, I mean, some, some of them get quite wide. You can do, you know, 12, 13 inches wide, but a lot of them are kind of, you know, between half an inch to three inches wide. And it's, it's, Yeah, it's mostly a warp-faced band, meaning you don't see the weft in the yarn. And depending on what you're doing, so inkle weaving is essentially a two-shaft weaving structure. So you really don't have your up and down. So it's actually very similar to a rigid heddle. And you can do inkle weaving on a four loom, on a rigid heddle loom, but with the inkle weaving, essentially you have every other thread is tied to a string. So it's kind of stationary. and then you're lifting or dropping the moving threads, be it past that, to create your two shafts. And inko is known largely for, it's a lot of hand manipulation, so there's a lot of pickups or drops, so you can get some really neat patterning in the weave, or it's kind of very colour forward. So you do a lot of colour blocks, or the patterns are bars of alternating colour, or little dots that show up. So it's very... you know, patterning is more around color, color use. Um, but you can also do some techniques like pick up. You can do like, you can do turn croak rug on ankle. So you get little patterns of little people or, you know, little images, but essentially, yeah, it's a two shaft, it's a two shaft, two shaft weave, um, on a very, and its depth is very narrow. So when you're weaving it, because all the threads get packed in quite tightly to themselves, you, you don't see the weft in between and it creates a very sturdy, strong, band. Inko is quite thin, so it's often also known as ribbon weaving. You've got to make a ribbon or it used to be called tape, which can throw it off. tablet weaving on the other hand is is actually more like a four shaft it's more like a four shaft weave so in tablet weaving you have a card the card sits on its edge and you have threads that go through typically it's four holes in a card you can have three you can have eight you can five you can actually have as many as you want. Most of them though are four shaft, or four holes. And then you rotate the cards forward or backwards, and by doing that in different combinations, you get a whole bunch of different types of patterning. But you can do so many different types of techniques. There's, you know, there's, you can do 3-1-12, you can do kind of like a colored weave style, you can do pick up, you can do yeah there's you know you can do double weave you can do double double sided weaving like yeah there's tons of different styles of things you can do um but essentially the difference is the warp is all tied from the front to the back and you've got these cards that you rotate back and forth and that's what gives you the different shafts um

SPEAKER_00: 10:14

so this is still like very much the same ideas like anything that you could do in a multi-shaft loom right like on a multi-shaft loom we have all these warp ends and then they are threaded through different heddles on different shafts so that you can decide which shaft goes up or which shaft goes down. And so I guess with Inca weaving, you have all those warp ends. They are all placed super, super, super tight and close together. So you're getting a warp faced look. I guess if you're using a thin weft, then you would make a thin tape or a thin ribbon. But if you were using like a thick weft, kind of like how they do for rep weave, is that something that ever happens with

SPEAKER_03: 10:51

Inca?

UNKNOWN: 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:52

Yes, you can create textural differences by using thinner or thicker yarn. So depending on what you're trying to do, there's actually some really neat uh some really neat bands i've seen where someone has taken like a very very thick weft yarn and they have it so it kind of like loops out and back in and you actually create like loops down the side of the band to give it some really neat textural you know differences you can use a thick and a thin yarn um it's very similar to like yeah rep weave um you can also do yeah like it it I think that the misconception is that ankle weaving or card weaving is a very simple, basic weave. The reality is it's not. There is as much, it's kind of, I liken it to rigid heddle weaving. When I first started learning rigid heddle, a lot of places online were like, oh, it's a basic loom. It's a simple loom. It's a good starter because it's a starter loom. But the reality is you can do as much with a rigid heddle as you can with a multi-shaft loom. In some cases, you can do things with that rigid paddle, you can't do a multi-shaft loom because of the structure. Inkle and table weaving are the same. They're as complex, there's as much variation as there is in any other type of loom weaving, but it's just not seen as, because it's simple, because it's small, I think people don't see that variation as often, right?

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

Yeah, I think one thing that we always try to communicate to people is this idea of your loom. The loom is basically just the piece of equipment that holds your warp ends but what you do with each one of those warp ends and which ones go up and which ones are colored and which ones go down and which ones you know however you want to do that that's what creates the fabric and so that all of that manipulation on all that pre-thought is the weaver and the designer it's nothing it's

SPEAKER_03: 12:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 12:47

The loom is just holding the thread.

SPEAKER_03: 12:49

Well, exactly. And that's a really good, like with ankle weaving or band, like you don't even need a loom. Like you can literally use a method where you tie your entire warp to a door handle or a poster, you know, and it's your, you know, you can do it that way. You can have it on around a chair or, you know, any kind of, you know, two table clamps on, you know, some of the tablet looms are literally a two by four, board with two clamps on each end and you know one end ties down the finish side and one end ties down the warp and you just you know advance it forward so like very simple equipment it's it's not yeah the equipment is actually not driving the creation it's all the weaver it's it's the insight it's the vision it's that planning and deciding what i want this to be so it is very much uh you know weaver driven activity the loom really you know i find actually when i use my flow It does a lot of the work for me. So it's very easy. It's very meditative. It's very fast. I find with band weaving and any type, there's more intentionality needed and more focus because, you know, and when you make a mistake, it's really hard to go backwards

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

sometimes. Yeah. So maybe like a different level of focus required for all of that. It's funny because sometimes when I'm, you know, we talk about a little bit about potato chip knitting. Like sometimes you have a knitting project where you're just like on auto. You're just kind of knitting on auto. and you don't really have to think too much about it. Whereas other times you're like working lace or your cables and you have to look at what you're doing. And I think it's the same idea with weaving. Like sometimes at a floor loom, you can just like, I throw in the shadow. This feels good. This feels really great. And then other times where you want to like actually be really intentional about what am I creating pick by pick in my fabric and what am I creating there. And you were talking about, you know, making things and not necessarily needing a lot of equipment. I did come across something previously about how card weaving or tablet weaving, you could just use a deck of cards and punch holes in the corners of a deck of cards and you make a loom like that

SPEAKER_03: 14:54

exactly you can anything as essentially you know cards can be um yeah like you want something you know paper just plain paper is too thin but like cardstock so yeah playing cards are really good because they're laminated but even just like yeah cardstock i've seen people make them out of like old milk jug plastic where they just cut they wash the milk jug and cut cut squares and punch holes in that. You can, yeah, you can make it out of, I mean, the, the first, the oldest known tablets were made out of bone. They're made out of, you know, like, like bone plates or wood, but, and there's, you know, most, most of the, you know, most of it was made out of natural materials. So a lot of it decayed because it's, you know, you know, it's what they had on hand, but it is, yeah, you can make it like, you don't need to need to buy really any equipment. Like you can make cards with, yeah, whatever you've around the house, you can tie it to a door, you know, whatever you're going to be brilliant by the thread. And even that, you know, you can use you can use any any, any thread you want. Typically, a lot of stuff, you know, you want something that's not going to be too stretchy, because, you know, stretchy, stretchy, it's hard, because a lot of tension is put on it. But you can use anything you want, really. So it is very accessible.

SPEAKER_00: 16:11

Yeah. So I mean, like, you know, I got as far as getting excited about the I got the ankle loom. And then the next step of actually putting yarn onto the loom and warping it up. I don't know why there was a bit of a mental block there. So I wonder, like, what would you say to somebody who's like interested or wants to get started and doesn't know how to... Yeah. Do that first step. What was the first thing that you made? What's the easiest thing to make?

SPEAKER_03: 16:40

So the first thing I made was an absolutely atrocious card band that like was card weaving and it was ugly as hell. And it was, it caused me so much frustration because I did everything backwards. But I think, I think the, what I would, what I would say is, is just do it. Like, like we, I find that I often, I often, one of the, that I've learned in weaving is, and all fiber arts really, is preciousness and not to get too precious with the things I've got, the yarn, the, you know, I go and buy this beautiful yarn. I was up in Yukon, I bought some Kivyit and it's beautiful and it's expensive. And I'm like, it's been sitting in a cupboard for, you know, three, four years. Cause I'm like, I'm going to make something with it, but I have to know exactly what I'm going to make and be really confident. Cause I don't want to, I don't want to screw it up. But that preciousness is something you've got to overcome. and just, you know, just do. So the first band I made, yeah, it was called a four forward, four back pattern. I got it booked out of the library on card weaving. It was like 10 or 12 cards. So very, very small number of cards. I threaded them all and you just kind of turn all the cards forward four times and turn all the cards back four times. And I tied it to my door and I was sitting, I have a picture of me sitting in this room with like the thread is attached to the door on one side of the room and I'm on the other side of the room with a tie around my waist and you know trying to struggle with this and it was ugly and horrible but it was so much fun to make um and then the second band i was like okay i learned i learned what not to do doing that one and i learned a bit of a better way of doing things and then by the third or fourth one i was doing they actually started looking good and i was like actually i like these um same with including actually was trying to think i don't remember when i bought my include And I think I struggled. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to make the string heddles, how to warp it, a lot of watching YouTube video and watching it and doing it and watching it and going back. But I was driven by it. I wanted to learn it. At the time, there wasn't any classes. There wasn't anybody teaching it. And I wasn't a member of the guild, so I didn't have somebody I could go to and say, hey, how do I do this? So, I mean, if... I would say, you know, either just do it or try and find some place. There are now, there are classes online. There are guilds you can join and have members who will be very happy to help out. Yeah. And I think that there's ankle weaving and card weaving are having a bit of a day right now. Like it's been a lot more resources go out there. So it's, I'd say just, yeah, you kind of have to just jump into it and be okay with making mistakes because that's part of the process.

SPEAKER_00: 19:26

Yeah. You said something really important there about like preciousness of material And then even going back to previously what you talked about, how like the making the cards or the tablets for weaving were made out of natural materials and they actually eventually over time decay. And I think with all things that we do in fiber arts, all textiles, everything will eventually decay. And so I think almost like looking at it from a perspective of. It's not that it doesn't matter because it does matter. It matters to the person who's making it and while you're making it all these kinds of things, but eventually they will all decay. And so enjoy the moment that you have it, right? It's a good reminder because I also picked up this indigo dyed silk from Japan like 15 years ago and it's sitting in my stash because I'm, oh, what can I make with it? It's too precious, that sort of idea. But, you know, if it just sits there, it's not doing me any good, right?

SPEAKER_03: 20:21

Exactly. And it's, I mean, we put Like, we as a society have built value into things that we can sell or things that we can, you know, things we can buy or sell. If there's a monetary value to it, then it becomes worth doing. Things that don't have monetary value to them, you know, we've devalued that in some ways. And the process of learning to weave, really, it's that learning process, and there's high, high value in that. But we don't put that value in the same way anymore. So, like, in a way, it's going back to, like, realizing, like, me learning this and yeah, I'm going to make mistakes. And it's a little bit of yarn. It's, you know, yeah, okay, so I spent a bunch of money on it, but if I mess it up, there's, there's more out there. I can, I can fix it. I can do something different with it. I can use that, that yarn. I can turn into thrums and I can read, reuse it. And, you know, I don't need to worry about that preciousness so much, but, but the investment in learning something new that I want to learn and doing it for myself. And, you know, I get so much value out of just making things with my hands and learning. Like for me, it's about learning new things. I like making the things too, but I like the learning process. And I like, I put a lot of value into that. And I think that we don't value that part of it enough. I think people need to start valuing my own growth, my own learning, because it's something I want to do just for the sake of doing it. I think it's also an important lesson to stick with.

SPEAKER_00: 21:44

I think I'm very, very much like you too, because I'm sitting here in my attic and I'm surrounded by my yarn and my things that I've made, but they're all like random bits of things that I've made. Like, oh, this is where I experimented with this. Oh, I figured that out. Oh, it's where I experimented with this. And then I have like a scrap of that. And they all just are scraps that represent things that i learned but they're not things that i could sell or give away to anybody or that is you know a thing

SPEAKER_03: 22:10

but that's actually really important because those are the things like like you said like those are the memories of your learning journey as opposed to making something that you're going to sell or give away like like somehow we value the thing that i'm going to make and give away to somebody higher than all those things all those lessons and all of those memories when you look at those you're going to be like oh i remember i did that and sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're horrific But those are actually the things that you can share and pass on to others. And I think we need to value those things so much more than we do because that's the journey, right? You're not going to necessarily remember the thing you made and gave away or sold. Those are really, at the end of the day, the value is not in that object. And the value in that is I'm making money off of it. And that's actually not why I've gotten involved in fiber arts. It's not something I... I have a full-time day job and that's where I go and make my money. But the weaving is my personal growth pieces and I really value that. So,

SPEAKER_00: 23:11

yeah. Actually, this is a great sort of segue. I wanted to ask you about sort of how do you juggle your work life and your making life? You know, like I think I've talked to a lot of people who are like, oh, you know, I would love to make things all day, but my job gets in the way or just things like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 23:29

I mean, yeah, that's saying, you know, I work, I work full time, so I don't weave nearly as much as I want to. You know, it's usually it's fits and starts a couple hours here or there. I spend a lot of time just like reading on things that like I have, I have a product list that's a mile long of things that have come across I'm like oh I want to do that oh I want to do that um but but yeah like it's you know then when you're not working there's life things that happen so I I would again same same I would love to be able to spend all my days fiber doing something fiber related but um unfortunately it's just not where it goes so I I do as much as I can I really I enjoy going to things like guild meetups and and going online I'm active in a lot of online communities just to stay connected to people doing that work. Because my day job is very much not even related to anything in the fiber industry. It's not even in the creative industry. I work in a not-for-profit in counseling. So it's a very, very different world. But in some ways, that's also really good because then I can come back home and I spend my time leaving. That's kind of some of my self-care time. I'm not thinking about work and I don't have to. I can focus on what I'm doing and it's so different that it's it's I almost I joke it's my other personality like it's another side of who I am um because it, yeah, it just, it feels that way, but also it works out that way.

SPEAKER_00: 25:01

Yeah. I think I was recently reminded about how, like, I heard some advice from somebody who's basically saying, if you want to be a creative, you want to be a creator, then you, the first thing you should do is you should go find a job. You should go find a different job because then you are not putting so much pressure on your creative work to somehow like pay your rent or pay for your groceries and things like that. And Elizabeth Gilbert, the author, she said the same thing in her book Big Magic about how I think she had a job for she had like a full-time job until she had finished her third or fourth novel or something like that because she never wanted to put that pressure on her creativity to like be able to support her and so when you have your job and then you come home and then you're able to weave then you're able to be more free with everything that you were thinking and want to experiment with right

SPEAKER_03: 25:50

100% I very much feel that like I I like to leave, people tell me, they're like, oh, that's amazing. You should sell that. Have you thought about doing this as a job? And the answer is no. I would never want it to be my job because I'd be too focused then on having to make production materials. It would just be nothing but sitting behind the loom, doing yards and yards, tea towels and fabrics, and limited patterning because you find what's going to sell. And if you're relying on the sale of it, you've got to make the volume of it. of it. Whereas, yeah, being able to come home and just sit down and do whatever, I don't have to worry about if anyone's going to like it. I don't have to worry if anyone's going to care. I can make something that I want to make for my own interest. And at the end of the day, yeah, I do sell some of my stuff and I have people who say, hey, can you make me this? And I'll say, yeah, I can when I get to it. I never like make it a, yes, I will actually have you make this thing in this many weeks. No, I don't do this for work. I do this for fun. So If you want that thing, you're going to get it, but it might take as much to get around to it. And that, I think, yeah, to your point, it allows for that creative process to be unencumbered, which I think is really important. And then I can just explore what I want to explore, what I want to explore. And I love that.

SPEAKER_00: 27:16

So you had mentioned before, also, you have a background in anthropology.

SPEAKER_01: 27:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:20

Studied anthropology. This is like the focus of your educational career and background. Do you see weaving and anthropology where they meet and where they intersect? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:33

There's a quote by Carl Sagan, which is, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. The opposite of that though is also true, which is any technology sufficiently ubiquitous is indistinguishable from nature. So meaning that if something is so ingrained in what we do, we don't see it separately from the nature around us. And weaving is one of those things. I remember doing, like I remember doing archeology classes and a lot of the archeological remains are really garbage. It's, you know, you go through, the call is a fancy word called a midden, which really is an archeological garbage pile. It's all the stuff, the broken dishes, and the broken things going out. And that's really what we find is all the leftover remains or the really fancy stuff that's in somebody's burial tomb that you happen to come across that just happened to not have been plundered by somebody in the last 2,000 years. And woven pieces, they don't preserve very well because they, yeah, they decay, they fall apart. A lot of pieces are, you know, if they're found, they're on like, you know, royal vestments or priest scarves or, you know, very precious things that have been, you know, maintained. So we get a very small glimpse into what that is. So being able to recreate some of that and look at like how weaving, like inko weaving like band weaving is in every culture. Like there is, it goes, it goes so far back that there's, you know, there isn't any actual saying, there's no word to say that came from this. Every culture has some version of it. There's, you know, pebble weave in the Andes. There is, the Métis actually did a whole bunch of, they adapted ankle weaving into their own culture and it became a very strong cultural activity. It really came out of the Irish and First Nations combination. You know, it's everywhere and it's it's i find it to be a it's a common it's a it's a it makes for a common understanding of of culture and we also express our culture through a lot of the things that we wear and do so it yeah like it's it's you know looking at all these patterns and looking at these things there's a there's a tie to our history a tie to you know things that we don't even know why we did it anymore um the oldest the oldest known car weaving pattern we have comes from an archaeological dig in Austria called the Hallstatt it's a Hallstatt mine and it's dated to around 5 to 800 BC so it's like 2500 years old and I my dad wanted he wanted a lanyard for flying for his like remote controls so I decided I was going to use that and I remember leaving it and it's It's a, it doesn't, it's a, it's a really old pattern. It doesn't quite follow some of the normal, um, like, you know, patterning. So like a lot of patterns on, uh, especially with car leaving or you've done in like, um, uh, even numbers, cuz it, you know, even number patterns, cuz it's four sides. So it's easy to go four forward or back or whatever. This one is all like, it's nine. It's all based on like a repetition nine. And it's a weird, it's a weird pattern, at least for my sensibilities. And I found it very hard to. figure out at first. But in weaving, just as I was weaving it, I kept thinking about somebody 2,500 years ago came up with this pattern. They were weaving this on wooden tablets or pieces of bone with probably pieces of leather or pieces of some sort of plant-made twine they created by firelight somewhere in Austria on. Like, how? I have difficulties figuring out a pattern using Excel and paper and all the tools that I've got in my hands. They wouldn't have had paper to mark this down. They wouldn't have been able to remember... They would have had to remember the entire pattern and like... they would have been passing that pattern on to others. Like it wouldn't have necessarily been a one-off. It would have been, you know, like, yeah, just the whole process and like me weaving it, I felt a very interesting connection to that history and that, you know, where does that come from? And made me really just kind of like my whole intention while weaving that, I just kept going back to them. And I thought it'd be a really interesting experience to be able to just be thinking on that while I'm making this band for, yeah, my dad's remote controls. Like it was such a... Very interesting place to go within the brain, right?

SPEAKER_00: 32:14

I think to be transported back to another time and to just imagine yourself another time. I think that that's very interesting idea. I think that very much fiber artists will have that experience. You know, you're like, I'm using this wool. It came from this sheep that came from this country. And like you somehow are tapping into a time and a place and just something that's so different. Yeah, I can see sort of having that connection. back to something else. What other kind of projects have you been really, really excited about wanting to try? Are there patterns that you want to also replicate or historical things that you want to dive in?

SPEAKER_03: 32:52

Right now, I'm learning more. It's about technique. The things I'm really excited about at the moment are there's a tablet weaving called Skipped Hole. Actually, it's four threads, but you get rid of two of the thread. So you're using the four-sided cards, but you're actually using two threads. So it makes a thinner, it's kind of like ankle weaving, but because with card weaving, the threads kind of twist on themselves as opposed to going up and down, it creates a very different type of texture in the band. So yeah, I want to do some more of that. And I haven't really done much of, it's called 3-1-12. So in tablet weaving, in 3-1-12, you can do, it's been described as like like painting with thread. So you can do some really, really neat graphic, like graphics and, and, you know, patterning in that. So you can draw, you know, you can draw characters and shapes and there's a lot of, there's a lot of patterns out there, but I'm also a bit of a, I'm a big geek. So I kind of want to learn the technique and then I want to make some, some, some 3-1-12 bands using like video game characters to kind of, you know, take the old technique, but then bring in some like that modern, some like pop culture pieces into it and play with some of that. Um, yeah, that's kind of my, the next place I want to go. Um, right now I'm working on some, um, some, uh, pickup, some, some pickup patterning on ankle weaving. So it's, it's, uh, just making very geometric shaped patterns on a band, which is a lot of fun. Um, yeah. Patterning. It's all about patterning.

SPEAKER_00: 34:37

When I first picked up that ankle loom, my first thought was, oh, I want to make like a a camera strap where I was going to weave a guitar strap. And I've seen a number of people in our community, in our Sweet Georgia community, who have woven shoelaces

SPEAKER_01: 34:51

with

SPEAKER_00: 34:51

ankle weaving and somehow able to like, some of them are flat, flat bands, but some of them have been like round, which I don't know how that works.

SPEAKER_03: 35:00

It's actually really, it's actually a lot more simple than you think, because really with a flat band, like most weaving, right, you just go, you go back and forth, alternating sheds. To make a round ankle band, You go to one side and then you go under or over which way you want. And then you go through and go over and go through and go over. So you're always, you're only going through from like one direction on each shaft. So, but you're closing that, you're going over the top or into the bottom to create that little tube.

SPEAKER_02: 35:29

And

SPEAKER_03: 35:30

it's, yeah, it's pretty fast and it's a lot of fun. I've done that as well. You can do them for very thin or you can actually do quite, you can do thicker ones. You can even, I've seen people like they take like another rope, like another thread to something thicker and they put a core thread and then they weave around that core rope. So you can make yourself something, you know, a little bit thicker that, you know, wouldn't work for the shoelace, but if you wanted something for like, you know, cording for, you know, like a hoodie pole or it's like a closure or like a bag closure, you can make something thicker and have it reinforced on the inside, but have a really nice pattern on the outside. It's kind of similar to like Kumohimo breeding but done it.

SPEAKER_00: 36:15

All of the technology and all of the structure and the interlacements and not just doing them flat on a loom anymore, but then like doing them in three dimensions is so fascinating. But like the point about, you know, weaving them in the round and just kind of going through one side and then coming back and going through the same side again. It's basically for anybody who's knitting is like working I-cord. It's I-cord. You're doing it on a weaving loom.

SPEAKER_03: 36:40

Exactly. That's it. Yeah, it's pretty much the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_00: 36:43

So cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 36:45

It is. It's fascinating. Again, this is not new. It's been around forever, but at the same time, we don't see it until it becomes new again. I love that.

SPEAKER_00: 36:59

One of the things that really is at the forefront of a lot of the things that I think about these days is just how things are changing so rapidly. Things in the past couple of years, technology-wise, have changed incredibly. So much folk on the future and automation and AI and all these kinds of things and what what value do you think there is for folks like us who are still interested in historical weaving and techniques from the past why should we convince other people to do this like when everybody is moving forward and like automating their entire day and having AI tell them what to do like why why do we Why do we do this?

SPEAKER_03: 37:47

Yeah. I think, well, there's a bunch of reasons. I mean, some of the things that we do can't be automated. Like it strikes me like all the technology, all of the stuff we've got, there's no machine yet that can still do crochet. Every piece of crochet out there is handmade. Every basket you see out there is hand woven. There's no such thing as a machine woven basket. These are techniques that really cannot be replicated by a machine. I guess eventually, maybe they'll build an automaton that can sit with human hands and do some of those things, but the creativity piece is still, you're never going to get that creativity or individualism out of an ai program they're really good at replicating things and kind of taking what's out there already but they're not going to create new right so there is there's definitely a piece about some of some of the things we want and sometimes we do require people at the end of the day um I'm also reminded of there's a, there's a, a weaving technique called spring. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it literally disappeared for over a hundred years. It was, I know it was really big in the metal in the, the, that they believe it was big in the middle ages. And it was actually what like a lot of like Knights and men would make like the tights that Knights would wear under their armor would was made of spring, but it literally disappeared from the world to such a degree that we don't even have a name for it. The name spring comes from what one particular village in I think it was northern Europe um they still were practicing it and that's kind of how they figured it out but they there was some researchers in the early 1900s who were like this is a brand new technique which is amazing where do you know where do they learn this um and they turned out like no actually this has been around since like 12 13 CE at least um but it disappeared to such a degree because you know, no one's there. No one really thought about it. So I think, I think that there's, there's a place for technology to help us remember, but like people needs to be doing it. And, and it's, it's a living history that you can't replicate. You can't just put into a computer and have a history of, you need people to actually like do it and learn about it and pass it on and, and be interested in it. Cause it is, it's, it's our history. It's where we come from. There's a woman, her, her, I believe it's Laverne Waddington. She's in South America and she's been doing an amazing amount of work in capturing and revitalizing a lot of the weaving techniques of the Andean people because a lot of it is done by women who are, you know, like there's only two or three people in the world left who know some of the techniques. And I think that history is really important for us because you can't learn it from a book. You can't learn it from AI. You can... see a picture of it and go that's pretty but to learn and actually you know to live that history we need to do it i think it's important for us to to have people interested in doing that um because it connects us to our past it connects to our history for all the goods and evils that are that are there i think it's it's important to be connected to that otherwise you end up back in bad places

SPEAKER_00: 41:10

yeah i think that when we only have the perspective of like this is the only time and this is the only thing that we're doing and i'm just focused on the things ahead of me and things like that. I think that we're missing out on so much of what it means to be human. And like you're saying, that history, that where we've come from, these textiles that we use to wear, the bands that we use to decorate our clothing with or to use more practically. Yeah, I can understand how having that moment where you're actually throwing the shuttle and creating the pattern right in front of your face. I think that that's going to be really, really special.

SPEAKER_03: 41:44

Yeah. I also think from like we, live in a like we built a culture of a very you know fast fashion throwaway culture where you know we don't we don't value a lot of the things that we have um i think that that there's a shift in some of that and there's going to have to be a bigger shift because they're just we don't have the resources for the whole world to live the same way and i also i think back to you know back to some of those early periods where like people would have one or two valuable items and they would modify them and they would add, you know, they would add different edging to it or they'd add different pieces to it to make it, you know, to recycle it or to use it differently and to show off, you know, changes. But it was really like, you know, it was a basic dress or a basic shift that would then have, you know, decorative pieces added to it or, you know, lace collars being added or band woven, you know, edges. And they would be, you know, repeated over time. And I think that there's also some, value in us learning about some of the history some of the ways we used to do things that we consider as being archaic or old or you know but actually they are sustainable and of value that there are practices we may actually want to be bringing back. And without people knowing that, seeing that, and understanding that, you lose out on those lessons. So I think there's some definite value in those.

SPEAKER_00: 43:09

I know for sure, like within our sort of fiber arts community, there's definitely like this movement towards slow fashion, towards making your own things, you know, visible mending, those kinds of things are very popular. But for the first time ever, I don't know if you've noticed this, but like Vancouver Lower Mainland, I was driving around and there's actually bus shelter ads, like full on, like in the bus shelter, giant posters that say, you know, something about when something is broken, consider repair. And I think it's about like textiles or like maybe your broken jeans or whatever it is, but like consider repair. That's really interesting to try to move the whole population towards the idea of fixing your stuff rather than throwing it away.

SPEAKER_03: 43:52

Yeah. Well, the interesting, like we, you know, anybody who grew grew up in the, you know, 80s, 90s, you know, their whole like three R's, right? Reduce, reuse, recycle. It was like everywhere. We have focused really heavily on the recycle. The reality though is a lot of the things that we think are being recycled actually aren't, right? Like there's only so much, like plastic can be recycled, but there's multiple types of plastic and not every type can be recycled. Some of them are so valuable and it's easy to recycle one type that they collect the other types just because they want that one type and the rest of it gets thrown in the garbage. I think now out of the seven types, I think it's like five or six of them can be recycled. But in the early days, only like bottles were the only ones that could be recycled and everything else was collected and just thrown away. We've not put the emphasis on the reuse and the reduce, which really those two pieces are so important to that, that cycle, um, that if we could really, yeah, if we could look at that, you know, reducing and reusing pieces so much more, that would push the needle in terms of our sustainability and so much further. And I think that's where the messaging is starting to go is trying to put more emphasis there, which I love. But yeah, I'm glad to see it starting to happen that way, right? Yeah, it's good. People are starting to pick up what the fiber community has been saying for a long time.

SPEAKER_00: 45:22

Yeah. Well, I am really, really excited to have this chance to talk with you. And I'm like really more excited about getting my Inca loom back. I got my Inca loom. It was all set up and then I lent it to somebody. And so now I'll need it back because I have all these ideas I want to try now. Actually, like one of the ideas that I have is actually taking leftover sock yarn and then making it into I-cord and then using that on the Inca loom in the way that you talked about, you know, like where that thicker cord loops out and then comes back in. And I've seen pictures of this and it looks really cool. So I'm like, oh, I'm all excited now. I want to do something.

SPEAKER_03: 46:04

Yeah, actually, I can totally, that would work really well because then you get the, yeah, you can put up the colors between the warp in the band and then the colors of the sock yarn. Yeah, yeah. I would just give a caveat, sock yarn would not be good as a warp. Great as a weft, but not good as a warp.

SPEAKER_00: 46:21

So then there would be like different, Some would be stretchy and some would be not stretchy and lots of things to play with and experiment with there. Thank you so much for your time today, Andrew. I'm really, really excited to hear about all of this. I feel like I learned a lot just in the time that we spent together. There's a lot more, obviously, to explore with ankle weaving and tablet weaving and band weaving. And I know that our community has been interested in ankle weaving for a number of years now. And so I'm really, really excited to be able to explore this together. with you as well in the future.

SPEAKER_03: 46:55

I'm excited too. It's definitely, like I was saying, it's having a day. People are very interested in it and I'm very happy for that because it's such a fun way to weave. So I'm really glad to be able to help bring more knowledge to it and more of a light to it.

SPEAKER_00: 47:11

Thank you so much for joining me on The Sweet Georgia Show. I hope today's conversation has sparked some inspiration for your own creative journey. Maybe you want to explore ankle weaving too. If you are interested in following more of Andrew's work, you can find him on Instagram at loopandwarp. And if you're interested in learning more about weaving, including rigid heddle weaving and multi-shaft weaving, you can find us on the School of Sweet Georgia, where we have more than 120 video-based fiber arts courses to take you from absolute beginner to confident weaver. We have monthly and annual all-access membership options where you can access all the courses, including spinning and weaving, dyeing, knitting, crochet, and more. And we also have We also have a standalone weaving membership if you only want to focus on weaving courses for now. As well, we have grown a very vibrant and encouraging community of multi-craftual makers that you can find at sweetgeorgayarns.com forward slash community. Also find us on YouTube and Instagram with the handle Sweet Georgia. And please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until next time, keep creating, keep exploring, and keep trying new things. And remember, there's always room for more color. This is Felicia and I will see you in the next episode. Bye for now.