Lancaster gets a lesson
by Mary Lancaster
The closest experience to weaving I have ever had before last week was during my childhood. I spent my allowance on a kit containing a small, square, metal frame with points on each side to which stretchy, multi-colored strips of material were attached and then crisscrossed until you ended up with a potholder. It was a token of affection for my mother, but surely so flimsy she would have suffered first degree burns if she really tried to use it to pick up something hot.

She did it! Mary, beaming with delight over her accomplishment on the loom.

And so, I was delighted when my friend and veteran weaver of 26 years, Karin Sheppard, consented to try to teach this old dog some new tricks during a morning at her home studio. Just walking in to the cozy space was soothing - shelves, tables and baskets held cones and spools of beautiful yarns in muted shades. Soft music played in the background. Her three wooden Macomber looms that all belonged to weavers past are worn to mellow tones from age and use.

One of the looms was already set up just for me - a somewhat daunting thought initially, but in minutes I was getting comfortable and having a wonderful time. Since I only had a couple of hours to spare, Karin wanted to ensure that I left my lesson with a finished project. A scarf was desirable but would take too long and require a degree of proficiency this student sorely lacked. Her choice instead was for me to create a cotton rag placemat. Though she started the yarn edge for me, I got to pick the three colors I liked for the body.

While the mechanics of setting up a loom seem complicated to this novice, and if I actually had to do that right now to save my life you would be at my service instead of reading this story, the actual weaving process is fairly simple - if you pay attention to what you are doing. Since the technique calls for alternating the loom pedals as a shuttle wound with cloth or holding a bobbin of yarn is slid back and forth beneath the string framework on which the material is woven, I discovered that, at my level of ignorance, socializing and making my placemat did not mix well.

Karin got me going and then went to her loom where she was working on a gorgeous, incredibly soft butter yellow and white blanket. She usually has three different projects going at once in the basement studio she shares with her mother Lia Marks, who for 40 years has sewn the handmade wool shirts sold at Nantucket Looms which are of their own woven tweed cloth. On the street level next to the studio Karin has her Island Weaves showroom, but she also sells through the Looms, where she used to be on staff, and has her own Web site, though she considers herself a "low-tech" weaver.

"I like things to look like they're going to last forever, and they actually do," she said. "I get great joy taking something off the loom that was a bunch of thread on cones that I made into something. I just can't get enough of it for some reason."

Anyhow, back to my lesson. I was starting to be a tad bit smug, sliding the shuttle under the "warp," or the fiber base running forward and backward and the "weft," which goes side to side. I was using two pedals for this design, each connected to the loom harnesses that hold the threads and pick them up in alternate sequence. The threads or cloth are then tightened through an action called "beating," which to me seems an awfully harsh term for such a gentle craft. Confused? Blame me for that. Trying to intellectualize the weaving process and actually doing it span two different brain hemispheres, at least they do in my brain.

Whoops! I was talking too much and lost track of which pedal I should step on next, messing up the twill weave structure holding my rag strips in place. But Karin bailed me out, explaining that one of the niftiest things about weaving is that, while sometimes challenging, there are always solutions if problems arise.

Karin pointed out that this was an essential method employed on a daily basis by homemakers of long ago who wove everything from cloth for the family's clothing to curtains and bed covers. Karin teaches weaving as often as she is able because she does not want this art to disappear.

"There is something that feels good about doing that - keeping that alive," she said.

And two hours later I felt pretty good, too, holding my blue, yellow and cream placemat after Karin finished off the edges on her sewing machine. Of course, once I took a close look at it I easily saw where my "beating" got weak and the moments when I was too fussy about the edge, which together produced a somewhat irregular shape and narrow, but not horrible, gaps between a few rows. Oh, well. I made it, I love it and I get to keep it. Thanks,

Karin. It was fun. I