The Penelope Project: Weaving Rizz

Remember our original idea to weave large sunshades for our school - it was going to be the finale for the Penelope Project? (It's ok if you don't.) Welp, it didn't work out as I thought it would. It worked out BETTER!

Just as we got to the phase of the project where I had to organize getting giant frame looms constructed to serve as the base for our shades, the school district decided that our school needed a large, black, industrial chain link metal fence surrounding it. The students immediately started to complain that they were being "imprisoned." Although I knew that the fence was actually about keeping them safe (we had a very open campus before), I thought they had a point. The fence was not particularly "aesthetic" (as the kids like to say), no cap. 

Then, as we were eating lunch one day outside near this fence, Athena struck me with an idea. Why didn't we just weave designs on the fence?! When I shared this idea with my students, we all agreed it would be a great idea to "rizz" it up. (I can't wait for my students to read this paragraph and melt to the floor in puddles of outrage that an adult is using already out-dated youth lingo. LOL)

So we started investigating materials that we could use for outside installations. I had originally settled on something like paracord, but the more I read about it disintegrating in sunlight due to it being plastic, I knew we had to find something else. When I looked up macrame yarn, I stumbled upon recycled t-shirt yarn. They take old t-shirts and slice them up to create yarn. Knowing that we would be spending many hours with this material running all over our hands, I wanted it to be comfortable so I ordered some to play around with. The kids and I both agreed that the t-shirt yarn was AMAZING. Bonus - it came in all kinds of pretty colors.

The next step was for the kids to design a pattern that we could easily transfer to the fence. They all turned in designs, and then we voted on the ones we liked best. We wanted the colors to match a mural that the art students installed years ago to beautify the front of the school. We also settled on an exact location: the main gate entrance to the school. Our weaving art would welcome visitors and students to the school.

We began weaving in late March. It was slow-going work but fun. The students got to work in small groups to weave the fence. They enjoyed chatting with each other as they worked side by side.

Because my classes are so large (3 sections of almost 30 each), not all the students could weave the fence at the same time. I had to devise small group station activities for students to work on while some wove the fence. Here are the stations we worked in every day: 1. fence weaving, 2. online reading program mandated by the school, 3. personal weaving on small frame looms, and 4. interpersonal skills (UNO or another card game in which they actually have to chat with each other and not interact with screens.) Thus, every student in every class got to weave the fence for at least 15 minutes per day. Some kids were better at it than others. Some were super fast and focused; others needed a lot of help. Weaving right alongside each other allowed that extra support for students who needed it.

Another cool aspect of the project was the opportunity to go outside for class. Anticipating seating issues with such a plan, I wrote the grant to cover outdoor seating. Every day when we go outside, we pick up our plastic lawn chairs and take them with us to the fence weaving space. Students who are working on their reading program on Chromebooks can comfortably sit while they do so.

As we wove, we got lots of questions and comments about our project. "Why are y'all doing this? Wow, that's pretty! That looks so nice - thanks for beautifying the fence." Kids who walk by it nearly always ask why they can't be in this class. (Hint: they CAN; they just didn't sign up for it.)

Now that we are nearly done with our fence weaving project, we have received so many compliments. It's really beautiful, and the students and teachers love it. Just recently, parents were discussing the newly installed fences on a social media app. One parent pointed out how we had beautified our fence and "made it so welcoming." We have achieved our purpose!

Advice to all teachers with "big ideas" - be flexible. Sometimes, things don't work out the way you want them to, but that doesn't mean they're not still awesome. Look around you - is there something that needs fixing? Something that could be better with just a little extra effort? Learning to notice those opportunities is a great skill to work on. 

Another bit of advice. Sometimes, projects take a REALLY long time so be patient. One day, my principal walked by as we were working on the fence, and she asked me, "So...when is this gonna be done?" I jokingly told her that we'd be finished at 2:25 PM on Wednesday, May 22. (That's the last minute of this school year. LOL) And may Athena help us, it seems as though that may actually be true. We've also had to take time off from class to celebrate the end-of-the-year achievements that happened because of this class - lots of silver and gold medals on the Pegagus National Mythology Exam!

We got so good at our work that the kids decided we needed to weave another section of the fence so that the gate is completely framed by the colorful panels. And our grant (from ADF) paid for plenty of yarn if we need more. See the bottom right corner of this picture? I'm regretting the use of that dark green and really want to redo it. Every perfectionist fiber in my body wants to. But, I'm going to try to live with it and let this project go.

As we finish out the school year with this project, it's good to know that we helped our school in some small way. My students learned to weave, they reflected on how long that process took in ancient times and in modern times too, and most importantly, they learned alongside each other. 

The Penelope Project: The Setup for the Setup

Believe it or not, the first thing you do to set up a warp-weighted loom is to weave the border of the cloth. The border anchors the warp threads (the vertical structure of the cloth), and the ancient Romans used tablet (or card) weaving to achieve this border. If you've never heard of tablet weaving, I highly recommend this weaver's explanatory video, "the Mechanics of Tablet Weaving." She uses popsicle sticks to demonstrate how to determine the pattern! (Bonus points for the name of her YouTube channel: Impending Looms. Seriously, watch this video before you read on.)

Years ago when I started teaching Roman Technology, I had seen tablet weaving done by a friend of mine who wove tiny belts for a costume she researched and created for her historical character in the Society for Creative Anachronism. She demonstrated the process on an inkle, a small loom used specifically for tablet weaving. I'll be honest - it looked complicated, and I was worried. I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I really needed to weave a border, but I promised that I would try the WHOLE process. And once again, I turned to my heritage education queen, Sally Pointer, for a simple tutorial on tablet weaving. I used cardboard tablets bought for cheap on Amazon, and they worked fine. However, after I got them going, I was sorry I didn't buy the pretty wooden ones because tablet weaving was actually pretty simple and something I want to do more of.

I wanted to be true to the Romans so I went searching for more info on Roman tablet weaving. Strong and Brown's marvelous book, Roman Crafts, has a whole chapter on Roman textiles that mentions tablets weaving with pictures of bone tablets (below). Amazing to me how some tools never change even after thousands of years. Above are some triangular tablets made of bone from the Roman occupation in the British Museum. 

The square tablet in this picture looks almost exactly like the ones I used on our classroom loom.

Here are the tablets I set up to weave our border and anchor our warp yarns (ignore the paper bags of hand-held looms for my students in the background):

Here's a closeup:

Just a simple quarter turn on the tablets and a pass-through with the dark thread wound around that white bobbin to the left, and the pattern begins to emerge. 

I chose a simple herringbone pattern that I learned from Sally Pointer's video.

Ignore that big white thread that I'm moving out of the way to show the pattern. That's where I messed up! Not bad for the first time, right?

Now that I had an anchor for my warp threads, I started adding them in as I tablet-wove the border.

In this picture, you can see the tablet-woven border attached to the top of the loom and the warp threads wrapped around the bottom of the loom.

Side note: Around this time in the blog, you might be asking yourself, "Why does Nathalie have a small swimming pool and a cat litter container in her classroom?" And I would say...mind ya business. (We need them for cardboard Argo races and storage for catapult baskets. You should know this. LOL)

When I showed my progress and process to my students, they were aghast at the complexity of the tablet method. "How did the Romans figure this out?" they asked. But as with anything craft related, generations of weavers surely passed down their knowledge to their apprentices and children. The knowledge was embedded in the computers of the time - craftpeople's brains. This type of knowledge transfer didn't need books; thus, we have little to no ancient sources explaining how weaving happened.

I was surprised how long all of this process took. Factoring in watching Sally's videos (numerous times) and actually doing the weaving, I would say this setup took about 4 hours. I'm a newbie to this process so I'm sure it took longer than it would have for an experienced weaver. Ok, so I'm now ready to weave, right? Wrong. Miles to go before I weave...stay tuned.

The Penelope Project: The Loom

How many times have I said this, teacher friends? Ask, and you shall receive. On my school's open house night in August last year, I asked for help with our #RomanRoadProject, and the DOTD research director came calling! This past year, I asked for help with woodworking so that my students could weave on an ancient Roman/Greek warp-weighted loom. A parent reached out to me the very next day volunteering her father, Clark, who, despite his full-time job, loves spending spare time in his wood shop making all kinds of things.

Before I could even say yes, Clark was emailing me also, asking what I needed and not to worry about cost. He wanted his grandson and all my other students to have a wonderful experience. He just needed some direction on how to make the loom we needed. Ancient vase painters depicted looms like the one we needed, but these images were not exactly a blue-print for building a loom.

Lucky for me, I knew exactly where to send Clark for help. Sally Pointer is a British heritage educator with a helpful YouTube channel on everything from ancient Roman cosmetics to Iron Age textiles. She has a whole series of tutorial videos on making, setting up, warping, and weaving on a warp-weighted loom. I used her design with a slight variation - I wanted a wider-than-normal loom so that multiple students could work on the same loom at the same time. One of the reasons I teach weaving on small, hand-held looms is that I want EVERY child to design and weave on their own - just watching is never an option in my classroom.

Over multiple phone calls and emails, Clark finally had a design that met my specifications, and he started building. I didn't hear from him for a while and got worried, but then out of the blue, he let me know the loom was done and wanted me to come pick it up at his workshop in Covington, LA. Did I find it a marvelous stroke of synchronicity that he lived nearly a mile from a Girl Scout camp that my troop frequented every fall and spring? Nope. Just a sign from Athena, goddess of household skills like weaving.

In November, I traveled out to Clark's workshop to pick up our classroom loom. Our woodworking voluteer had it set up for me when I arrived to picked it up. I almost cried when I saw it. Not only was it super wide and a little shorter (for my middle school students), but it had adjustable heddle rods. AND...it could be taken apart for easy transport and storage. I thanked him profusely and promised to send pictures of our weaving process and product...but that would not happen as soon as I thought it would.

Thanks a million to our woodworking expert, Clark Gristina. His patience, research, and expertise were unmatched - our Myth Makers appreciate his volunteering so greatly!

The Penelope Project: The Healing Aspects of Weaving

I look forward to this day every year! The day I get to teach my students how to weave!! We start by hearing the stories of Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare. Most students don't know that she was also the patron goddess of craftspeople, especially weavers and potters. They almost all know that she and Arachne compete in a weaving contest, but most forget that Arachne wins and gets punished for her hubris. They all know that spiders are called ARACHNIDS, but few know that ticks and scorpions are too. Beyond this famous story, we also explore the Parthenon and the hotly debated controversy surrounding its marbles. They love hearing about the Parcae (or Moirai), the three fates who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life for each person. Perhaps their favorite story though is about Penelope, the long-suffering wife of Odysseus...how, in her husband's 20-year absence, she fended off the suitors with a weaving trick.

For many years, I used to cut to size cardboard for my students to make their own looms. It was a fun process, but VERY hard on my hands. This year, with a sizeable grant, I purchased small, notched wooden looms that can be reused from year to year. But I'm already debating the wisdom of that decision. When the students made their own looms, they took them home when the lessons were done, and some of them, amazingly, continued to weave on their own.

A couple of years ago, I had a student who had experienced significant trauma throughout his young life. He was in a homeroom class that I taught, or mentored really, of students who needed extra support due to various traumatic experiences. Some had incarcerated parents, others had witnessed gun violence against their parents. Some just needed extra love and support - I painted nails, helped with edges, washed clothes, handed out snacks, and did a lot of listening. M also took my Myth Makers class that year and really excelled. He took to weaving, making his own cardboard loom at home in addition to the one he had made in class. Other teachers reached out to me to ask if it was ok for him to weave in their classes; it calmed him and focused him, they said. The worst day of that year was having to watch M being loaded into an ambulance at school. For the second time during that year, he was institutionalized. I thought I would never see him again. Months later, I cried tears of joy when he showed up to my homeroom one morning to return to school.

Fast forward to this past fall when I got a request from another teacher to share my phone number with M. He had news to share. Having moved on to high school, he wanted to tell me THANK YOU for teaching him to weave. He still makes his own looms and brings them with him to school and work. He is interning at a local hospital.

His experience with weaving is not unusual. Many students speak to the calming aspects of the weaving process. Since it's repetitive and relatively easy once you get going, the students chat with each other while they work. They weave small pieces of cloth from donated yarn, using large plastic needles as shuttles. Do some get frustrated and want to quit? Absolutely. Do they weave masterpieces of art? Of course not. But they certainly learn patience and have fun doing it.

When we finish the unit, I try to get the students to reflect on the experience of Penelope. Did she use weaving to escape the dark thoughts of her husband not returning? Did she use weaving to escape the notice of the evil suitors who wanted her wealth and power? Penelope used a job often (not always) relegated to ancient women to retain her power. The students love this aspect of the story.

Want to teach your students to weave? Use my lessons (linked here) with instructional videos by ME!

We'll soon be taking this project to the next level with a full-size warp-weighted loom so stay tuned...

The Penelope Project: Fun-ded!!

"You win some, you lose some." That's what I told myself at the beginning of this school year. I was bummed because I hadn't yet heard about a grant I'd written way back in May. The grant instructions said we'd know by July, and in mid-August, still nothing.

The grant was going to fund The Penelope Project, an experimental archaeology lesson plan to build large-scale warp-weighted looms for the students to weave on. This community weaving project would create woven sunshades for our campus that any students could contribute to. In addition to the looms, the grant was written to include outdoor furniture so that the students could sit outside, read, weave, and enjoy the cooler weather of fall and winter. 

As I checked the status of the grant online and found nothing, I was beginning to put aside my dream for this year. There's always next year, I told myself. Even though we weren't funded, we can still have FUN.

But then something unexpected happened. During my school's parent night, I set up stations in my classroom for parents to visit. One of them was about the Penelope Project and specifically asked for woodworking skills to help build the looms we need. A full week later, I got an email from a parent volunteering her father. When I emailed her back with specifics, I then got a very long, detailed email with specifications and research from the woodworker himself! He thought he could figure out how to build an ancient Roman/Greek warp-weighted loom, and he was ready to go. He even offered to build us a more permanent loom meant to stay in my classroom for future lessons on weaving in my Roman Technology class.

The very next day on Friday afternoon, before I'd had a chance to return his email, I went to the copy room to prepare some paperwork for Monday. When I looked up at my mailbox (yes, we still have physical mailboxes), I spotted a letter in it. When I opened it, I was shocked to find a letter stating that the Penelope Project had been funded. We got the grant after all! Enclosed was a check in the amount of $2025.00. Thanks to Baton Rouge's Academic Distinction Fund for their generosity.

As we prepare for this project, I can't wait to dig more into the ancient technology of weaving. Years ago, when I wanted my students to learn this ancient skill, I taught myself with YouTube videos on small hand-made cardboard looms and even took a class from a modern weaving artist. It's become one of my favorite little side hobbies. But modern loom weaving is very different from large-scale fabric production weaving. I'll be looking for resources from the experts out there. Can YOU help? It's gonna be FUN!

Myth Makers - The Penelope Project

Next school year, I'll be taking a break from teaching Roman Technology to teach Myth Makers, my STEAM class based on classical mythology. (You can watch a presentation about this class here.) One of my favorite lessons to teach is weaving, in conjunction with the stories about Athena, the Greek goddess of household craft. Students consistently cite this lesson as one of their favorites. Each student creates their own hand-held loom out of cardboard and weaves a small piece of cloth. Why not take it to the next level?!

I'm spending my last day of school writing a grant to make large, ancient-style warp-weighted looms. The Penelope Project is a collaborative project that will have students build 8-foot-high looms to weave on in outdoor classrooms. While a couple of students weave, the rest of us can enjoy listening to mythological stories while we sit outside, basking in the sunshine. The looms will eventually be broken down and moved to our new school whenever it gets built.

You can read more about the project here.

And if you need free weaving lessons for your classics students, go here.