Since craft is such a big part of my life, I can’t resist trying to get it into the books I write. This means I sometimes have to learn a craft as research. Have to. Honestly.

In the one I’m writing now the character is a tapestry weaver, so I hied off to the Australian Tapestry Workshop with a friend for a guided tour. Which I have to admit, was a bit thin on the information side. The guide knew a bit about the history of the workshop, proudly telling us it was the only one like it in the southern hemisphere, but when I asked questions about the history of tapestry weaving or technical aspects of the looms and bobbins she looked scared and ran away.

Well, not completely away, she just kept to the other members of the tour, who seemed to either have an unquestioning tourist-like interest, or in the case of one, seemed to already know a heap about the subject. (I wasn’t quite bold or fast enough to sidle up to that one, unfortunately.)

Still, there were some useful tidbits. Watching the weavers work, three to a loom, it struck me that other kinds of weaving were solitary – one person warping or weaving at a time – whereas tapestry weaving had the potential to be social. Even so, the workshop was very quiet. No clacking of reeds or opening of sheds. (It looked like the looms had a mechanism for opening the shed, but with three people working together it was probably too difficult or slow to co-ordinate their weaving.)

I’ve also signed up to a mini tapestry weaving workshop in the Handweavers and Spinner Guild Summer School program, in January. Nothing like a bit of hands on research.