2 years ago
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6
Posted On: March 15th 2025, 01:14 am
Just look at this beautiful place! Last night I joined Loom Club in the new @sccpgh Timmons Studio for the first time and wow, what a place! We weavers made quick work of loom set up, laughed, toasted to community, to our teachers, and to those who made it happen. I thought later how much I love that when I feel ill-suited to a task, there are people who jump in, and I can do something that suits my mood and my skills. I love that everyone gets excited to greet new arrivals, and that people bring mandarin oranges and sour patch kids to share. But I especially love that @jamieaboyle checks in on me, on everyone. I laugh when she jokes about "being in the way" because we all know what to do now, but I know the truth - that we would not be here without her, without her "weavers choice" mantra and the perfect balance of encouragement and instruction and inquiry.
And the people in that room made me think about the people that have inhabited this beautiful space over the years, when it was Hunter Saw and Machine starting in the early 1900s. And I wondered what they would think of we weavers, and the other studio inhabitants. In the classifieds of old Pittsburgh Posts and Press I found advertising for lathe hands, and drill press operators, and blacksmiths. And I realized, those craftspeople - they are kindred spirits to the new inhabitants. There is a wood studio with those very same tools, and a space for blacksmithing, too. It's like it was meant to be. Here we are, carrying on craft.
And then I happened upon the fact that the building was recently advertised for sale by a company called Ballymoney Real Estate and I did a doubletake. Ballymoney. Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ireland, population 3,269 in 1900 (around when Hunter Saw began). Ballymoney, where in the immediately preceding decades, several of my ancestors were weaving, likely linen. What a wild coincidence.
When I start teaching my next Weaving 1 class, my first in the new studio, I'll try not to get too overwhelmingly sappy. But I might just implement a Bushmills toast when we weave off our first samples. To over 100 years of craft. To our ancestral weavers near and far. To the stories we'll weave.
And the people in that room made me think about the people that have inhabited this beautiful space over the years, when it was Hunter Saw and Machine starting in the early 1900s. And I wondered what they would think of we weavers, and the other studio inhabitants. In the classifieds of old Pittsburgh Posts and Press I found advertising for lathe hands, and drill press operators, and blacksmiths. And I realized, those craftspeople - they are kindred spirits to the new inhabitants. There is a wood studio with those very same tools, and a space for blacksmithing, too. It's like it was meant to be. Here we are, carrying on craft.
And then I happened upon the fact that the building was recently advertised for sale by a company called Ballymoney Real Estate and I did a doubletake. Ballymoney. Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ireland, population 3,269 in 1900 (around when Hunter Saw began). Ballymoney, where in the immediately preceding decades, several of my ancestors were weaving, likely linen. What a wild coincidence.
When I start teaching my next Weaving 1 class, my first in the new studio, I'll try not to get too overwhelmingly sappy. But I might just implement a Bushmills toast when we weave off our first samples. To over 100 years of craft. To our ancestral weavers near and far. To the stories we'll weave.
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