When I was around 50 I encountered Nader Khalili (electronically), and I fell deeply in admiration.

I read about his idea for ceramic homes in the Middle East, and how when asked for ways to build on the moon, he came up with the concept of moondust-filled “sandbags,” coiled like beehives and secured with four-point barbed wire. He’d gone on to make small houses with sandbag tubes and barbed wire in underdeveloped areas, and I’m sure he wished like you and I do, for laxer building codes that would permit us to slap up such replaceable structures in our country.

He had a website (calearth.org), and I bookmarked it. I’m sobered to report that when I just revisited it I read that he is no longer alive.

But of course his ideas are. And the sandbag or sandtube approach – I think it can be enhanced or at least varied. When I saw the website pictures of the simple houses, I was reminded of beehive pottery and coiled rugs. I wondered what other textile applications could be used for construction: macrame, knitting, crochet, weaving …?

For the sandbags are forms of very thick yarn. Fabrications could be hung from simple pipe frames, which could carry water and power and which would open the way for easy windows and doors.

I never thought of clothmaking and housebuilding as forms of the same activity, until then. Until now.