Recently, I taught Stephenie Gaustad to swave. (I was at Studio Gaustad for something else.) She is a very busy lady. She would not bother learning a new knitting technique unless it produced a fabric that she liked, and that she could not produce in any other way. She requested that I come up to the house and show the process to Alden. (He does not knit anymore, but he was a great knitter.) He is always my toughest critic, and of course he knows more about the various processes and technologies of making textiles by hand than anybody. His comment was, "Why aren't you using hand spun?"
Both of them like the produced fabrics, and said they was not like any fabrics that they had seen. (And they have both seen my gansey knit fabrics, which are also very tightly knit.) Both like the speed of production.
Fine fabric at a high rate of production. If it is not swaving, then it is a new process that I invented and I can patent it. Then, soon everybody would be trying to void the patent by claiming that it was just swaving. And, they would be correct. The tools are right, the motions are right, and the produced fabrics are right. for it to be swaving.
Alden reminded me that "Kersey" at various times referred to a frame knit fabric. Perhaps not in 1746, but at some times, Kersey was a knit a fabric. Maybe, I was not as wrong as the mice said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment