Preface
One thread has to cross another before anything holds
Väva is Swedish for to weave. It is the whole job in one word: cross the threads until they hold, then make the cloth into something a child can sleep in for years.
We started at bedtime. It is the hour that is never photographed and never given good clothes, and the only hour a child wears the same thing every night for years. Nothing else in the wardrobe is worn long enough, or close enough, to be remembered.
So we make one thing, and we make it to be kept. A nightshirt in double gauze, two thin weaves bound together so the cloth is warm without weight and softer every time it is washed, woven for us in Portugal. Made well enough to be handed on.
We are in Sweden. The collection is small and will stay small.
Recurring themes
Most of what we believe fits inside one nightshirt. It should be there every night, so it remembers what a photograph can only show. It should leave room to turn over, kick free and start the night again. It should be one of a few things rather than one of many, made slowly and kept longer than anyone planned. It should be made well enough to outlast the child it was made for. And when it is handed on, it should be the shortest distance between two generations.
How we talk
We write the way we were read to: slowly, with the story in the middle. There is a Swedish word, vemod, for missing something while you still have it. Most of what we make comes from there. The rest is the feeling of being home, and safe, in the clothes you sleep in.
Written for
This is written for two people. One turns the label over before looking at the front, and chooses for a child the way they choose for themselves: the fibre first, then the making, then what it will look like after fifty washes. The other is a friend, an aunt, a grandparent, looking for a gift that is still in the house long after the paper is gone.
The shop is not open yet. Leave an address and we will write once, when the first chapter is finished.