Meeting 15: Vine to Cloth

"Invasive plants – earth’s way of insisting we notice her medicines"

—Stephen Harrod Buhner

Thanks to those who gathered from near and far we hosted our 3rd annual Vine to Cloth kudzu camp with Kudzu Culture. We harvested fresh growth together along the roadway and then discussed retting times (around 10 days) and coiled our freshly harvested fiber. We rinsed fiber that was already retted for camp and then carded and spun some as well as weaving on our tapestry looms and our 8 harness table loom. We will continue to weave kudzu cloth on this loom until the warp is done. There should be enough to make a kudzu shirt with this year’s fiber!

Two participants, Kenny + Jasper, knit up a kudzu sample. This bast fiber does not have much stretch, but the small sample inspires us to continue knitting and crocheting with spun kudzu fiber.

We opened and closed camp with ancient Chinese poems about kudzu. We discussed how our relationship as human’s with this creeping vine has not changed much over these 3,000 years. The title characters were created using a kudzu fiber brush.

See you in the weeds,

x Nica