backpacking

Spinning and weaving in the woods

Spinning and weaving in the woods

It has been a busy summer and I haven’t had nearly enough time to backpack. But I did get away for a few days to the Rawah Wilderness this week. This is one of my favorite places to visit but I hadn’t been back since the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire. The fire started perhaps 10 miles from where I camped but went in the other direction. It ended up lasting 5 months and becoming the largest wildfire in Colorado history. From this spot 60 miles from Fort Collins, the fire burned within 5 miles of the city limits.*

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I left the pups at home and hiked in about 7 miles to one of my favorite camps near Twin Crater Lakes. I spent three days sitting in the sunshine, exploring a bit, spinning, drawing, and weaving. It is a good reset to get outside, sleep on the ground, and listen to the quiet, the birds, and a moose chomping willows nearby.

A new backpacking/travel loom!

A new backpacking/travel loom!

Like a dog alerting to the small of cooking sausage, I noticed a loom I hadn’t seen before on the table of one of my students while teaching at SOAR. It turns out it was made by one of my favorite small loom makers, Janet Fox of Handywomanshop.com, but I had never seen one in person.

My backpacking loom was made by Jim Hokett and it is the lightest loom I can find that will allow me to weave small tapestries at 12 epi when hiking. Of course for backpacking I need something that is not only very light, but also very small but sturdy so I don’t break it in my backpack. Since Jim retired in 2019 I’ve been looking for a replacement, worried about the day that I’d lose or break his loom dropping it somewhere in the backcountry. When I picked up Emma’s loom at SOAR, I knew I’d found what I was looking for.

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Weaving in the wilderness (nearby)

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Weaving in the wilderness (nearby)

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.

Inhale

Inhale

A vacation.

It does not seem like taking some time off should be difficult. Humans need rest.

But I do find it difficult to absent myself completely from my business. It turns out in two weeks there were no monumental tapestry emergencies, my website went back up, and I enjoyed watching my brain relax its anxious grip on whatever it perceives as reality in that moment.

I picked up Krista Suh's book, DIY Rules for a WTF World in a yarn shop recently and it seemed like great deck reading. Right at the beginning of the book. . . .

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My Hokett kit

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My Hokett kit

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.