Fiber at the Mission Espiritu Santo in Goliad

The back roads of Texas have a variety of rather picturesque things to share, so yesterday Jeff and I decided to find some of those things. Our eventual destination was Goliad, in particular one of the many Spanish missions from the 1700s in Texas. Mission Espiritu Santo was once a particularly large ranch in southern Texas that specialized in longhorn cattle. The “mission” part comes in where they used native workers for their economic activities and also taught them Christianity in exchange for basic food and housing.

A volunteer’s current weaving project. Onion skin yellow, madder root orange.

I’m not the person you want along on a historical tour. I, ah, have studied rather a lot of history and I, um, tend to correct the tour guides and make comments about the inaccuracy of displays. Hey, what can I say? The guy that worked at the mission was trying to tell some visitors that the “savages” were cannibals. Riiiight. Who hired that guy?

A yarn winder and baskets of pecans for dyeing yarn.

In any case, the yarn-loving religious history nut in me had a great day at the mission. Not only was it a beautiful day, but it turns out that there were some people there who really did know what they were talking about. Their specialty? Dyeing, spinning and weaving at the mission. Isn’t that completely awesome? They are volunteers, a husband and wife team of retirees who spend part of their year in Texas and give demonstrations to guests while they’re here.

One of the lovely volunteers and a standing spindle & carding tools.

I learned about four different spinning techniques, 4 types of looms and a bunch of dyeing stuff. I have never dyed, spun or woven before, it seems very complicated and difficult so I’ve not tried. But I’ve wanted to. Of course you can imagine I might be interested in such things given my other interests.

Two harness loom - two sets of heddles - with a WIP. The volunteers made all the blankets hanging on it, too.

In fact, I’m particularly interested in natural dyes. I’ve long been interested in herbology and stuff, and so this was just awesome. Pecans for brown, indigo for blue (you know you have to use acid to get blue out?), madder root and cochineal beetle for red, onion skin and flowers for yellow … oh so fascinating! I can just see myself at the farmer’s market looking for new dye possibilities. Sorry, Jeff, I think this is next. I apologize about your kitchen in advance.

Natural kettle- dyed skeins of hand-spun wool.

I was also fascinated by the spinning and weaving. I’ve always wondered how such machines and tools work. I can’t say I’ve ever looked at a loom up close before, or had the opportunity. I knew you can sorta throw your shuttle back and forth, but given that you have to, you know, weave, I didn’t see how throwing of any sort was possible. Now I see! They they told me all about warp and heddles and creating sheds.

Two sets of heddles on the loom and the striped warp threads.

I love how clever people can be. Who thought of this weaving loom thing, anyway? I’m still in awe of however it is my sewing machine does what it does. Now I want a loom so I can inspect and try things out. This is just great. I’m told that doing the warp and the heddle process is fairly dull - I can see that. But it’s still really cool.

Foot pedals on the floor loom and a backstrap loom.

It was an incredibly interesting trip overall. It’s the sort of thing where I remember why I went into history in the first place. This isn’t by any means recent technology, no matter how new it is to me. Thinking about these people around 1775 shaving sheep, picking cotton, picking seeds out of cotton, carding the wool and cotton, spinning the fibers into thread and then weaving fabric - and it had to be done for the entire local population. It’s just fascinating. It was such a big process to do it, such a lot of work for so many to clothe everybody and provide blankets and things for the church. How long would it take, how much effort, just for a pair of pants or a shirt?

Anyway, I am still excited. Back later with pictures of the actual mission. I have a cute sheep or two to share as well (Jeff and I did some impromptu herding).