antique tape loom | olddogsnewtruck

With a year of plague-induced seclusion under our belts, we are ready to start venturing out. We are still patiently waiting to be vaccinated, however. Just today, Maine extended vaccination availability to those under 70, so we are hoping to be jabbed before the month is out. Although we are eager to see our family again and to savor the pleasures of eating inside a restaurant, moseying around stores, and browsing through the library, our year at home has been productive, creative, and satisfying. And it has changed us.

I have an even deeper appreciation of the life we have created here, shed layers of stress, embraced my reclusive nature, and have less itch to travel. I have become far more attuned to the weather and the seasons, to the point of following the sun as it tracks across the room—morning weaving at the big loom in full southern sun,

midday weaving tapes and spinning wool as the sun hits the eastern side of the room,

and afternoons at the flax wheel, which sits in the western dormer. It will be interesting to see what long-term behavioral changes come out of this upside-down year.

Our weather these past three months has been as unsettled as the political scene (my fear that our democracy might not survive this year turned out to be well-founded—but we did squeak by).

We have had a few snow dumps—which make the dogs crazy with joy—

followed by melting back to bare ground.

We had one spectacular ice storm,

some frigid patches,

warm patches,

and lots and lots of high wind.

A December wind even blew the outdoor shower off its foundation.

It is well-secured now.

Christmas was quiet, but lovely.

With the cold weather, George moved his projects indoors.

When we had our garage built, the plan was for George to use one bay for a woodworking shop. He finally had the time to get it fully up and running this winter.

He made a bookcase for the bedroom,

installed an additional shelf in my loom room,

and has been working on my spinning wheels, including making a curvaceous treadle for the pendulum wheel

and fixing the wooden axle on this more-than-200-year-old bobbin winder.

For me, winter means spinning and weaving.

I finished a small coverlet that had been in the works for years. It started with a lustrous Nash Island fleece that I brought home and washed two summers ago.

I spun it last winter and spring and dyed the yarn late last summer with madder, woad, and Japanese indigo from my dye garden, and goldenrod, which grows wild here.

The final step was picking a traditional coverlet design—pine cone blossom, also called pine burr—and the actual weaving.

Alice approves.

I have also been weaving more fabric for clothes,

weaving tapes,

and doing lots of spinning—wool and flax.

I have added a few wheels to my collection, but do not have them yet. They are being fostered with other wheel collectors until we can really start traveling again. I am fostering several wheels for others, too, so there is going to be a lot of wheel railroading going on this spring.

As if my wheel collecting is not enough, I discovered the world of Conder tokens recently. A weaver posted a photo of one on Instagram and I was instantly intrigued—a graphic piece of history captured in a coin.

*The bobbin winder on this 1790s token looks very much like the one George repaired above*

Because of a scarcity of small denomination coins in the late 1700s due to increasing industrialization and population growth in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, business owners, merchants, and local governments started minting their own.

They are often intricately designed, representing local industries and trades,

anti-slavery pleas, and political satire. I have collected a few of the textile related designs and one political one, which I will be using as weights on orifice hooks for my spinning wheels.

We are still eating food that we put by from the garden—we have enough winter squash, frozen and dehydrated vegetables and herbs, tomato sauce, carrots, and ginger to last until spring.

In fact, we had so many pumpkins and winter squash that we donated them to a local farmer friend for her pigs. Sadly, we had to give up on greenhouse greens this winter, because the mice kept devouring them. We have not had any signs of mice in the greenhouse for the last six weeks, though, so I planted seeds for spring greens. We will keep the traps well peanut-buttered, spread the minty mouse deterrent, and keep fingers crossed.

Pruning and outside spring chores are just around the corner.

The mourning doves are coo-cooing, foxes are barking and looking for places to den,

and I put wool on my apple branches in hopes of keeping the spring-hungry deer from nibbling the shoots.

In the meantime, we are enjoying the final month or so of hunkering-down, while planning our reemergence into society.

Maine in May. A morning walk brings a full-on explosion of plant and bird procreation in all its colorful, musical, hustling glory.

No sinful secretive New England Puritan sex here, but an unabashed in-your-face sensory overload of fecundity–mating calls, mating chases, seed-flaunting,

and the perfection of miniature leaves unrolling from their womb buds, still perfect and unmarred by disease or insects.

Birdsong wakes us in the morning and peepers put us to sleep at night.

I love the catbirds, because of their incredible vocal gymnastics and the mourning doves–who travel everywhere as a couple.

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Our swooping, gurgling swallows are back. We weren’t sure they would be because our aggressive male bluebird chased them all off last year. After he harassed us all winter, we took down the nesting boxes in hopes that he would move on. He did. But not far. He is now harassing our across-the-street neighbors and launching himself at their windows. He thoughtfully finds time to visit us periodically to attack our cars and windows, just so we know he hasn’t forgotten us.

The female bluebird with the injured foot is back.

We still have lingering cold and the flowers are late to bloom, so the poor hummingbirds have been lining up at our nectar feeder.

The soil has been so cold that I’ve only planted a few vegetables, but we have overwintered parsnips, and green onions and spinach in the cold frame.

Our asparagus is up and in its third year, so we can harvest a decent amount. What a treat to have it fresh out of the garden. We are consolidating our scattered vegetable gardens this year into two big gardens. I’m ridiculously excited about it.

This 1950s tractor has its original engine, without even a rebuild. It will be drilling our fence post holes. It’s not ours, but we get to admire it.

There’s something about having fenced-in vegetable beds, with wide walkways–and plenty of room for flowers–that makes my heart happy. I’m growing more flax this year, a dye garden, and trying cotton–a wild experiment. This spring, we planted paw-paws, persimmons, more pears, hazelnuts, goji berries, maypops (passionflower), and mulberries (for silkworms). All of last year’s bushes and fruit trees survived the winter and appear to be thriving.

The peaches are covered with blossoms.

Spreading apple branches.

This is the time of year for morning fog and gathering, cutting and splitting next year’s firewood.

George is constructing an impressive fort of firewood, which we hope will get us through next winter. We ran out of wood this past winter, with its prolonged cold spells, and had to buy a cord.

We are finally having a garage built this year. We are NOT building it ourselves, thank goodness–we have enough on our plate without a major construction project. George is designing an outdoor sauna to build this summer, which is something I’ve been wanting for years. And he’s continuing with trail building, which makes the dogs very happy. Things are taking shape around here.

I have been spinning and weaving in the evenings and on rainy days and continue to grow my flock of wheels. My latest find was another dusty antique store treasure imprinted with the “Thomson” in the table.

I was thrilled. There was a Thomson family of wheel makers in Massachusetts in the 18th and 19th centuries, headed by the patriarch Archibald, who is reputed to have made the first treadle spinning wheel in this country. They were Scots-Irish from Ulster and, interestingly, George has Thomson ancestors who settled in the same area of Massachusetts a few decades after these Thomsons. An “H” Thomson migrated to Maine at some point, likely around the time of the Revolutionary War, and made beautiful wheels, with simple Shaker-style lines. This wheel looks like one of his, although the “H” is worn off.

Amazingly, the flyer assembly was all intact, although the wooden tension screw was totally frozen. I cleaned her up and finally got the screw unbound.

She is one my sweetest spinners and her wood is exquisite.

There are some gorgeous modern wheels with beautiful wood (that cost a small fortune), but–to me–they just don’t compare to the glowing wood on these old beauties (which go for a song), that has been mellowed by time and the touch of so many hands over hundreds of years.

I also bought a little 19th century tape loom. It’s amazing to think that just a few hundred years ago, every imaginable kind of tie and strap was woven at home on these little looms–often by the youngest and oldest family members.

The loom I bought has a foot pedal that raises and lowers two shafts and has a small beater for fast, efficient weaving. The two shafts are only designed for eight warp threads, which means it was used to weave a very simple straightforward tape.

In fact, the loom likely was used to make lamp wicks, with no design at all. I have been experimenting with putting multiple threads in each heddle and some warps between the heddles, to create a middle shed that I can manipulate with my fingers to make some simple designs. I’m quite enjoying it.