The responsibility for designing the National Salt Satyagraha Memorial (NSSM) at Dandi had an interesting side effect. Students and faculty at the IDC School of Design learnt how to spin and weave on a handloom. Over the last 4 years, this activity has attracted students from science, engineering and design departments at IIT Bombay, and some have been learning how to weave their own convocation scarves with the assistance of traditional handloom weavers. Many of the students have felt that the activity has been therapeutic. Today, students in design schools are taught design through digital medium and modern technology. While an engagement with emerging new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality is novel and exciting, this paper seeks to explain that having an engagement with history and with traditional design knowledge can be equally enriching. A connection with our own design heritage can go hand in hand with the exposure to modern technologies. In its absence, students tend to regard traditional knowledge and practice as inferior and outdated. India has more than 4 million handloom weavers and these weavers practice different techniques and are extremely skilled in their craft. Unlike other countries in the world, India is a rare place where the traditional practices and knowledge still coexist with the modern technology, and design is one field where our craft practices can inform our approaches to learn different disciplines of design. This paper documents the experiment of bringing traditional weavers in contact with young students through an act of regular and extended practice.