I go to Beaver for a day. Back to the place I was born and grew up and where our family home stands empty and alone since the deaths of my father and sweet stepmother. I go with my saintly sister, who lived here fulltime to care for my aging parents the last six years of their lives.
We drive down Main Street because Genene has told me the incredible news, Beaver has a stoplight! I must see it for myself, test myself on the stopping and waiting at the Post Office corner just to see that the lights go from red to green to red just like they do everywhere else.
We drive by my father's house on 600 East just to see. The dozen or so apple trees in the yard are a riot of pink and white blossoms, promising a harvest of plenty in a few months. If it doesn't freeze again. It has snowed on us this late May day all the way from Kanosh. Oh, Dad, you would love to see these trees so beautifully blooming. Even in the snow.
Our destination today is to the home of an old friend. He has offered to help me learn to make rugs. We traipse through the snow with my basket of colors sewn into strips an inch and a half wide. Downstairs into the basement we go where the loom is waiting for us. This is not just any loom. This is a memory of my childhood. For many years this loom stood in a room in our church basement waiting, strings strung, for any ward member who wanted to bring their leftover fabric to make rugs. Some of my earliest memories are of playing at my mother's feet as she passed the shuttle back and forth, pounded the rows of fabric together, and produced swaths of color that lessened the winter cold of the linoleum floor in my bedroom, or softened my standing at the sink to wash dishes.
I am amazed as I see the loom that it is much smaller than my child eyes remember.
I choose a stiff yellow fabric to begin. We wrap three or four shuttles with the long strips, choose a deep green for an accent stripe and we begin. It's simple really, with just a bit of instruction I get the hang of moving the two pedals up and down that switch the strings above or below so the weaving occurs. Pound, pound, pound with the bar between each pass of the shuttle and the stiff yellow fabric begins to take rug shape. Oh, it is beautiful. I learn to place a stretcher bar across the top of the work so the width of the rug stays even. I realize the pedal needs to be down on the side I start the shuttle from. I work blisters on three fingers of my right hand by the pounding and the muscle in my forearm begins to ache. No matter, the rug takes shape.
In a couple of hours I have completed the first rug. A break for a late lunch and I begin the second one. Pink and blue for this one. The lightness of the fabric makes the rug not so thick. More delicate. A rug, delicate?
As the afternoon wears on I make mistakes, breaking strings with the stretcher bar that takes all of us to fix so the rug holds together. I see my sister solve problems to make something work just like Dad used to do. A gift I admire. Solving problems.
By late afternoon I have made two rugs that are curled around the loom underneath. A rug always needs to stay on the loom to hold a starting place for the next one. We will return in a couple of weeks to work again. But today, we must leave to get home before dark. The snow has turned to driving rain all the way home to Provo. But I am filled with thinking about making things with my hands, turning leftover fabric into useful things of beauty, and memories of home.
We drive down Main Street because Genene has told me the incredible news, Beaver has a stoplight! I must see it for myself, test myself on the stopping and waiting at the Post Office corner just to see that the lights go from red to green to red just like they do everywhere else.
We drive by my father's house on 600 East just to see. The dozen or so apple trees in the yard are a riot of pink and white blossoms, promising a harvest of plenty in a few months. If it doesn't freeze again. It has snowed on us this late May day all the way from Kanosh. Oh, Dad, you would love to see these trees so beautifully blooming. Even in the snow.
Our destination today is to the home of an old friend. He has offered to help me learn to make rugs. We traipse through the snow with my basket of colors sewn into strips an inch and a half wide. Downstairs into the basement we go where the loom is waiting for us. This is not just any loom. This is a memory of my childhood. For many years this loom stood in a room in our church basement waiting, strings strung, for any ward member who wanted to bring their leftover fabric to make rugs. Some of my earliest memories are of playing at my mother's feet as she passed the shuttle back and forth, pounded the rows of fabric together, and produced swaths of color that lessened the winter cold of the linoleum floor in my bedroom, or softened my standing at the sink to wash dishes.
I am amazed as I see the loom that it is much smaller than my child eyes remember.
I choose a stiff yellow fabric to begin. We wrap three or four shuttles with the long strips, choose a deep green for an accent stripe and we begin. It's simple really, with just a bit of instruction I get the hang of moving the two pedals up and down that switch the strings above or below so the weaving occurs. Pound, pound, pound with the bar between each pass of the shuttle and the stiff yellow fabric begins to take rug shape. Oh, it is beautiful. I learn to place a stretcher bar across the top of the work so the width of the rug stays even. I realize the pedal needs to be down on the side I start the shuttle from. I work blisters on three fingers of my right hand by the pounding and the muscle in my forearm begins to ache. No matter, the rug takes shape.
In a couple of hours I have completed the first rug. A break for a late lunch and I begin the second one. Pink and blue for this one. The lightness of the fabric makes the rug not so thick. More delicate. A rug, delicate?
As the afternoon wears on I make mistakes, breaking strings with the stretcher bar that takes all of us to fix so the rug holds together. I see my sister solve problems to make something work just like Dad used to do. A gift I admire. Solving problems.
By late afternoon I have made two rugs that are curled around the loom underneath. A rug always needs to stay on the loom to hold a starting place for the next one. We will return in a couple of weeks to work again. But today, we must leave to get home before dark. The snow has turned to driving rain all the way home to Provo. But I am filled with thinking about making things with my hands, turning leftover fabric into useful things of beauty, and memories of home.
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