Lovely video of making a feather blanket

[Toddy]

This lady is an archaeologist who specialised in traditional technologies of the SW Americas.
The video shows her making a turkey feather blanket, and the yucca cordage that binds it all together.

It's pouring here, sodden wet, and I have a bucket load of willow bark sitting retting outside the kitchen door...guess who's itching to play

M

 

[Woody girl]

That's an amazing lot of work. I have a real love of Native American crafts and have owned a woven rabbit skin blanket before now. It got very moth eaten and smelly after many years and sadly had to go.
I still have my deerskin dress though.
(I do wonder if I can still fit into it )

 

[Toddy]

Hand crafts like this are a lot of work though. Folks totally underestimate the sheer effort involved in just making sure that folks were properly dressed when it was all hand made.
Mary's so right about all the little muscles in the hands working, isn't she ?
Been there, done that. Crampy, achy, and just go back and do some more until the job's done though.

 

[Seagull]

I watched all the way through, fascinated. The process of it and the tools needed have a remarkable resonance in some aspects of applied knotting work, even the use of that "third hand" (Swedish fid) and the baton (splicing sabre). And, yes, I too can vouch for the aching fingers in the doing of it.
Regards
Ceeg

 

[Ed the Ted]

Really amazing video, thanks so much for sharing

 

[Robson Valley]

Very short days and very cold maybe snowy days of winter in the American SW desert country of New Mexico.
There's little forest to be had for fire wood so just staying alive (warm) would have been a big driver.
Not enough grassland to attract any herds of bison at all.

Thanks for posting that link. Good to see the preservation of paleo skills.

There are 4 or 5 different subspecies of turkey in North America. I can hunt the Merriam's turkey, quite some distance south of my place. Maybe 10kg for a really big Tom-bird.

 

[Tony]

Great stuff, so much effort and skill, you can see why it's hard for the old skills to thrive, yet they're great for people to be mindful and slow down a bit...