Last week I went to a talk given by Helena Hernmarck, the master weaver whose exhibit I wrote about here on this blog. She showed slides of many of her pieces and told some behind-the-scenes stories of how they came to be. What came through was her pure delight in these creations of hers. Each made her laugh, each had a story, each had a handful of people (and she named them) who had helped make it possible.
She talked about her processes, including how she gets her wool from a specific kind of sheep at a specific family's farm, a particularly lustrous light-absorbing wool, which she then dyes herself. She has done it this way for years and years.
As a writer and not a weaver, I'm alert for pearls I can borrow from practitioners of other crafts and here's one of the pearls from Hernmarck: "What makes weaving with this wool magic is that it allows light to enter in." That's the kind of weaving she does. That's the kind of writing I want to do. Use words that allow light to enter in.
Yes, there were other pearls as well.
