First Session

Today was my first day participating in the Local Industry exhibit.  The bobbin wall and spool table look much as they did the opening night of the exhibit, with some evidence of handling.

It was a difficult day for me to begin this project.  I have been battling a cold, and didn't feel at my top level of enthusiasm.  However, it was important to me that I not put this off, and I was curious as to how the exhibit was progressing.  I arrived at the museum and set down to start winding.  During the time I was winding my bobbins, a little over an hour, towards the end of the day today, several other people participated in the exhibit.  We all worked independently and quietly.  I overheard one woman express her concern to even out her bobbin, which was most of my focus for my time there as well.

I was fairly amazed and mesmerized by watching the thread travel back and forth across the bobbin.   While I felt some amount of control over its progress, at times it hitched itself backwards and then forwards again.  While the spool was spinning, each pass of the thread created a new ridge, that seemed distinct and highlighted the imperfections in the eveness of the thread, though when still, the bobbin looked much more uniform, resembling a small cocoon of thread.

I changed colors often.  I picked my comfort colors.  I promised myself to use colors that were not my typical color palette on another day, but today I could not be jarred. At one point I lost tension on one of my spools and it dissolved into a tangled mess.  With mild shame and panic, I tried to determine what to do with the failed bobbin.  I wanted to hide it, not admit to the waste and failure.  To my relief, there was a trash can below the winding table.  There I saw another clump of thread, and immediately relaxed.  I disposed of the wasted thread and redetermined myself.  

As I worked to keep my bobbins even and uniform, I thought about craft.  This project is dependent on both novices and skilled craftspeople.  The weavers, the skilled labor, select the bobbins with which they would like to weave.  One cannot expect that novices will perfectly wind each bobbin, however without a certain uniformity in the bobbin, the weaver cannot efficiently throw the shuttle across the loom.  I found myself examining the little bobbins, wondering and hoping that they would pass the inspection of the weavers' eyes and make it into this vast cloth. 

I heard the woman who was weaving today tell a visitor that she and the other volunteer weavers had nothing in common, except that they all sat on the same bench.  It seemed to me a simple, but eloquent description of this project.  Each of the people coming to this exhibit will share in sitting on the same benches, and their effort, their small labor will be woven into one piece; strangers bound together, without ever meeting, sharing a common purpose.