First, the short answers…

1. Do you teach fiber arts?

I’m just gearing up to do so, actually. Stay tuned to this blog for more information about that, or you can drop me an email!

2. Are you related to Ed Franquemont? Did he teach you to weave and spin and stuff?

Yes, Ed was my father. Did he teach me the fiber arts stuff that he used to teach in classes? Hrmmm, a trickier question. With respect to the Andean textile production stuff, we had many of the same teachers, only I was a child learning with the other kids, and he was a grownup who didn’t know how to do a lot of that stuff. There were things I learned and taught him (like fingerloop braiding, which the kids did but the grownups didn’t bother with), and vice versa (like English textile terminology, and how to run a workshop or class). And just like my father did, I learned tons and tons of things from my mother, Christine Franquemont, and from her mother and her aunts. My father and I engaged in a lifelong game of textile oneupmanship of sorts: “Aha, look, turns out knitting is fun!” vs. “So what do you know about the history of Irish crochet?” and “Look, I’m spinning novelty yarn, have you ever tried to do a real boucle?” vs. “Hey, do you know about devoré?” I’m told there’s no mistaking me for anyone but his daughter; sometimes I point out there could probably be no mistaking him for anyone but the man who’d have raised me. I’ll always miss him.

3. Is the widest part of the cop on that spindle really wider than the whorl?

Referring to this post. And yes, it is; when winding a cop on a low whorl spindle, I pretty much always wind one that is wider than the whorl; it’s a normal Andean spinning thing, and the challenges involved in doing that on a top whorl spindle is one of my dissatisfactions with the top whorl in general, so it’s something I’m trying to work around.

4. Do you have some links to traditional Andean weaving stuff?

I very much recommend checking out The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, about which I’ll really need to write a longer piece one of these days.