Christina Garton didn’t get to be the editor of Little Looms by taking weaving too seriously.

First introduced to weaving in a class post-college, she joined Handwoven as assistant editor in 2011. She developed her passions for editing and weaving while working on both multishaft and rigid-heddle looms. Although she still loves working on her four- and eight-shaft looms, she was surprised to discover that she loves the hands-on, up-close nature of hand-manipulated weaving.

With the launch of Little Looms in 2016, Christina began exploring the horizons of pin looms, rigid-heddle looms, and inkle looms. She’s found that you can make amazingly clever, versatile, and beautiful cloth on even the simplest loom.

Listen in to find out who Christina defines as a real weaver, learn how to see your work in the magazine’s pages, and hear a preview of a new project coming from Little Looms this fall.

Links

Laverne has maintained a blog and weaving journal on her website since 2009.

Laverne’s books are available from Taproot Video.

Laverne offers a number of tutorials of techniques she practices as well as videos of a variety of weaving techniques and traditions.

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You’ll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway’s array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you’ll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

If you love knitting, quilting, and all things fiber, you have to check out the new Fiber + Fabric Craft Festival. It’s brought to you by the team behind h+h Americas, premier craft trade shows across the U.S. They have something for everyone—from consumers to retailers to manufacturers. Come shop, learn, and get inspired.

Learn more at FiberFabricCraft.com.

Small textile towns were once common in New England, with stout brick buildings harnessing the power of the region’s water to mill yarn and cloth. The Colony family had been owners of a mill in Harrisville, New Hampshire, since before the Civil War, but by the mid-twentieth century, such factories had begun to disappear. In 1970, 53 mills closed in New England, the Colony family’s among them. John Colony (known as Chick) returned from serving in the Coast Guard to a mill town without a working mill.

Chick saw that the small town would wither unless a new project came in to fill the gap. After considering the options, he had the idea: What better use could there be for an old mill village than to make yarn? So shortly after his father and uncle closed down the mill, Chick opened a business making woolen yarn on some of the same old equipment. The new endeavor was scaled back in scope, but yarn was coming from the old mill buildings once again under the label of a new company, Harrisville Designs.

The town’s buildings and surrounding watershed became the center of a historic preservation effort. More than 50 years later, Harrisville is known as the best preserved early textile village in the country.

Harrisville Designs’s woolen-spun yarns are dyed in the wool, blending 12 or 13 brightly dyed fibers into dozens of subtle heathered hues. Initially developed for weaving, the yarns have become popular among knitters looking for yarns with character.

The next generation, Chick’s son Nick Colony, has taken on management of the mill, developing knitting yarns such as their Nightshades color line and small-batch Shear as well as updating the company’s energy production and manufacturing facilities.

Harrisville Designs has produced a range of weaving looms for decades, but the youngest weavers probably know the company for their potholder looms. Realizing that the potholder loops and looms on the market were poor quality, Harrisville developed a metal loom and experimented to develop cotton loops in a range of bright colors.

Weavers, knitters, and history enthusiasts may all know Harrisville for different reasons, but the effort that began in 1971 as a preservation project has created new futures in this small New Hampshire town.

Harrisville Designs website

Historic Harrisville

Red Brick Village, a documentary about preserving historic Harrisville

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You’ll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway’s array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you’ll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

The picture of a flock of primitive-breed sheep, the last of their kind, living on an island off the northeast coast of Scotland, has a certain romance to it. Plenty of knitters, spinners, fiber artists, and citizens of the modern world might idly dream of living on such an island and tending such a flock. With no background as a farmer and only a few years as a shepherd, Jane Cooper decided to bring that dream to life.

Enchanted by the fiber of the Boreray sheep, and with her life transformed by a class on knitting with rare breeds, Jane decided to buy a small parcel of land and start a spinner’s flock by adopting a few wethers from another farmer. In a short time, however, she found herself with more land—and more sheep—than she planned for. And so began her adventure as the shepherd of the “lost flock,” a group of sheep whose ancestors had escaped the official registry.

Since obtaining her first sheep in 2013, Jane not only developed her own breeding program but established several other breeding flocks in the Orkneys. She has explored the recent and ancient history of her sheep, from the Vikings who used dual-coated wool in their sails to the breed registries established in the 20th century (and traced how her own sheep came to be called “the lost flock.”)

This episode is brought to you by:

Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You'll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white.

If you love silk, you'll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed.

Orkney Boreray website

The Lost Flock book by Jane Cooper US edition and UK edition

Blacker and Beyond Ravelry group

Blacker Yarns and The Natural Fibre Company
Woolsack British wool website