Blog
With the possibility of travel largely gone for the foreseeable future, exploring the places where we live seems like something to settle into. I’ve become more interested in details. In watching and understanding what is happening in my back yard. And in spending the time to watch what happens overnight on the trails I have loved for decades. I’ll keep weaving and spinning while outside and that will prompt me to weave more while I’m in my own studio.
I get questions fairly often from people who know I backpack with a loom and want to know what I take. What I pack does vary depending on whether I am going backpacking or car camping or traveling to teach somewhere.
As a lightweight backpacker, my total pack weight before food and water is between 13 and 18 pounds. The lighter the better as food and water can add another ten pounds to the total. Hiking becomes miserable with more weight than that. So any craft that I bring into the backcountry has to be both small and light.
I had grand plans yesterday. It was a beautiful day in Fort Collins--mid-80s and sunny. We are trying to go hiking on Sundays and it seemed the perfect day to do so. I love to hike high until the snow flies, so we headed up to a trailhead I had been at just a few days earlier with a friend from Michigan.
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I had packed my loom and some handspun hoping to get a few needed photos, but alas, this was all I could manage. The loom has naught but warp on it still.
My hike was wonderful. I was unable to post to the blog from the trail, so what follows is a little photo record of my walk. I hiked for 9 days and I can tell you with firm certainty that this is my limit for not having a shower. There is only so much a little bottle of Dr. Bronners and freezing cold stream water can do. I came to the trailhead at the only major paved road ten minutes before a hail storm and nine days in and that was it. The second car by was a nice woman with two dogs who, though she did turn on her car vent a couple minutes after I got in, did not complain about my smell. Straight to a hotel through a hailstorm I went. Clean clothes, shower X2, pizza... all was well. Though I got off one day before I intended to, it was the unknown shower wall that demanded it. Nine days is the limit.
There comes a moment when I'm getting ready to go on another trip when I feel compelled to visit one of the excellent yarn stores here and buy the supplies for a new knitting project. The voice in my head is very strong.
"You have two long travel days and two weeks among strangers. If you run out of knitting/weaving/spinning projects, you might not survive." --Rebecca's head-voice
Resisting this voice is difficult, but I am determined to go shopping in my own yarn stash first. This is only practical. The stash is threatening to take over all available space in my clothes closet and even I need to wear clothes most days. Certainly I can find an appropriate match of knitting yarn and pattern for the upcoming teaching trip to Penland School of Crafts? Surely I can.
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| 6-dent Hokett loom warped at 12 epi. Project done with handspun. |
