Monday, October 23, 2023

Crackle Weave: Resources

Before I get any further into this series, I thought it would be good to list resources. This will serve as both a bibliography, as well as a centralized location for online resources I've found. It's a work in progress, and I will add to it as I find more. If you know of any good ones on crackle that I don't mention here, I'd appreciate your pointing me to them in the comments.

Books

I think I now have most of the recommended books on the subject. Except for one, the older sources are about weaving in general, but have a good chapter or section on crackle. Three (one old and two new) are specifically about crackle. Those are:

Books with chapters or sections on crackle:
  • Designing and Drafting for Handweavers by Berta Frey (1958) chapter 10, "Crackle Weave"
  • The Key to Weaving by Mary E. Black (1945) chapter 8, "Crackle Weave or Jämtlandsväv"
  • A Handweaver's Pattern Book by Marguerite Porter Davison (1944) chapter XXI, "Crackle Weave"
  • The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon (2007) "Block Drafts. Crackle" 
  • The Shuttle-Craft Book of American Hand-Weaving by Mary Meigs Atwater (*1951 revised edition), "Chapter 12, "Additional Four-Harness Weaves: The Crackle Weave"
  • The Weaver's Book by Harriet Tidball (1961) "The Twill Derivative Class: The Crackle System"
Notes on books
  • *I have two editions of the Shuttle-Craft book: one of the original 1928 edition and also the revised 1951 edition. Crackle was added when the book was revised; it isn't mention in the original edition. A more detailed comparison of these two here.
  • Most of the old books are out of print. Some are easy to find used, others not.
  • Davison's A Handweaver's Pattern Book has been republished and you can find it here.
  • The Key to Weaving by Mary Black was revised in 1957 as The New Key to Weaving. I don't have access to that edition so I don't know if the section on crackle has been revised.
  • I'd like to do some book reviews on these in the future.

Periodicals

Shuttle-Craft Guild Bulletins starting in 1928 through the 1930s and 1940s (and beyond) have carried articles about crackle. These are available for PDF download from the On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics. I'll make a list of the issues as I identify them.

YouTube Videos

  • The Core of Crackle by Chris at Action Creative is an excellent introduction to the basics. It's geared towards new weavers, so she explains a lot of the weaving terminology too.
To answer my traditional versus classic crackle question, the welfordWEAVES series by Rachel Smith have been very helpful. It's more technical, and she takes awhile to get to the point, but she does a good job of explaining the differences between the two.

Online Articles, Blogs, and Webpages

Of these, the most helpful have been blogs and websites by weavers who are actually exploring this structure. The least helpful are sales sites focused on selling rather than teaching.
  • Talking About Weaving by Peg in South Carolina. That links to all the posts on her blog under the label "crackle." There are dozens of them, and I have yet to read and categorize all of them. She made a serious study of crackle and has lots of interesting ideas and experiments. Sadly, she hasn't blogged in a number of years.
  • Block Substitution by Kerstin Fröberg at Bergdala Spinnhus website. Kerstin is Swedish but the article is in English. Explores the American evolution of Crackle. 
  • The A,B,C's and 1,2,3's of Classic Crackle by Susan at Thrums blog. I need to note that "classic crackle" described here as a two-shuttle weave, whereas, I'm defining it as discussed in the second section of this blog post ("Traditional Crackle versus Classic Crackle")
  • Crackle Weave. A PDF at the University of Arizona.
  • Crackle Weave at gathertextiles.com

So, that's it at the moment. Suggestions welcome.


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