Geometric

Watch a weaver work and the first thing you notice is the patience. A line of wool laid down, then another, then a row of triangles built one beside the next, until the same small shape has marched the whole width of the cloth. A heavy blanket could take months, sometimes longer, spun and woven through the winter. The pattern is slow on purpose.

That is what you are looking at in geometric design. Triangles, zigzags, straight lines and squares set in rows, each shape answering the one before it. Pattern here is order and rhythm, built up step by step the way a wall goes up brick by brick, until one small motif becomes a field that holds together across the whole piece.

The weaving runs back a long way on this coast. Before trade wool turned up, weavers worked with mountain goat wool, the hair of a now-vanished woolly dog, and plant fibres like cedar. The finest blankets were never everyday cloth. They came out at the big gatherings, so the pattern carried weight well past its warmth.

Look closely and you can follow it, one row at a time, the same steady count a weaver kept by hand.