#weavingtoday

Arcade Mall, Bridgeport, CT October 2018

Many of us who are more artistic or literarily-inclined than we are mathematical or scientific sometimes get down on ourselves. If you ever feel this way, remind yourself that weaving history got us to the moon. “Wait,” you might be thinking, “back up here. To the moon?” Yes. To the moon. Specifically, little old ladies weaving got us to the moon. The Apollo missions were equipped with the smallest, most sophisticated guidance computers available at the time, but there was a problem with the software needed to run them, especially when the ship would be on the other side of the moon from Earth. The programs were initially written the same way most computer programs in those days were coded: magnetic tapes read by disc drives that were far too large to send into space. Code could also be written on paper punch cards that had to be read by machines, again far too large to go into space. Both options were also too delicate to take the punishment of launch, temperature changes, and cosmic radiation that they’d experience throughout the voyage. Whatever solution they came to would even need to be able to survive power losses without losing the program!...

Weaving at Harrison

Fun times weaving with our neighbors at my Bridgeport studio.