When my father was in town for Christmas, he brought me a copy of YOU CAN WEAVE: A Simple and Basic Guide to Weaving, which my grandmother, Bessie R. Murray, wrote with Mary Ellouise Black, in 1974.
Weaver House calls the co-authors “two of Canada’s foremost professional weavers in the 1950-70’s.” My grandmother, Bessie was the president of the Halifax Weaver’s Guild (precursor to Atlantic Spinners and Handweavers), and is best known for creating the official Nova Scotia Tartan, which she apparently debuted in a display about sheep rearing at the 1953 Truro Exposition. She ran a busy weaving shop, and there are still Nova Scotian weavers around today, who remember her, as well as “the little boy who opened the door at the shop.” That would be my father, who was just a toddler at the time– the youngest of her five children.
You can read more about the tartan at the hub for Canadian Tartans, which is helpful, because outside of Nova Scotia, I bet that not many people are even aware that Canada has regional tartans.
Back to the book. YOU CAN WEAVE was published on New Year’s day, 1974, by McLelland Stewart. I would love to know more about why such an auspicious and inconvenient publication date was chosen. Did they think “let’s get it out there on a day when nothing is open and pre-launch promo will also be nearly impossible!” Did they forget that January 1 is New Year’s? Did they explicitly want it out after Christmas, even though it’s for children? Was there a big weaving to-do on the 5th? Did pub dates just not matter in 1974? I will have to investigate.
Bessie died when I was about five years old, so I never got to know her very well. My memories of her are mainly anchored around toys she made me and my brother– a dollhouse, a doll, and two sets of incredibly detailed doll-and-finger-puppet sets modeled after the Beatrix Potter books, Mrs. Tittlemouse, and Jemima Puddleduck.
For someone who created such an enduring icon, there isn’t an overwhelming amount written about her, or catalogued in archives either– though Dalhousie University apparently has a box of her correspondence from 1976-79 on file, and it’s intriguing to think I could read her own writing from around the time I was born.
And I do have this book, so let’s start there.
It’s dedicated to Natalie and Sheri Black, and to my cousins, Louise, Stephanie, Margo, Holly and Heidi. I can only speculate as to why my other cousins are not mentioned, so for now I assume it comes down to gender and birthdate.
The book opens with an Instructions page, which explains the book is designed for children and easy to follow. This, frankly, shocks me, because we had a copy of this book in the house growing up, and even as an early reader with a passion for making things, I must have passed it over a hundred times, never guessing it was intended for me.
The rest of the book is hand-illustrated, and printed in Bessie’s trademark handwriting. Its easy-to-followness hinges on a UX choice to print pertinent portions of the illustrations and their related text in red. (Pretty cool use of a 2-colour-process layout, actually.)
The jury is out on whether it’s actually easy to follow. This was a long time before the age of YouTube tutorials. Notably, the book has no advice on choosing a loom. It just says, quite suddenly on page 24, “Carry the warp to the loom carefully.” Presumably, you already have a loom, otherwise, why would you buy YOU CAN WEAVE? It’s an instructional protocol from a past time.
My initial reaction to many of the images and subsequent walls of red-painted text– math-laden pages on which nearly every term is apparently worthy of red, is panic.
There are so many things to measure, count, double check, tie and untie carefully. Warps and wefts, and pegs and clamps, and shuttles… Long before page 24, I am already starting to think it’s a miracle any of us wear clothes, let alone have the kind of additional internal resources that would avail us of things like the placemats and napkins that make up the early projects of YOU CAN WEAVE.
Something about the way my grandmother instructs weaving reminds me of the time my father told us (aged six and nine) that he was going to teach us to write codes to each other in binary because it’s easy. I absolutely can not ever remember exactly how binary works. COULD I WEAVE though? Could I?
When I was a teenager, painting and sewing and learning music, determined to figure out how to make everything I wanted to, our dear family friend, Katie Hastings, used to lovingly make fun of me. She’d come over for coffee with my mom, and perhaps ask me for advice on how to add an elastic to a skirt, or attach a ruffle, and if I didn’t know the answer– which was most of the time– I’d think it over and tell her about a book I’d seen at the library that might show the process. And then she’d hug me but laugh her head off. “A book, of course a book. It’s always a book.” I’d ask her why that was funny, and she’d say something like “because you think other people, can just figure any old thing out from a book!”
Well, it looks like I’ve met my match. It is called YOU CAN WEAVE, and my own grandmother wrote it.
I’m going to get myself a table loom.
I’m going to WEAVE. Possibly.
Maybe in the process, I can come to understand something about myself and my family better. Why are we like this?
Please stay tuned for whatever tangled mess I am about to make.
P.S. There are two copies of YOU CAN WEAVE currently for sale online, from a bookseller in Dartmouth, N.S., so you could actually get a copy for yourself if your inner crafty 70s child is interested!
