A Practical Guide To Weaving

Johan finished his diagram of the loom and inspected it with a critical eye. It was... mostly correct. He had never been much of an artist, but all the important bits were there, the lines were straight (or mostly straight, anyway), and the operation of the thing was clear. As clear as it could be, from a sketch. He had drawn multiple angles of the loom and labelled all of the components that seemed important, although most were labelled things like "peddle" and "bundle of yarn." The only bit that he had an actual name for was the shuttle, and only because he had overheard the weaver ask one of her apprentices to fetch one. He could have just asked what all the different parts of the loom were called, but he was trying to stay out of everyone's way, as best he could.

Wizards were rarely interested in such mundane work, but Johan felt that was a mistake on their part, rather than an issue with the work itself. Magical experts were often inventive, but unfortunately, they were experts on magic. There were entire treasuries full of staffs that could summon fire, artifacts that could empower spells, or robes that kept one warm in the winter. All things that wizards, at one point or another, had created in order to make their lives easier. But there was a notable lack of magical looms. Johan suspected that it was partially due to the perception that weaving (or milling, or blacksmithing, or really any craft aside from magic and warfare) was low-class.

On top of that perception, it was just harder. To make a magical loom, one had to know how looms worked. This wasn't an insurmountable difficulty. Johan had spent barely half a day sitting at the weavers shop, and he already had a good idea of their function. Although... there were likely nuances to the craft that he still wasn't aware of. He absentmindedly underlined a note that read "No Assumptions" as he thought.

A magical sword, on the other hand? Trivial. Anyone could look at a sword and understand how it worked immediately. There was a handle on one end, a sharp edge, and a point on the other. No moving parts, and rarely more than two or three different materials. A skilled wizard could enchant them to be stay sharper, to resist wear, or even glow.

Although, now that Johan had visited a smithy, he thought there was likely more to creating a good sword than simply casting a spell to make it tougher. There was gradient of hardness through a blade- the edge needed to be hard in order to remain sharp, while the spine of the blade needed to be more flexible. He might be able to use manipulative magic to adjust whatever structure was in the metal so that the blade... hmm. He shuffled his papers, looking for his notes from the blacksmith.

"Show me some magic?" A high voice spoke at his elbow.

Johan jumped wildly, almost losing control of his papers, and whipped his head around toward the voice. It was a little boy, perhaps no more than four or five years old. The boy was blonde, skinny, and had dirt staining his face and knees of his britches. Despite the recent evidence that he had been playing in the dirt beside the shop, he looked very serious. Johan saw the weaver's eyes widen from the corner of his eye, and she stopped working, holding the shuttle poised in one hand. He kept his gaze on the boy.

Wizards had a fearsome reputation, although it was (in Johan's opinion) generally unearned. For the most part, they were fixated on various esoteric questions about magic, rather than on quests and battle. He had been in Dotton for a little over two weeks, and in all that time, no one had spoken to him except to respond to his questions. He straightened his papers and cleared his throat.

"What sort of magic would you like to see...?" He asked curiously.

"Blow something up."

"That's not... advisable. Everything here belongs to someone." Johan wasn't overly comfortable with children, but he remembered how his father had spoken to him as a child. Which was, now that he thought about it, almost exactly in the same way his father had spoken to everyone. Directly, clearly, and with endless patience for ignorance.

"Enchant my tunic!" The boy responded, holding out the dirty cloth and looking down at it, then back to Johan.

"Er..." Johan cut his eyes sideways at the weaver for help, but she was now pretending to examine some thread. He sighed.

"Very well."

He laid one finger on the hem and reached into the well of magic inside his mind. It was like... he had seen a painting once, of a small, tentacled sea creature. It was said to be able to change the color of it's skin and squeeze through absurdly small spaces. That was what he imagined his magic was like- a slim tentacle that could change color, shape, and length at will. He sent the tendril of magic into the cloth, tracing the threads and colors through the fabric. He made a few careful snips here and there, then began pulling the thread into a new configuration and splicing the cut ends back together. After a few false starts, he had the pattern in his mind, and the rest of the hem rearranged itself within a second or two. The edge of the boy's tunic became an elaborate pattern of square knots that Johan had once seen on a dress in Ardglas.

Each iteration of the pattern spiraled around itself, before doubling back enough to reach the starting point of the next, and small threads (mostly hidden on the underside of the fabric) hooked the corners of the spirals outward to force them into a square shape. There were no actual knots in the design, due to the limitations that he was working under, but it was prominent enough to be noticeable.

He dislodged the dirt from the fabric, pushing it out to the surface and then allowing it to fall to the ground, before drawing his magic back into himself. He had lost roughly a fiftieth of his well in the operation (generating a few threads to replace those that were frayed), which was more than he would have liked. His magical abilities placed him at the extreme lower end of what was considered acceptable for a wizard, so much so that there had been some debate over his entrance to the university. It was a painful thought, but an old one, and he dismissed it easily. He had compensated for his relative weakness by becoming very good at manipulative magic.

He inspected the hem closely, satisfied with his work. For a half remembered pattern, and on a task that he hadn't attempted in years, a fiftieth of his well was fairly cheap.

When he looked up, the weaver was standing in front of him with a conflicted look on her face. Johan released the tunic as the boy exclaimed over it, leaning back and clearing his throat uncomfortably. She knelt down and inspected the hem herself, keeping a wary eye on Johan as she did so.

After a moment, she looked back up and smiled politely.

"Very pretty. How long will it last?" She asked.

"Well... it's permanent. It's not going to disappear tomorrow, or anything." Johan responded awkwardly. "I just rearranged the thread."

Many of the stories of wizards confused them with fairies and told of enchanted items or summoned gold disappearing at dawn. It was a common misconception. He considered explaining that wizards didn't do that sort of thing (well, they mostly didn't do that sort of thing), but thought better of it. Weirdly, the weaver reminded him of his mother, despite the two women looking nothing alike. Where his mother was a small, delicate woman, the weaver was almost as tall as he was, and broad through the shoulders. They had a similar polite confidence to them.

She nodded and fingered the hem again before letting it drop. The boy immediately ran away down the street, shouting for someone named "Mac" to come see his tunic.

"Well, it's not really permanent, then, but it's very nice. You'll have to fight the boys off with a stick now. They'll all be wanting little things like that." She stood with her hands on her hips, staring after the screaming child.

"I'm Maeve." She said, looking back at him with a slow grin and extending her hand.

"Johan." He shook her hand shortly and stood up, collecting his papers. He wasn't sure if he was leaving or not, but it seemed impolite to sit as she stood over him. She waited for him to gather his things, and then walked back toward where she had been working.

"What... uh, what do you mean? When you said 'it's not permanent'?" He asked, trailing after her as she returned to the loom. She sat down before she replied, busying herself by straightening out the thread and rolling the excess up. After a brief silence, she finally sighed quietly, and handed him a scrap of cloth with a resigned air.

"Here. Do it again." She said.

Somewhat bemused, he laid his finger on the cloth and quickly rewove the threads into the same pattern. She turned it carefully, looking at the front and back before gesturing at him to lean in. She showed him the bottom of the fabric and ran her finger along the threads that pulled the square knots into shape.

"This? You've got threads hooked through the corners, holding the pattern in shape, but it's only a few threads, here... and here. These will wear and break, eventually, 'cause the clothing rubs against the legs and belt and so on. When it does, the pattern won't be square anymore. It will be more of a... lumpy, round... thing." She turned the edge of the rag over, smoothing the pattern with two thumbs.

"Once the shape fails, these threads in the middle will be loose, and they'll sag and make gaps in the fabric, see?" She flexed the material, giving the edge some slack, and Johan saw small openings. "You've, I think, rearranged the threads in the cloth, and picked out the stitching that ran along the edge of his tunic. These threads aren't running straight anymore, they're hooked around in different directions to make the spiral. Once the threads in the back fail, the edge will fray very quickly."

She released the tension on the cloth, and it relaxed back into the square pattern that Johan had made. He stood silently, frustrated at himself. He should have realized that the hem was intended to keep the edge of the cloth from fraying, but it hadn't occurred to him. She was right, though, he saw immediately. She would have to repair the tunic or at least restitch the pattern in a matter of weeks, likely.

Johan's mother still wore a dress with a very similar scrollwork pattern that he had created for her as a student. She joked that it was "thematically appropriate" for her job as a bookkeeper. His face flushed as he wondered how much time she had spent, painstakingly picking apart that pattern and then restitching it, to make it last.

"It's very pretty though." Maeve said soothingly, patting his arm.