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which_chickIn my feelings about how undervalued and invisible textile production is, I have located some media that agree with me and are therefore right. Or informative, anyway. :)
Hank Green who apparently is some sort of famous youtuber or podcaster or something has an interview-ish with Virginia Postrel who wrote a nice book about this stuff. I don't actually know who Hank Green is or why he is famous-ish but he seems sensible enough and it's a fun youtube, so yeah.
Virginia Postrel's book is available as a dead tree or kindle edition if you are interested in reading instead of listening. (That'd be me, usually. I don't get a whole lot out of audio information. In one ear, out the other, my mind wanders, etc. If I actually want to learn anything from "listening", I have to take notes -- lots of notes, gloriously organized and beautiful comprehensive notes. There will be illustrations and bullet points in the notes. After I take the notes, I never look at them again because the ACT OF DOING THE NOTES is where the learning happens. It's dumb. I know it's dumb. However, I can "listen" as hard as I like and try really really hard to pay attention but if I don't fucking take notes, twenty minutes after the speaker shuts up, all I'll be able to tell you is that I listened to them talk about *topic* with no details and that it was "interesting". I can't podcast for this reason. I know people like podcasts and that there are some great podcasts out there but they don't fucking work for me AT ALL unless I sit there TAKING NOTES while I listen to them. Reading doesn't have this problem for me. I can read shit and I've fucking got it solid.) Postrel's book is also an audiobook but honestly I can't get shit out of an audiobook (the listening problem) so I don't do those. I bought this book and am reading it. Expect a review in a few days. Thus far (4% in) she produces non-annoying competent prose. I would have read more but it was late and I was tired.
Postrel also did another Youtube apparently as book promotion stuff. She's fun to listen to if you want the same notes as the Hank Green thing only shuffled a bit.
I've kind of been on this since the Farm Show where I was literally gobsmacked to see that a shocking amount of the Sheep-to-Shawl audience had no fucking idea how on earth "sheep fleece" turned into a shawl. Like, they didn't even have a broad outline of "card fleece, spin fleece, weave fleece".
"What are they doing with the little brushes?" "How come nobody is spinning anything?"
People do know what spinning wheels are, at least the "traditional" ones, though they do not have a great mental model of how they work. Generally they think the big wheel has something to do with the yarn going around it? (No. The yarn goes through an orifice and onto a flyer and then onto a bobbin. The yarn never touches the "big wheel" part at all. The "big wheel" part is for the human treadle power and it transfers its motion to the flyer/bobbin by way of a drive band. Because the "big wheel" is big and the flyer drive is small, the big wheel doesn't have to go very fast to make the flyer go really fast.)
People have no fucking idea how a loom works or what the steps are for weaving. They don't know about the pedals, shuttle, heddles, warp yarn is already strung, beater bar, like... no fucking idea how those actions generate cloth or what the fuck the weaver person is doing. I was standing next to an adult man (late 50s) and in front of several young people (under 25) and the adult man was "How does that work?" and so I started to explain it. I apologized to the young people in front (it was loud in the exhibition hall so I had to explain loudly) and they were "No, you're fine, this is fascinating! We had no idea how it all worked!"
I need a good history of weaving and looms because there's quite a bit of variation on that front worldwide, lots of peoples have made looms and they've not all done it the same way.
Hank Green who apparently is some sort of famous youtuber or podcaster or something has an interview-ish with Virginia Postrel who wrote a nice book about this stuff. I don't actually know who Hank Green is or why he is famous-ish but he seems sensible enough and it's a fun youtube, so yeah.
Virginia Postrel's book is available as a dead tree or kindle edition if you are interested in reading instead of listening. (That'd be me, usually. I don't get a whole lot out of audio information. In one ear, out the other, my mind wanders, etc. If I actually want to learn anything from "listening", I have to take notes -- lots of notes, gloriously organized and beautiful comprehensive notes. There will be illustrations and bullet points in the notes. After I take the notes, I never look at them again because the ACT OF DOING THE NOTES is where the learning happens. It's dumb. I know it's dumb. However, I can "listen" as hard as I like and try really really hard to pay attention but if I don't fucking take notes, twenty minutes after the speaker shuts up, all I'll be able to tell you is that I listened to them talk about *topic* with no details and that it was "interesting". I can't podcast for this reason. I know people like podcasts and that there are some great podcasts out there but they don't fucking work for me AT ALL unless I sit there TAKING NOTES while I listen to them. Reading doesn't have this problem for me. I can read shit and I've fucking got it solid.) Postrel's book is also an audiobook but honestly I can't get shit out of an audiobook (the listening problem) so I don't do those. I bought this book and am reading it. Expect a review in a few days. Thus far (4% in) she produces non-annoying competent prose. I would have read more but it was late and I was tired.
Postrel also did another Youtube apparently as book promotion stuff. She's fun to listen to if you want the same notes as the Hank Green thing only shuffled a bit.
I've kind of been on this since the Farm Show where I was literally gobsmacked to see that a shocking amount of the Sheep-to-Shawl audience had no fucking idea how on earth "sheep fleece" turned into a shawl. Like, they didn't even have a broad outline of "card fleece, spin fleece, weave fleece".
"What are they doing with the little brushes?" "How come nobody is spinning anything?"
People do know what spinning wheels are, at least the "traditional" ones, though they do not have a great mental model of how they work. Generally they think the big wheel has something to do with the yarn going around it? (No. The yarn goes through an orifice and onto a flyer and then onto a bobbin. The yarn never touches the "big wheel" part at all. The "big wheel" part is for the human treadle power and it transfers its motion to the flyer/bobbin by way of a drive band. Because the "big wheel" is big and the flyer drive is small, the big wheel doesn't have to go very fast to make the flyer go really fast.)
People have no fucking idea how a loom works or what the steps are for weaving. They don't know about the pedals, shuttle, heddles, warp yarn is already strung, beater bar, like... no fucking idea how those actions generate cloth or what the fuck the weaver person is doing. I was standing next to an adult man (late 50s) and in front of several young people (under 25) and the adult man was "How does that work?" and so I started to explain it. I apologized to the young people in front (it was loud in the exhibition hall so I had to explain loudly) and they were "No, you're fine, this is fascinating! We had no idea how it all worked!"
I need a good history of weaving and looms because there's quite a bit of variation on that front worldwide, lots of peoples have made looms and they've not all done it the same way.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-31 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-01 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 12:01 am (UTC)One of my favourite things to do when playing video games it to look at how the game designers have modeled looms and spinning wheels. Some of them are close visually, and others have left me quite speechless at the lack of understanding of functionality!
no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 12:56 pm (UTC)Like if I were transported back in time to pre-spinning-wheel, could I explain/design/build (with help of a reasonable craftsperson) a spinning wheel in a world where one did not yet exist?
People spun with spindles like, for literally ages and ages before spinning wheels. The Vikings plundered by sea using sails that were all handspun ON SPINDLES. Imagine for a moment the amount of labor involved in that shit.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 05:40 am (UTC)At one point in I think elementary school we did a sort of "pioneer day" thing, where we went to a local house museum, and one of the things we got to do (for just a couple minutes) was card wool. I appreciate that it at least gave me a sense of what goes into the process of turning wool into thread.
Ugh, there was some fantasy thing I read one time that described the poor, tragic heroine (who was of course super strong and cool and special and was miserably stuck doing gross girl stuff), as having to spin thread, and she was so frustrated when her nice long thread slipped off the side of the big wheel and got tangled, and she'd have to rewind it... around the wheel? I cannot remember anything else about whatever this story was. Maybe spinning wheels simply worked differently in fantasy world.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 01:14 pm (UTC)