2025-08-09 North House Folk School

What a whirlwind the past few weeks have been! I might need a few more just to process everything. Flying back home to attend a funeral, family visits, sibling medical issues, new professional projects, it felt never-ending.

But in that blur was a little trip my partner and I took up to learn how to weave. This trip was originally going to be between my partner and their sibling, but due to health concerns for the long trip to Grand Marais, I took their place.

We were to learn how to weave on an inkle loom, and as someone who has never woven anything, I was a bit nervous. I do love getting into fiber arts, but I knew that the first time I tried knitting, I was so stressed, I gave up and didn't touch it again for a couple years. The instructor we had was amazing! Her name is Traudi Bestler and she's been doing fiber arts for over 40 years. I tend to get hung up on the parts of weaving that take up .5% of the time when working, but are important so the piece doesn't fall apart in the end, but Traudi made sure to keep giving each person in the class individual attention when they needed help.

Including me and my partner, there were 8 students in the class. We showed up every day from 9am to an end time of approximately 5pm (though we left early when work was finished). The first day consisted of quite a bit of instruction on how to warp the loom, but we were able to finish up our very first inkle band by the end of the first day. The second day mainly had us operating autonomously with a slightly more difficult band pattern. My warp took far longer to set up on the second day, but I'm so happy I took some extra time to really decide how I wanted it to look.

My partner and I were so infatuated with the thought of continuing weaving that we ordered a Beka inkle loom and some cotton yarn before heading home. Even though it was another thing happening in a hectic few weeks, it was such a fun experience- one that I hope can experience again next year (but with a different class, of course).