My Grandma Margaret loved to crochet. She taught me when I was young and she let me dig around in her yarn and craft supplies and I loved her for it. She also taught me to read patterns. She had patterns that she recieved handed down from Auntie Cassie, and she’d tell me about how Cassie didn’t read patterns, but a magnifying glass to count stitches. When Cassie was done she’d give them to my gramma who would follow the patterns and she marveled at. These pattern books are from the 80s and 90s.
Next, my Grandma would always rip the free patterns at the yarn stores, usually taking 2 or three. When I would visit, she’d make me sort them, take copies I wanted and pile up the doubles for her so she could redistribute in her networks. Here is my accumulation.
The American Miniaturist belonged to my Grandma Raylene. She made miniatures, was in miniature clubs, and had friends all over the pacific northwest who also enjoyed this hobby. She too had a redistribution network, and I was often the final destination for some of these hobby magazines.
Somewhy I curated these things together in one place.
As an Indigenous archaeologist studying the lifeways of the ancestors through their material culture, I get embroiled in long drawn out thoughts about sensorality, life/thought energy and materiality in Ancestral objects and assemblages.
This collection is a present/future Ancestral assemblage. By curating these things together, in combination with my thoughts and memories about them, I have added my energy to the assemblage. I have cared for them for 15-25 years already.
Also present in the assemblage is a memory of each moment there was energy contact between people’s attention and the objects, and here in my reasoning I draw on Yannis Hamilakas’ work with sensorial assemblages.
I think when I extrapolate the ideas to apply to Ancestral assemblages of stone tools. I tend to reinterpret with my Xwelmuxw lenses to imagine all who have given the thoughts about the objects energy to be included in an assemblage, Ancestors witnessing stone tools; stone tools witnessing Ancestors; both stone tools and Ancestors witnessing me witnessing them.
Maybe when we die, our energy is just scattered, across everything we’ve ever held in our attention, objects and energy we have engaged or interacted with. And it remains there, forevermore, for connection with future moments.
The Reluctant Anthropologist 