This Spotlights honors one of our members as part of our 75th Anniversary Celebration.
- by sandy mclain hochmuth
Gay, our co-president, thoughtful and warm, elegant and precise, certainly not sheepish, because… she grew up with sheep.
Her father, who emigrated as a child to the United States, was born in the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland, the islands home to the legendary breed of sheep called Shetland. So it was natural that he would collect a small flock of sheep to graze on their 10-acre “farmette” in west suburban Winfield. Gay, of course, loved every member of the flock. Each spring, she would name the newly born lambs, make each one a birth certificate to which she’d tape a carefully clipped bit of their fleece.
As a young adult, Gay taught herself to spin on the vintage wheel her grandmother brought from Shetland. Hand carding every bit of wool from the family flock, she came to understand how painfully laborious work it is to create yarn for knitting or weaving. She vividly remembers the year she worked and kept fleeces from six or seven sheep, convinced that the night before they were to be shorn, they very deliberately and evilly rolled in the mud, the mud gluing the pasture’s many twigs and leaves to decorate their coats!
As a child, looms fascinated her. A relative had a table loom that her husband had made from a kit, and she showed Gay the parts, how it worked, and let her pick up a shuttle. On vacation, the Andersons visited the Berea College weaving studios, where her father bought yardage and had the local tailor make a suit.
So it was that throughout her life she would think “someday I AM going to learn how to weave.” A year into serene (and somewhat quiet) retirement, walking the dog, she thought that “someday, I’m going to …” thought again. Stopped dead in her tracks, she said (scaring the dog), “TODAY IS THE DAY!” The rest is history — she located the Chicago Weaving School, registered, and started taking lessons the very next week.
In the glorious photograph Gay is seated, not next to, but rather, inside her 150-year-old, handmade, 4-harness, countermarch “barn loom,” most likely built by a farmer in northern Wisconsin. Her brother-in-law purchased it from a Wisconsin antique store about 25 years ago, fixed it up, and used it for a while (another intrepid male weaver!). When she started to learn to weave, she bought the loom from him. Gay IN her loom? Because she usually warps front to back, she climbs inside her loom to thread the heddles (and having seen her work at Show & Tell, obviously does this most successfully).
Gay joined the Illinois Prairie Weavers Guild in 2011 and has found it a wonderfully welcoming, supportive, and stimulating weaving community. She recognizes all too clearly that weaving is a solitary activity and how important it is to have these friendly connections. We thank you, Gay! We try!
Note: one time this writer won the Goodie Bag – and it had a skein of, yes, Shetland Wool, and a packet of Scotch Shortbread cookies!! Need I say more?
Illinois Prairie Weavers Guild 