Jeny Stoesz Weavings

My experience of Becoming A Weaver…

It began at a Laramie, Wyoming garage sale where I spontaneously bought a loom with the mortgage money. My husband was tolerant, left work and loaded the loom into the jeep.

After 4 hours of weaving instruction I was minimally competent but confused enough to decide to go it alone from then on. My daughter was preparing for a college year exchange to Nova Scotia so I joined her at Gaelic College on Cape Breton Island for a week of immersion. She studied fiddle and language. I talked the teacher into letting me hang out in the crammed weaving room, watching, asking questions, helping other weavers, weaving two items on my own and generally soaking up the experience of fiber fiascos and fantastic results. At the end of the week I was hooked so we sent our clothes home except for a backpack of essentials, and started filling the suitcases with all the yarns we could buy from the locals. Some kind of law was in effect that would have prevented traditional importing so we passed off all of my purchases as “gifts.” I doubt the customs officers were fooled.

The people of Nova Scotia gave me contacts — mill owners ‘across the pond’ primarily. Thanks to them I never bought via the traditional wholesale route. I bought mill ends and closeouts directly, often not knowing what I was getting until it arrived. Word-of-mouth gave me access to farmers and ranchers, both in the U.S. west and abroad. I attended shearings, learned the names of llamas whose coats provided soft, sleek yarns, gathered the down shed annually by our American Bison, watched yaks being combed and Angora rabbits being plucked for their fibers, scrounged for driftwood, scrap copper, fishing line, leather leftovers from a boot maker. I believe in using what is available. Other weavers sold me yarns they didn’t want. I wanted variety and natural, obtaining possomdown from New Zealand before they quit exporting raw materials, and quiviut (the down of Musk Ox) from Alaska natives. I bought handspun yarns from friends when my spinning speed was inadequate to the quantity I needed to weave. I shunned synthetics and bought all the color-grown organic cotton (grown in USA) available at the time. Kansas and Colorado mills sold me their reject orders of cashmere and mohair. Two tons of yarn now fill my Yarn Shed and most are no longer available. I have enough to last the rest of my life. That is good.

I knew I wanted to weave images of the U.S. west but the idea didn’t gel until my professional photographer husband suggested we team up on the business. I could use his photos as inspiration, plus my own experiences of living here most of my life. However, color was an issue. Commercial dyes don’t capture the subtly of the west. For several years I worked with a dyer in Canada and one in Colorado. We mixed dyes, sometimes recording the dye concentrations but often not. The west is anything but boring or predictable. We knew a color was right when we saw it. I now do all of my own dyes, and have samples of 1,000 yarns that have been dyed to honor this region. I dye when I need a color. The trick is making ‘weathered’ colors. That is the western character of color.

Every piece is one-of. Most feature mixed warps, a weaving technique infrequently done commercially. In it I combine fibers, specialty spins such as boucle, varying thicknesses of yarns, sometimes adding a non-fiber such as wire. The fringe is the end of the warp. Unlike most commercial weavings, I always tie fringe knots. I don’t want my work to fall apart in cleaning! I also love overshot patterns, another hallmark of handweavers, and develop my own overshot patterns, called name-drafts, avoiding the computer generated method in favor of graph paper and colored pencils so I can tweek the pattern if I want. Once I have an idea, gathered my yarns and warped the loom, the process really becomes fun. Just because I have a plan doesn’t mean I stick to it. I seldom do. I change colors on a whim, add embellishments ‘just because it makes sense,’ — but always have a inspiration in the back of my mind. At times I start with one idea and get sidetracked as when I was weaving at 4am and saw and heard a buck antelope and two ravens outside the window. The weaving changed. Colors changed. It became “Antelope and Raven Calling at Dawn.”

I title my weavings — really to focus the viewer’s attention — and to combat the proverbial question, ‘what is it?” It’s a shawl if you want it to be, but whether you wear it, frame it, cuddle under it or hang it I hope you will enjoy my vision of the west.

I weave to honor the west I know and love.