Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and warm but the light summer breeze kept the heat from feeling oppressive. Even the clouds looked relaxed floating high up in the sky all puffy and white like flocks of sheep meandering their way across a deep blue meadow. Through the open windows Jessie could hear the distant traffic like the steady crashing of the ocean waves and for a few moments remembered a time when she was younger and vacationed at the beach.

To feel the salty air tug at your hair and to build sandcastles that you knew would be washed away so you could build them anew. The feel of warm sand filtering through your toes as you walked just above the wave line and the squeal that burst from deep within when a much cooler wave licked at your toes before you could scramble back onto dry sand once more. Ice cream and pretzels, boardwalk games and stores, quiet dinners in the condo and fancy ones on the waterfront…. Those were the times that Jessie wished she had appreciated more but as they say hindsight is always 20/20 and a young child can hardly understand just how much a grown adult would love to be a child once more.

The blare of a distant horn broke Jessie out of her thoughts and she looked down at the small loom in her hand. The store was quiet since it was a school day, the first few weeks of school were almost always quiet in the store anyway since most projects are not given yet and teachers are evaluating what their students retained from summer. So with the store quiet, everything done that needed to be done, Jessie decided to once again take up loom knitting. It was harder than using a small loom to weave, or at least for Jessie it was, and it took more concentration to keep all the counting and stitches straight. At least using a small flat kids loom all you had to do when doing a simple pattern was weave over and under… over and under… over and under. It was rather repetitive but if you take all your small woven squares and patched them together you could make a very pretty blanket. Sometimes Jessie wondered what it would be like to work on a much larger loom, to make a blanket out of one piece of cloth, but then she would look up at her full shop and even fuller apartment above her and knew she wouldn’t have the space for it. Besides she liked cross-stitch a bit more the weaving.

“Knit one purl two…. Knit one purl two… knit one purl two…” Jessie murmured as she carefully made row after row on the loom, the scarf slowly working itself down off her lap to hang mid calf. The gentle tinkle of the bells over the door warned her moments before a voice broke the silence of the store. Putting down her work Jessie stood and waved to the young man, a bit surprised he was there. “Hello. Welcome to The Bookwyrm.” She glanced down at the clock on the register wondering at the time since school would still be in for a little while, then again the young man might not be as young as he seemed or maybe he had already graduated… there were many possible answers so she shrugged it off and focused on what he was looking for. This was her favorite part of the job anyway.

“I’m sure we can find something and if we can’t I’ll keep looking on the internet till we do.” Jessie smiled before adding, “I can help you if you need or you can wander as you wish just follow the ‘signs’ for what you’re looking for.” She gestured to the ceiling over the bookcases where the giant paintbrush was suspended over the art section, stars and plants over astronomy, birds over animals, and far in the back behind several cases there were what looked like clouds, Pegasus, and other flying mythical creatures… the creatures were fairly new since Jessie started to read up on mythology and figured such toys would fit perfectly in the fantasy/young adult sections.

“Thank you but to be honest it’s more of a matter of pride. I love books and I want to share that enjoyment with others and if we don’t have the book then I will do my damndest to get it. After all if you went to so much trouble to get the book why shouldn’t I as well?” Jessie blushed as she realized she became a bit enthusiastic about her ‘if we don’t have it, we will find it’ policy. It really was something that she was passionate about. There were only a few times when the requested book could not be found… or rather it was found it just couldn’t be bought for whatever reason. There was even a case where a book containing the info didn’t exist.

Jessie opened the list expecting to see a list of books but she was surprised to be met with a list of activities. She slowly read down the extensive list before answering hesitantly, “We have lots of books that could help with quite a few of them. I know of a singer who might be able to help with the first one and I could at least help with the needlework and weaving since I tend to work on that in my spare time.” She glanced down at the list again, “I’m quite curious about the ‘reciting books’. Is it like learning a monolog from a play and reciting it?”

Jessie nodded thoughtfully. He did have a point… it was a pretty large city and this did seem like an interesting way of meeting new people as well as learning new skills. And since school seemed to be delayed for him why not. She did wonder about the origins of the tasks and what half of them meant but that would be dealt with later now… now was time for books. “Well we have a pretty large selection and I know we have at least a dozen books on needlework, knitting, and crocheting. Weaving will be a bit harder.” She hummed slightly as she mentally dug through possible books, “We should have a few that mention the mechanics behind it but I think a ‘how to’ book would have to be ordered… it’s not really something that comes up often.” She shrugged slightly before making her way around the counter to stand a little ways away from the young man.

“Now that is pretty neat not that I would want to sail the world but… travel it? Yes there are quite a few bookstores around the globe that sound worth visiting, and that’s not even factoring in the libraries.” That was Jessie’s ultimate retirement plan but until the store could run itself she would be here trying to make her store one of the stores worth traveling to. “Anyway I can teach you what I know, although I would not consider myself an expert in any sense of the way. I would say let’s stick with the needlework and the weaving.” She started to lead the way to the art section where the pertinent books would be before turning and adding, “The weaving would have to be done on a hand loom. Does that matter? I don’t really have what you would call space for a full scale loom here.” She waved at the colorful, large, but a bit cluttered store. Jessie hadn’t even picked up on the ‘willing to pay’ part of the request for help, she was actually more than willing to help anyone out with projects as long as she knew how to do them and this was right up her alley.

“’After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.’ Camus had a point and while Krishna likely did not learn from books neither of us are he… are we?” Jessie looked back at the young man, laughter in her eyes. “Besides Confucius said that ‘you cannot open a book without learning something.’ so I believe it would be best to start there…. Or rather here.” She gestured to the art section. The paintbrush hanging over the aisle, miniature easels held miniature paintings on the shelves. Busts of famous artists and musicians acted as bookends while plastic cameras, metal dancers, and what looked like a ball of yarn were placed in what seemed to be a haphazard way on the shelves and even above them. “I learned cross-stitch by doing it but I learned what the stitches were by reading about it. I know how to weave a potholder and craft a scarf but asking me what the exact parts are on a loom and I would have to look it up. I have yet to meet anyone who could not benefit from a book… besides what would you do during the times I can’t teach you?” Jessie ambled down the aisle and paused a few feet from the yarn before reaching up on her toes to fish down an object that was resting on the top of the shelves.

She celebrated her minor victory with a ‘aha’ and turned with a wooden frame in her hand. “A hand loom.” She held it out to show him. It was rather unassuming. It was about shoulder with across, a simple wooden rectangle, the two end pieces taller than the sides, with two wooden dowels on the very end of the structure. “Let’s start small before worrying about going bigger.” This would be fun. It wasn’t often that Jessie got to help with craft projects… research papers yes but not craft. There was one time when she got to help with a young students diorama but it was the exception not the norm.

Jessie wasn't going to push any books on him but she felt sad that he didn't want to read up as much as he could on the subject. Granted he did have a point, with so many to learn he didn't actually have to study each subject in great detail. Ah well, to each his own.

"Well weaving can be done with many different materials. Basket weaving for example is typically done with plant fibers such as reeds and even newspaper but for loom weaving, which I find a bit easier, the simplest thing to use is yarn but with skill one could use silk, velvet, polyester.... really any material that can be formed into thread. The majority of clothing made today has been mass produced on giant looms." Jessie pointed to the young man's shirt, "Take a look, your shirt has been woven. Your socks, pants, bed clothes... unless I'm mistaken everything cloth like is woven, granted some are knitted or crouched not loom woven." Jessie stopped herself when she realized she was going off on a tangent, there was so much information she could pass on but it didn't help rambling on and on to the point where she overwhelmed the young man.

She took a few steps back and reached for the yarn like book end... it really was a ball of yarn. "For now we shall stick to a simple weave on a small loom using normal yarn. There are three parts of this loom you need to know about... the warp, the weft, and the shuttle." Jessie pointed to the small dull metal spikes that sat at the top of the ends of the rectangle. "These help separate the warp, the yarn that will be going vertical. The weft is the yarn that we will be passing through the warp horizontally and the shuttle is the... well I guess bobbin is a acceptable term... and means to send the weft though the warp."

((if you care here is a 'how its made' clip for fabric... its pretty interesting actually))

"Well..." Jessie paused a moment as she tried to remember the last time she wove something... it was just a plain scarf so it didn't have any additional colors in it other then what she added at the end. "If I remember correctly there are actually a few different ways to make intricate pieces. The simplest way is actually to have the warp be different colors and the weft be a plain color although I suppose it could be done with a rainbow thread to add even more interest but I think you would have to plan that one out." Jessie realized that she would need to refresh her memory since she hadn't researched weaving cloth since she first started messing around with it several years ago. But that thought did bring up a interesting question... "Would weaving baskets count as part of the list?" And the last time she did something like that was in middle school art class..... it would take some serious reading up to feel anywhere near proficient in that.

Jessie hesitated before answering, “I haven’t done that in years and would feel better teaching it after I read up on it some.” She actually had a book in mind and a few web pages that she could dig through to refresh her memory. “It’s the same basic principal of over under weaving just using different materials such as reed, pine needles, and newspaper.” But the idea of unusual weaving shapes brought her mind the other uses of cloth and wondering where they would fall in this list of the young man’s…. who she had yet to introduce herself too. She mentally smacked her head while finally introducing herself, “I’m Jessie by the way… and um… would making a rag rug count as weaving? It’s made by taking rag strips, braiding them together, and then sewing them into a shape such as an oval or a circle?” Since she wasn’t sure if the young man wanted to jump right in using the loom but she wanted to do some research before doing baskets it would make sense to start on something simple like a rag rug. Since he could braid the rag strips and then work them into the shape he wanted and with luck by the time he was done with that Jessie could start him on making something simple like a newspaper basket…

It was a lot of ands but the definition of weaving didn’t really leave a lot of certainties since its basically the interlace of various materials to make a fabric or material so in theory making rugs was the same as baskets which is basically the same as making cloth…. Her mind turned inward as she tried to think of other things that could in theory be considered weaving if one took the definition of it literally. The whole world was a interconnecting of people and things, which brought her mind to the old myths of weavers… most of them connected to spiders such the Hopi’s Spider Woman or the Cherokee’s Grandmother spider. Hell even the Greeks connected weavers and spiders when Arachne beat Athena in a weaving contest and was turned into a spider. So many stories and books and myths were built around weaving, even if it was only in weaving a good tale, Jessie nearly danced as she mentally fished through all her books trying to decide which ones to read again first, she had practically forgotten the young man who stood in front of her and sparked the desire to read up on such a strange topic.