I own four looms. This is all just in the past like five or six months. Before that, I did a lot of knitting and embroidery because I like to touch things, and in coronavirus you can’t do that. I saw the Brown Arts Initiative was doing grants and weaving seemed like a cool thing to do. I thought, “This seems like my next step.”
That got me a loom, then for my birthday, my parents got me a hand table loom, and then I have a travel loom and then I made this tapestry loom. I wanted to make a tapestry but the lowest price I could find for a solid size loom was $225. So I went to the hardware store like the good little Gen Z queer lady that I am, and I got $32 worth of wood, some nails, and hooks. And so I designed this with my bare minimum knowledge of woodworking.
I got into textiles my freshman year. I had come home for the break and I was super depressed. I was falling asleep in every single one of my classes because I had undiagnosed narcolepsy. In high school, to stay awake, I would stab my leg with pencils and pens. Knitting was a better alternative. I like clothes and fashion and I like doing things with my hands. But a lot of it was staying awake in classes. My mom is a really good knitter, so I asked her to teach me.
There was a point last semester when I really took over half of the house and I felt so bad about it. I’m just constantly doing stuff around the house, like I have a knitting project here and the weaving project down there and a sewing project in a different room. It’s nice to be able to relax and create and not just consume. Now I want to try to figure out how to, like, spin yarn.