We are All ‘Super Slick Salesmen’: A life as a living historian in the retro-utopia, or, I have an amazing post-apocalyptic bug out team – probe on the MIT Media Lab

Most of the world today runs on ‘fixed-term contracts’ (Barbrook, 1995, p. 2). Long gone is the notion of staying in one job or company for an entire career. When I began my career as a historian, Mulroney had decimated the history staff at Parks Canada, and many of the community museums in Nova Scotia were only seasonal.  I knew early on that I needed to diversify my skills and always be ‘on the lookout’ for the next contract. There was no “guarantee of continued employment” (Barbrook, 1995, p. 2), there wasn’t even a guarantee of summer employment!  All that aside, for the most part, Nova Scotians have put their ‘big girl panites’ on and figured out how to live a meaningful life.  Like Europe, we understand the need “for an enlightened mixed economy” (Barbrook, 1995, p.8).  There is no job that is deemed ‘too menial’, in fact many of the people behind the counter at Tim Horton’s have degrees of higher learning, some of them multiple.  The running joke in my family has long been ‘Dr. Grant to the centre cutting table’ because to return to Nova Scotia may mean a return to working at Fabricville. 

So what’s a historian to do? 

In Robert Hassan’s article “The MIT Media Lab: techno dream factory or alienation as a way of life” he asks “what are some of the possible social, cultural and ontological consequences of ‘being digital’ within a hypermediated digital ecology of interconnectedness” (Hassan, 2003, p. 89)? Hassan tells us that the MIT Media Lab looks at ‘Sociable Media’ and how people percieve each other in a networked world, and the ‘Digital Life’ looks at connections between ‘bits, people and things in an online world’ (Hassan, 2003, p. 90). As I have mentioned in class before, part of my life is spent online interacting in online history communities. This is not really all that different from most people’s lives. Everyone has online communities that they frequent. What is a bit different for me, is that the online world is also my work world. “[T]he ‘real-time’of the online environment [has] become the ‘real-time’ of [my] everyday life” (Hassan, 2003, p. 90).  My peer-group has come to realize that we can use technology to create a space for working, sharing research, and networking with historians and museum sites all over the world.  We have found a space that is between the ‘good and evil’ of technology, in that we all use it, begrudgeonly for some, but that it can be a useful tool for us to develop the networks we need in order to remain in the history field (Hassan, 2003, p. 91). For many of us, dabbling in webpage development was just too cumbersome a thing to maintain. Facebook though, proved to be an easy interface to use. Add to this many blogging forums that we could publish in and hotlink to facebook, a network could be formed.  In a similar fashion to LaTour’s laboratory of a couple of weeks ago, we are able to read other’s research findings, share and collaborate on new articles, and be in a creative space together, even though we may physically be thousands of miles apart.  A cocktail party in our network would have to be done over skype, with each of us sitting in our own home offices, probably over coffee instead of alcoholic drinks. “Media has become critical in popularizing me as a person in the historical community” (Hassan, 2003, p. 92).

So my work life and personal life have become blurred into one.  My online prescence is strictly developed to provide ‘good press’ (cited in Hassan, 2003, p.93).  I am constantly reading about the eighteenth-century and its fashion, I am hoping to soon fully contribute to that discussion instead of just the occasional comment. My own trips to the past in the form of re-enactment are not only sales trips in that I am still making clothing for interpreters, but also research and networking trips as I learn of new pieces of extant clothing that I will want to study for the disertation. In both instances, I have to be ‘on my game’.  Unfortunately though, despite my offering a ‘commercially viable product’ (Hassan, 2003, p. 93), I am not being paid unless I have provided an article of clothing as part of the exchange.  I am still being paid for what I do, not for what I know, and that tends to relate to a lower dollar amount.  Hassan tells us that “ICTs have flooded the lives of many within the advanced economies, that it is increasingly possible to speak of life being conducted within an information environment, an informational ecology” (cited in Hassan, 2003, p.95). How to earn a living from this ‘interconnectiveness’ will be the question on many historians lips before too much longer.

I will admit that I am extremely privledged to be who I am in this world, an historian who is not employed in the traditional sense, a graduate student.  If it were not for my husband’s steady job, neither of these parts of my life would happen.  I would be that struggling, retail sales associate at Fabricville, cutting your fabric, asking you what you are making, and if you need thread (questions we all have to ask, not that we are interested).  I would not be sitting here at the computer thinking philosophical thoughts about ‘interconnectiveness’, I’d be worried about paying rent and buying groceries.  These two things are still in the back of my mind though, because I have been that retail sales associate.  And so this past week, along side my philosophical ramblings, I have been carrying out a time honoured tradion of processing the Fall harvest for consumption during the winter months.  Alongside my friends in other parts of New England and the Maritimes, I have been making pickled veg, filling my freezer with other freezable vegetables and meats.  If you live in an area where there are farms and farmers, food tends to be cheaper right now than any other time of the year.  Also, since I have just received my term disbursement cheque, I have money.  Money that was almost entirely spent on food for the winter months.  Other friends of mine are processing their flock of chickens and turkeys, others still have gardens full that need to be ‘put up’ for the winter.  Next summer, I too will have a garden full of things that we can eat.  This summer was a write-off, as we did not move here until mid August, instead of the first of June as we had originally intended.  I have other friends who are now finishing up their summer employment and are getting geared up to begin Winter projects for themselves, or to suplement their income producing items for museums trying to use up budgetary money before the end of March.

By now, you will have noticed that I haven’t cited the Brand reading.  Having tried to obtain a copy of the book to read, I learned that it is not available as an ebook (technology), nor, despite there being several copies available, is it available for shipping until after christmas, unless I sign up for a costly Amazon shipping package that I will never use.  In the meantime, I have been reading about the MIT media lab through other sources.  I have been thinking about technology and how it was supposed to make our lives so much easier.  One would think that by now, most books of this sort would be available as ebooks.  My mum devours fiction now only as ebooks or audio books, which saves our bookshelves for books on art and topics that we are constantly researching.  And then I think about what would happen without technology (there was a recent fiction novel about a post technology state and how re-enactors were able to build a new society, it was the SCA, but the skills are similar).  I still wouldn’t be able to read an ebook entitled The Media Lab:Inventing the Future at MIT.  I have been thinking about the community I have become a part of through the internet.  How I would miss those friendships that I have developed.  Hassan informs us that the time-space compression that technology provides was part of the acceleration of modernity, centrally connected to capitalist development.  He explains that tech has changed the lives of many people in profound ways on a macro level (Hassan, 2003, p. 102).  But what of the micro level?  My own life would change without technology, certainly.  I would have to think harder about the micro of daily life.  How important a good cooking fire is; that hot water is a chore and a blessing when it doesn’t come from the tap.  But then I think of the things that I know how to do, the knowledge that has been passed down to me from my parents and grandparents, the knowledge shared amoungst my peers.  Daily life would be harder, but livable.

Especially if we up and moved again, to be closer to our friends, our post-apocalyptic bug out team. 

Works Cited

Hassan, R. (2003). The MIT Media Lab: techno dream factory or alienation as a way of life. Media, Culture and Society, 87-106.

Richard Barbrook, A. C. (1995). The Californian Ideology. Mute, 1-8.

Works Not Cited

Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987. Chapters 1, 6, 9, 13.

Post Script

Last week I wrote a whole other probe about tech and how I live my life with tech, but still do a lot of non-traditional, low tech things at this time of year.  That my life is a balance of tech vs. non-tech, leaning towards the non-tech.  I was missing the last readings, from the Brand book though, and even commented on how my inability to find those readings ticked me off.  This is why…

Thursday, before class, I went in to the Library and found a hard copy of the book.  Yes, I could have done this right from the beginning, but I was told ‘just go on to google docs and look for the readings’.  Having done that, I really could not find the readings.  Further searches informed me that there was ‘no electronic format’ of this book, but that I could buy it from Amazon for the low-low price of one cent.  I thought, ok, for one cent, that, even with shipping costs wouldn’t blow my budget.  I could do this.  I wanted a hard copy, printed out anyway, so that I could make my comments in the margins and highlight the hell out of it.  You really can’t do that with a library book, the librarians kinda frown on it.  The problem was, with regular shipping, the book wouldn’t get to me until February, unless I bought into Amazon’s expensive ‘free’ shipping program, Prime.  I could get six months free trial and then cancel without being charged.  Well two of my friends have fallen for this trick and have been charged, and have had a difficult time getting out of the contract, so I was hesitant…and so, I went to the library.

The thing is though, this book is about tech that was being developed 30 years ago.  Think about that.  Thirty years ago, I had no idea what the internet was.  No idea what email, or list serves, or even really what a computer could do.  Thirty years ago, I had just written my first computer program, one that made a turtle slowly walk across a bar of music that made the notes play as he passed over them.  This was four years before I would know about something called the intranet, four years before my family would own ANY kind of modern tech.  Hell, we had only just gotten a microwave!

As I have told you before, I spend a good part of my day on the internet, on social media, on J-stor, on youtube.  A lot of my social life is there, as my friends are far flung, not only in Nova Scotia, but in the US, out west, in the UK, Germany.  It makes me feel a little less alone.  I think J-stor is one of the very best inventions ever, and I am so happy that I will still have access to it, long after I leave Concordia. 

Youtube has become my television.  I have separated this one out because I think it’s as important as the fact that I couldn’t get the Brand book in electronic format.  Brand talks a lot about tech in the book, tech that has been developed in my lifetime.  Things that have caused me to have an easier life.  It started with the VCR, because at about that same time, my migraines started to get really bad, and I began noticing that I couldn’t watch movies in the theatre any longer without coming away violently ill.  We had a small screen TV at home, and my dad would rent a VCR on the weekends and a bunch of movies and we would have a great time, all curled up in my mum’s room until long into the evening.  We watched all the classics, concluding each weekend with another great Cheech and Chong movie.  Yes, my parents were/are weird, and I love them for it.  We had a great video store at home, whose staff were into some ‘other than normal Hollywood’ stuff.  I became a great fan of stuff produced in the UK and Europe.  The plots were often better developed, and the scenography ‘quieter’ on the eyes.  Now, I watch a lot of those films on Youtube.  The problem with Youtube isn’t the interface really.  That is really easy to use, and the search engine’s great, and the fact that it’s algorithm remembers me is really not creepy to me, and has been helpful in finding things for me to watch that I wouldn’t know to search for, like Timeteam.  The problem is that I have to wait for other people to upload the programs I would like to watch to Youtube.  I, living in Canada, do not have access to the programming of the BBC.  It is ‘blacked out’ here.  We have BBC Canada, but often it is just a rehashing of programs produced here in Canada, like Holmes’ and Baumler’s renovation programs.  Not the BBC at all.

Timeteam

is a UK based show where a team of archaeologists have two days to go into a site and do an archaeological survey.  The stuff they find is fascinating.  If the site is rich, then there may be follow-up digs on the site at a later date.  All the seasons are there, on youtube for us to watch.  I have gotten many of my friends hooked on the series.  Youtube is also where I ‘met’ Ruth Goodman, and her team of living historians doing a job that I could only dream about, actually living history for a period of time, in a historical place.

Tales From the Green Valley

Living history allows me to have a better understanding of how historical clothing works.  In some of the historic sites that I have worked, we have been able to do experiments on clothing, noting wear patterns, how clothing is changed by the wearing, and how the body is changed by the clothing worn.  It then helps me to understand what I am looking at when examining an extant garment.  I can understand if it has been altered, and often when, and for what purpose.  I have also come to the understanding that a lot of the myths being spread about clothing in our grandparent’s time and before are truly that, myths.

But let me get back to Youtube, and technology…

The UK is big into Living History.  I capitalize it on purpose, to try and explain how big it is in the UK.  Their museum system is almost entirely federally funded.  And they are swimming in historic sites.  It is so important that the BBC has an entire channel devoted to historical stuff, and I’m not talking about Ice Road Truckers or ‘Alien’ anything here, actual HISTORY!  And so these shows are being produced, and people watch them, and they grow to like their own history.  Here in Canada, we get stuff from the US, which by and large is dramatically plotless, and uses far too much special effects and flashy filming techniques to make the viewer think they are getting something new and fabulous.

I have been home sick this week.  I have been watching (listening to, really) a lot of home improvement shows.  I am bored, but cannot stay awake long enough to continue with my readings.  It is really hard to concentrate on stuff you want to write about when you lose your place on the page twelve times before the end of it.  I can watch a home improvement show and it really doesn’t matter who the host is, I can see the problems coming a mile away with the shallow plot techniques and know how the show will end, in case of napping.  Sitting at my computer to watch Youtube is problematic when sick, it is cold outside of bed, and uncomfortable sitting in my desk chair all day.  And yes, in case you haven’t realized it yet, my bedroom TV is still a dumb TV, and Pierre detests it when you set a laptop on the bed…he is a techie.

I have brought you on this quick rant because by now, thirty years after the Brand book was written, I figured that I would just be able to watch anything I wanted to watch (produced anywhere in the world), when I wanted to watch it, on just about any surface in my home.  Or maybe not on a surface at all, that TV would be like Princess Leia’s hologram from Star Wars.  That I would be able to explore the space all around the ‘program’, looking to see what I wanted to see, from the comfort of my own home, from bed when I am sick.  Thirty years in though, I am still stuck watching a lot of bad TV from the United States, which now, Pierre tapes and we watch when I can handle the flashing for a period of time…which lately has been growing shorter and shorter, along with the list of programs I can handle both the flashy filming, and the seriously bad plotlines. 

Works Cited

Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987. Chapters 1, 6, 9, 13.

A selfie of my loom

My loom is like a housewife’s ill-used treadmill.  It sits behind me in my office/studio beckoning me to ‘work’, to weave something, anything!  Instead, at this point in my life I really need to read stuff, write things.  My work table doesn’t hold fabric, waiting to be made into a suit.  No.  It holds collated readings for the grant proposal.  Readings for probes.  More readings for the paper I must write for the end of the term.  The things is though, I’d rather do anything but write.  And so, like a good academic, I have perfected the act of procrastination.  Oh the ways that I can procrastinate, even though I know that if I would just sit here and write, there would be time left in the day to create. By the way, this is my loom’s first ever ‘selfie’, and the second ever ‘selfie’ of myself.  I’m not usually one for modern technology.

For this probe, I am going to talk about weaving.  This had been my plan since first reading the abstracts for the readings for this week.  I weave to develop a better understanding of how people in the 18thC lived.  I weave to firmly grasp how expensive clothing is, so different from what we see today.  Yesterday I went out and spent 200$ and bought two pair of jeans, four T-shirts and four packages of underwear.  Two Hundred dollars; that was all it cost for all those clothes.  That is not the real and true cost of those items of clothing.  In fact, if we were to harvest the fibres, process them, spin them, weave or knit the cloth, then make the garments, we would have a better understanding of the true cost of the clothes that we wear.  And we would be outraged.  But, back to weaving.

This is a weaving pattern.  The main body of the pattern gives you a diagram of how the weave structure will look as you are weaving.  The pattern in the cloth.  There are many different varieties of weave structures that will give you different patterns in the cloth, and are used for different reasons.  The jeans we wear are a twill weave.  Twill stretches a bit and so makes our jeans more comfortable to wear, even if they don’t also have a stretchable fibre in them.  Dish cloths tend to be woven in a variation of the twill that produces a waffle-like effect in the cloth.  This allows for better containment of soap, and more scrubability.  Dress shirts are woven with a plain weave structure.  This makes ironing them easier and allows for a crisper finish.

The top bar of the pattern tells you how to thread the loom to achieve the pattern.  The top right hand corner tells you how to tie-up the foot pedals to the loom.  The bar that runs down the right hand side of the pattern tells you how to weave, giving you which pedals to press down with each step.  This text allows weavers of many generations to understand and recreate cloth that may have been first woven hundreds of years ago.  The structure of a weaving pattern has not changed in a very long time.

My loom is called a ‘colonial box loom’.  It is a modern loom based on the style of looms that would have been created and used in the 18^th century.  My loom came to me in a very interesting way.  This may seem like a bit of a side-bar, but is relevant to the story.  Two years ago, I was able to spend a summer with the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design.  During that summer residency, I had full access to their weaving studio.  My project was to recreate linen textiles from the 18^th century.  I had never woven with linen before, and there were some things I wanted to create for our re-enacting kit.  Among these projects were dish cloths and towels, chair strapping, a tablecloth, and a length of shirt cloth.  The shirt cloth was to be the major project, with the others being made up as time allowed.  The shirt cloth yardage was supposed to be about 15 metres long, enough for several shirts and some aprons.  Each of these textiles were based on historical weave patterns from a book written in the late 18^th century, and the check pattern for the shirt cloth was based on a sample in the MET museum in Boston.

I began on July 1^st.  It took a week to wind off the threads for the warp of the shirt.  The warp threads run the length of the cloth, and are what is threaded through the loom.  As a weaver winds the warp threads on the warping mill, he/she counts off the pattern of the weave structure.  I had to first determine how wide I wanted the cloth to be, and then how many threads I wanted to use, and in what order, colour-wise.  This idea was then counted off while I wound the warp so that I would have a consistent pattern across the cloth, and would have enough threads to make the desired width.

https://www.facebook.com/pierre.longtin/videos/10151728034619669/

This shirt warp took over a month to actually wind on to the back beam of the loom, ready to weave.  The warp was wide, 30 inches.  Normally it takes two of us to get a warp on to the loom so that I can thread it.  This warp took three of us.  I had to wait for pairs of friends to be willing and able to come into the studio with me.  (In the meantime, I continued on with some of the other projects that I had on the go.)  Also, the linen was very hairy thread, and liked to catch itself on the other threads, making large snarls.  To ‘condition’ the threads to ease in this problem, I starched the threads once I took them off the warping mill.  I then continuously sprayed the threads with even more starch as we wound the warp on the loom.  Little did I know that the threads drying out would be a major issue (problem #1), and that my starching may have caused yet another issue (problem #2).

We finally got the warp on the loom and I began to thread.  This took me two solid days of work. The warp was 30 inches wide and there were roughly 20 threads per inch. Roughly 600 threads to thread into the heddle eyes. And then threading 600 threads through the reeds.  I really do enjoy this part of the weaving process.  I put a Latin mass on my iPod and completely get into the zone of hanging in my loom, threading things.  I really do hang inside the loom.  The front bar comes off, and I get a chair inside as closely as I can to the heddles, and then I hang my arms over the beater bar and thread.  It is tiring though, and hard on the body.

When I finally got everything ready to go, I decided to start fresh the next morning.

I usually start working very early in the morning, even when working in a studio outside my home.  During this residency, I would start about 7am.  The centre itself would open about 830am, with the public starting to come in to visit about 9am.

And so I go into the studio, get settled in for the day, sit down and begin to weave.  I start with a really heavy thread.  This is done to check the tension, and also to allow for a nice strong start to the weave.  I may have thrown about five weft threads when I noticed that my tension was getting worse, not better.  In fact, it was reaching catastrophic failure.  WTH? I got up and then I noticed the back of the loom, where 15 metres of threads were at one time all nicely wound on the back beam.  The threads that had been so lovely the night before had become a snarled mess.  They slid off the sides of the coil of threads (problem #3), and were just a mess of thread on the back of the loom.

And here is where I was really glad that I was alone in the studio.  The air turned blue as I cursed that warp in three languages and threw an epic temper tantrum.  EPIC, I tell you, with tears and everything.  I was still having a good cry, pulling the warp back off the back of the loom when a tourist walked in and said hello.  He took one look at me and understood what was going on.  He told me that his wife was a weaver, and that when she had this happen to her, he would disappear off to the pub until she called and told him it was safe for him to return.  My first angel walked into my residency.  This lady told me what was happening, told me it could be fixed, and then spent a good amount of time with me helping to get the warp off the loom without me cutting it to shreds.  She told me how to fix problem #3.  That weekend, my husband Pierre, friend Garth, and I got the warp back on the loom.  I could finally weave.

This was the first of August.  I had a little over a month left to go on my residency and far too much to accomplish.  I set to weaving.  This shirt warp proved to be difficult the entire time.  I had to continually starch the warp as I wove.  I got into a routine of spraying the warp with starch, while I waited for it to dry just enough, I would knit, then when I hit the sweet spot of dampness, I would weave like a fiend until the warp got too dry. Spray. Knit. Weave. Repeat.  During the month of August, I wove 6 metres of shirt warp, knit a pair of stockings and a pair of 18^th century ladies mitts.  My other weaving projects I finished up in July, thank goodness.

My second angel was also a weaver who came into the studio one morning and sat with me for a good part of the day, talking about historical textiles and clothing.  She was on her was to the UK to take part in an experimental archaeology conference, meeting a friend who had just done what I was doing.  Her friend was recreating Norse textiles, a process far more difficult than what I was undertaking, but close.  This new weaver angle asked why I was working at the centre.  Did I not have a studio at home?  I told her that no, I did not have a loom of my own.  She told me that once she was back in Canada she would email me.  She had some things she’d like to discuss with me, one of which was a loom.

The Labour Day weekend there was an encampment at the Halifax Citadel.  I spent the entire weekend at the encampment, in historic dress, constructing historical clothing.  That weekend I got most of one shirt made.  I finished it up on the Tuesday at home, and Tuesday evening, with great hesitation, I put the shirt in the wash.  With so much starch, the shirt felt as if it were made of cardboard.  I had to mount my portion of the final exhibit on Wednesday for the opening on Thursday night.  I figured at that point, if the linen completely self-destructed in the wash, I’d have a fun story to tell during the opening.  The shirt survived the wash though, and the exhibit was a success.  It was the very first time any of my work had been placed in a gallery exhibit.  I was excited and happy with my work.

At this point, I realize that this has become a wordy post.  There are things that I needed to tell you though, so that the problems could be discussed fully.  I’ll start by telling you that at the beginning, I wove both dish towelling and dish cloths.  They were woven using the same warp, the same threading of the loom.  I changed the weave structure of the cloth by changing how I tied-up my pedals underneath the loom, and the steps I took to weave.  So if looking at the pattern of the weave, the top bar was the same for both types of cloth.  What changed was the top right hand corner, and the bar along the right hand side.  This made the difference between a waffle pattern for the dish cloths, and a bird’s eye twill for the towelling.  This project went perfectly from start to finish.  My chair strapping also went perfectly.  The tablecloth didn’t make it past winding the warp on the back of the loom because this is where things started to go wrong with my shirt warp.  In all, I had four looms on the go that summer.

And so the shirt warp.  Going back to problem #1, you may notice that the threads were drying out.  This was due to the fact that I was working in an air conditioned space.  A space where I could not turn the air conditioning off.  Air conditioning works by drawing the moisture out of the air.  It also drew the moisture out of my threads.  Problem #2, my having to constantly starch the thread lead to there being far too much starch on the thread.  This lead to the cardboard quality of the fabric, but also may have, most likely had, contributed to the looseness of the weave structure.  No matter how much I beat the weft threads into the course before, I could not get the fabric to weave tightly enough.  The resulting fabric has a characteristic of cheesecloth, only really heavy cheesecloth.  Reducing the size of the weft threads might help negate this issue. I am planning to try with the remainder of the shirt warp, once I get back to weaving again.

Problem #3 came from how I was taught to wind a warp on to the back beam of a loom.  I was taught to use paper between each course of winding, to separate the threads.  The studio used cardboard, which was waffled in the middle.  This waffling lead to the cardboard collapsing, which I had learned on another warp, and so with the shirt warp, I went back to paper.  Because the warp was so long, and so wide, the paper could not handle the task of keeping the threads neat and tidy.  My shirt warp slid off the edges of the paper.  Angel #1 told me that I should be using sticks to separate the warp.  That wood will not collapse, and will hold the threads properly.  The studio was full of sticks, as you use pairs of them to keep threads separate in the back of the heddle harnesses.

Angel #2 returned from the UK and did email me.  It turns out that she was a sheep farmer, and a weaver.  When she bought her current farm, she found an older model, colonial box loom from LeClerc.  She had several looms already, and would I like to have this loom?  My family and I drove up to her farm, spending the afternoon with her before bringing my loom home to Halifax.  While there I learned about the sheep she bred.  How those heritage breed sheep were black when they were young, and then as they got older, they turned white.  This would start me thinking about what I had learned about Norse clothing years before.  I also learned that she has waste warps on her looms, that run from the back beam through the heddles and reeds, and that she ties her warp threads to these waste threads to making threading much faster.  Since most of what she weaves is similar in threading, she just reused the waste threads over and over again.  Each loom had a different threading.

That winter, Ross Farm museum had a flax production day.  Garth and my family decided we needed to attend.  We learned about how flax is grown, harvested and processed into fibres and then spun into linen thread.  Garth and I both were able to spin for a bit, and I learned that I could get a far finer thread with my very limited background in spinning than I ever could buy. 

This trip also got me thinking about the ‘when’ of how fibres are processed, and how this may influence textile production.  When you really begin to think about the ‘when’ of things, it starts to make sense how the problems arose in my own production.  Linen is harvested in the Fall, it is then laid out to basically rot in the sun and the rain, separating the fibres from the reed it grew as.  These fibres are then spun in the early winter months, and fabric can be woven in the wettest period of our year in Nova Scotia, the late winter.  Sheep are sheared in the spring, and the fibres are spun then and weaving this fibre may happen in the late spring, when the weather begins to dry up, but it is still not hot.  Summer months are for sowing, caring for and harvesting crops.  There is usually not enough time in the day to be spinning or weaving cloth, but there may be time to sew clothing.  In fact, the summer months are my most favourite times to sew, as my hands stay nice and warm, making it easier to hold the needle.

The time of year, coupled with the problem of the air conditioning made for an uncomfortable summer of textile production for me.  I knew how to weave.  I knew how to reproduce the patterns from the historical text.  Until I encountered the issues that I had with the shirt warp though, I did not fully grasp all of the concepts of historical textile production.  The difference between the “knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’; skill and knowledge going their separate ways” (Kramer and Bredekamp, 2013, p. 26).  In the Siegert article, the author tells us that ‘cultural techniques always have to take account of what they exclude” (Siegert, 2013, p. 62).  There was a lot that was not taken into account with the historical text, the least of which was the assumption that I would have had a firm enough background in weaving to know that I should not be weaving in the hot or dry conditions.  I am now a firm believer in the importance of practice based research, in that I would not have fully understood the research I had undertaken to that point if I had not taken into consideration the daily practices of farming and producing textiles myself.  I will never again have air conditioning in my studio.  I will be mindful of the tasks I complete and the time of year.  In the future, I also hope to grow my own flax and produce my own threads to weave with, so that I may have a better understanding of how much clothing is ‘worth’.  That first shirt project was meant to study the production of cloth into shirt, and then how long that shirt would last through wearing.  I know now, that the shirt will not last as long as a more tightly woven cloth would.  The looseness of the weave structure is already producing stress points that will contribute to the wearing out of the shirt.  We will see if I can get a tighter weave structure out or future attempts with the remaining warp threads.  I hope so.

Works Cited

Bredekamp, S. K. (2013). Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques - Moving Beyond Text1. Theory Culture Society, 20-29.

Siegert, B. (2013). Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory. Theory, Culture and Society, 48-65.

Sterne, J. (2003). Bourdieu, Technique and Technology. Cultural Studies, 367-389.

Humanities Methodology class has me thinking

This post may become part of a probe for a class in the near future.  Probes are reading responses.

When I am feeling my worst about modern life, I often think how easy it would be to just be my 18thC persona for a couple of days.  Being in the 18thC is so easy for me, I take her clothes out of the crate and put them on.  I am tied to a constrained idea of fashion, and morals, even the foods we eat and how we go about our daily tasks are to a pretty strict guideline.  But even this society has changed over the years that I have been involved. 

As I begin this probe, I have just finished the readings on Actor-Network Theory and Controversy Cartography.
Law, John. "Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity." Lancaster: The Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University. 1999, revised 2003. http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sociology/research/publications/papers/law-notes-on-ant.pdf

Venturini, Tommaso. "Diving in Magma: How to Explore Controversies with Actor-Network Theory." Public Understanding of science 19.3 (2010): 258-273

They may be clouding my interpretation of the readings for the week that I am probing, but that 'spector' is there, leading me to these thoughts. They build on last week's readings on Infrastructure and more on Cartography.  Last week I was thinking about my studio space, and how it works and doesn't work in its current state, in this house.  This week, I am thinking about why I am studying the thing that I am studying (18thC clothing) and how it relates to my hobby as a historical animator.  And then how that hobby has changed through the technology and infrastructure of facebook and the network and actors involved in the larger hobby.

The readings for this probe are all about the media and how it relates to cultural studies.

Kramwer, Sybille, and Horst Bredekamp. "Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques - Moving Beyond Text." Theory, Culture and Society 30.6 (November 2013): 20-29

Siegert, Bernard. "Cultural Techniques: Of the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory." Theory, Culture and Society 30.6 (November 2013): 48-65

Sterne, Jonathan. "Bourdieu, Technique and Technology." Cultural Studies 17.3/4 (2003): 367-89

So, when I began in the hobby of reenacting, clothing of reenactors suffered greatly from the old-timey look made popular through TV shows like "Little House on the Prarie".  The men's military uniforms were fairly well researched and they made a strong attempt to get things right.  The civilian population though, wore what ever they liked, really.  There wasn't much concern for historical accuracy, they were just an add-on to the military show.  Things began to change though, as more and more researchers of historical clothing joined the hobby and wanted to get things right.  At the time though, the internet wasn't a widely known thing, and researchers were working in large part, in isolation.  When the email list serve became a thing, accuracy in civilian dress really took off, because our community became larger, encompassing more and more units and organizations across North America.

The Infrastructure of our hobby changed from small groups of folks figuring things out in their living rooms on Monday evenings, to having a continental conversation of like minded folks.  Without leaving my own living room, I met a community of people I may not have otherwise met.  We discussed things and inspired each other to push our standards of accuracy in dress, but also life.  Now, with facebook, there are any number of communities that one can join and become part of the conversation.

I make this point because our hobby has changed because of the media infrastructure.  Before, we would meet at the events held almost every weekend during the summer months.  Smaller groups may get together during the winter months on a regular basis.  Smaller numbers still, may travel to meet other reenactors in other places, to learn and share information.  Our hobby has changed because now, there is no real separation between modern life and our hobby life.  We are able to immerse ourselves in conversations about the 18thC all day, every day if we so choose.  We share research, photographs of events, ideas.  To me, the hobby has become more inclusive because of the technology.  I can stay abreast of new research even if I may not make it to a single event in the season.  My community is also much larger than I had ever dreamed it could be.

I find it interesting as a side note, that because of this media network, fashion trends emerge.  Yes, fashion trends...Not what you would expect from a hobby that is supposed to be historically accurate to the month and year.  You wouldn't think a modern idea such as the fashion trend would have an effect.  But it does.  When new research is published, either through social media or in paper form (relating to the week's readings) people rush to make copies for themselves.  Be it silk bonnets, or a newly found cut of gown, or whether a particular fabric was used, trends emerge in the fashions that you will see at events.  We have to be very mindful of how our research will be perceived by the population of our hobby.  What kind of name fame do we hold, and how will that effect how our research is transmitted, copied.  If we have found an anomaly in our research, will it become "fashionable" and give the wrong message to the public (that our anomaly was worn by everyone).

How has the technology and media we use effected the hobby we participate in?  For a hobby that allows us to live for even a short period of time "tech" free, the technology that we use in our daily lives has become inextricably intertwined.  It pushes our research, and builds our community.  And yes, creates fashion trends we sometimes don't expect, and may don't even want.

Ok, so this is a first draft of my thoughts on the readings so far...

Dans en Montreal?

Well, we made it, along with all of our stuff.  The last week has been unpacking boxes, finding homes for things and complaining about the lack of clues found in the typical packer...yeah, joyous bliss!

I have a loom room now, and there's a loom in it...albeit in pieces on the floor.  As the studio gets unpacked I will be donating fabrics I have no use for and getting things organized again.  It has been five years since I've actually had a studio of my own, so it's a little like Christmas, and a little bit of "why do I still own this?"

stay tuned!

a bit busy...

We were supposed to have been moved by now.  I was also supposed to spend the summer in Williamsburg with Jay Howlett making breeches.  Neither happened.  Our move date has been pushed to next week, the 29th of July.  So I have been keeping myself busy with other things.

First off, I made an 18thC pin ball.  My mum made the silver ring, and then I worked the embroidery.


blue flower on one side, pink on the other

 

Then I realized that Pierre would need a new waistcoat for Shelburne's founder's days, since all of his clothes are F&I period, not Revolutionary.  I had a piece of blue finely striped linen that would do the trick.  I ended up piecing the top shoulders as the length wasn't quite long enough.  I interlined the fronts with linen canvas as the fashion linen wasn't up for the challenge of being tailored, and then I lined the whole waistcoat with a thin green linen.  It took me two days of sewing, but I got it finished by Wednesday afternoon...now I'm wondering if there are any photos from the weekend that show him wearing it?

Thursday we headed to Shelburne Nova Scotia.  It was a great weekend, just what we needed.  It was warm enough for me and being right on the water, still cool enough for the rest of the gang.  We hosted a tavern night on Friday evening which was a famous success! We'll have to do more of that.  And now I am inspired to work on more projects.
The best part of the weekend for me personally, was learning that clothing that I made almost 20 years ago is still going strong, still being worn.  Some of those uniforms are now on their third owners.  This has encouraged me to start the business back up again.  So this winter, I suspect I will be sewing as well as studying.

For now, I'm off to see if I can find a photo of Pierre in his new waistcoat, if not, you'll have to wait to see the rest of the suit!