On Gleaning

Originally published on Patreon, October 19th, 2021

 

Jean-François Millet | The Gleaners Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Glean to gather material bit by bit.

I learned the word "glean" from my high school biology teacher- who taught us to apply it to cornfields post harvest, and to roadsides ditches as a source of protein and leather. Gleaning was a passion also shared by my Oma, a woman who could spot worthwhile roadkill and wild asparagus at 60mph just as well as she could a good deal at TJmaxx. She seemed to know the church sale schedule of all neighboring counties the way old fishermen know the tides- in her bones. My Oma loved to GET THINGS and she was creative in her ways. As often as she was at a thrift store, she was also helping friends clean out their closets, trading housework for weaving seconds, and pulling over at every faded dirt-roadside sign: pottery, baskets, yarn... quilts. She passed her skills on to me not as a hobby but as a way to live well and be surrounded by beautiful and useful things on (sometimes literally) a dime. So I learned to cast a gleaner's eye on the world. And I quickly learned to talk about it. 

This, I think, is the most powerful secret of gleaning textiles and sewing supplies: tell people what you do and what you are looking for. I can't count how many times I have told someone that I am a quilter and been met with a look of zero recognition- only to get a phone call months later that their grandma is getting rid of her quilting supplies, would I like them? There is something about the stuff of textile work- sewing machines, boxes of pins, etc.- that folks want to save and protect and pass on to be used. I think perhaps it is some deep internal (ancestral, cultural) knowledge we all have about the necessity of textiles, about the underground nature of their importance to our survival, but also our identity. Or maybe it's sentimental- an acknowledgement of the care that is inherent in textile work. Whatever it is, folks are often just relieved to have someone to give it to.

This form of community gleaning if you will, is not without work. Luckily I am overjoyed at the task of sanding rust off of old straight pins, rewinding spools of thread and untangling safety pins. Recently, as I washed brass tarnish off of glass beads found in a saran wrap-ed peanut butter jar lid vessel, I remembered my Oma at the laundry room sink doing some bit of similar work. I suppose I come from a long line of bead washers :) I love to gently soak a stain and I am into the way sun-bleaching and fading can enhance a fabric's interest. Maybe it is my Virgo habits coming out, but I yearn to process chaos into order and then distribute the bits I won't use into the hands of folks who will. In order to do that I've built up a solid community of likeminded folks near and far, so I always have someone to call when, for example, I am suddenly rich in poly-fill or newly in possession of an embroidery hoop. These same folks hit me up when they are parting with a nice garment or paring down their yarn stash. 

Grace Rother