The Fall Fishermen's Festival is an annual event held in Seattle Washington, USA.
While the event is mostly focused on the Seattle fishing fleet and the families of the fishermen,
for the past several years the IGKT-PAB has been offered a booth at the Festival to display our craft.
Herewith an
open-letter plea for the IGKT-PAB to take advantage of this BIG
festival to help the Guild with part of its charter, too much neglected--to wit:
Undertake research into all aspects [here, commercial fishing] of knotting.
Rather than being captive to one's own exhibition booth & goal of displaying
a few traditionally selected practical knots and fancy work, focus your
mainenergies/efforts
on learning what, why, how of commercial fishing knotting
from those participating fishermen!!! (Too well the past situation seems an apt
allegory of the knot tyers' situation, alas.) And from such association during the
festival, hope to gain contacts for further research & discussion (maybe even some
special
field trip for interested PAB members). You would do well to get samples
of their materials--e.g., of the quite hard-laid lines used by Alaskan crabbers,
who I understand favor the Carrick bend. How much of the newer coextruded
PP/PE and PolyDac cordage is there now (much)? What constructions of cordage
can one find (many)? (And how does this compare with other com.fish.areas,
such as USA east coast, or European areas? I'm gaining some ideas of these.)
This is a big festival and should be a rich resource for the PAB in
learning,
as much or more than in
recruiting.
--dl*
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