I've been noticing the harmony between what I'm seeing outdoors and indoors these days.
Hmmm, this could become a habit....
I've been noticing the harmony between what I'm seeing outdoors and indoors these days.
Hmmm, this could become a habit....
The first two have been lacking in my life lately, although texture has continuously been there. And I noticed texture was one of the most striking things about being back in a forest. The view below was beneath my feet as I sat on a rock.
The river itself is multi-textural, rushing through the rocks and eddying near the shore. This river, the Elwha, has a remarkable story that is in dramatic progress, with imminent and unpredictable change in its future.
In fact, the hike we did may be inaccessible once the waters rise, so it was a privilege to see the place as it is now. But mostly we were in the forest. It stuns me how quickly one is in the forest on the Olympic Peninsula.
Every tree has a different texture, from its own bark and from all the licheny, mossy, fungal growths happening.
There's not much to say when dwelling in this sort of world, but I wanted to share a few images, as well as the Elwha story.
There are some pretty laughing doves that sometimes lay eggs on our window sills. They bustle around with sticks, which gives the appearance of making a nest, but they really just scatter a few twigs, rather than building anything. The other day I saw this:
Quite an elegant gesture, isn't it? Later, I saw a dove walking toward the opposite end of the sill carrying a stick, and still later I checked and this installation was gone. I'm amused that they take such care in placing and moving the sticks, when they're not serving any structural purpose (and there are more twigs to be found on the ground - we're short on trees here, but small twigs are not hard to find.)
We are also now picking up sticks and moving on. Although we have a lot more to carry than the doves, and we spent quite a while here, it ultimately feels like this was simply the gesture of a nest. There is something transient in the air in Doha, heightened by the dust, wind, and endless construction.
Some of the last sticks that had to be packed up were the pieces of my backstrap loom. I did some last-minute weaving, to finish up a larger piece, and then dismantled my setup. I've been using this dining table to tie up to for as long as I've been backstrap weaving, so it will be another big change to find a new system.
This weaving will be finished, and a new tie-up found, when the real nesting begins.
The treasures I found on my last trip to Jordan cost only 1 JD each, and had the theme of traditional dress.
First, a brilliant subversion of the Barbie aesthetic, hand crafted by an anonymous woman in Madaba. I saw this display on the street, and was completely enthralled. As I closely examined the whole array, a man told me they were one dinar, and that his wife made the clothing.
I can still look at this photo for ages: such well-dressed women! The various cross stitch, brocade, and print fabrics are so well selected, and the combination of semi-veiled, fully veiled and headband wear makes it look like a parade of actual Jordanian women. And even the occasional man, with a drawn-on beard!
Some of them have black eyes, made with the same pen as the men's beards, and others are left blue-eyed. It's the variety that gets me, and makes such a strong and positive point. The Madaba woman is not simply saying that women should be "modest" or "covered", or that they should all look the same, but saying rather, "Look how lovely we are, in the rich mix of clothing that shows we are Jordanian!"
I only bought the one shown here, after much agonizing over colors and styles. Probably should have gotten at least half a dozen, but sometimes reason does prevail over my collecting urges, supported this time by an imminent international move. I told the man to tell his wife "Mashallah!" - Well done!
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It's striking to compare the beauty of these dolls with the images they were originally meant to represent, which I don't see as "beauty" at all, merely convention. Keeping them in the original boxes makes the subversion complete.
I'm definitely a biased observer, given my love for handcrafted clothing and textiles, but to me it's quite obvious which presentation celebrates female identity and beauty more effectively. One has only to imagine all the dolls looking identical, prior to their transformation.
I should also mention that one sees colorful, embroidered robes for sale in the shops, and women really do wear them. Jordanian women are quite visible, active, and professional around town, while maintaining a high level of modesty and coverage with their dress.
The second treasure of this trip was a set of postcards, two for 1 JD, from the Shrine of the Beheading of John the Baptist at Madaba (I know - whoa.) The church is an active one, with evidence of the Orthodox Easter celebrations still scattered around (I was there in April,) and in addition to the interesting architecture and historical aspects of the building, they had a collection of old photographs on display. The prints showed Christians from Kerak and other neighboring areas, who came to Madaba to consolidate the Christian community, around 1900. Of interest to me was, of course, how they dressed.
I noticed the girls were wearing oversized dresses with long, pointed sleeve openings. This was particularly evident on the smaller girls.
You can see that the ends of her sleeves hang in front, and that the dress is bunched up below the waist. This may be less obvious if one has never seen a traditional oversized dress, but I immediately thought of the three meter dress I'd seen at Tiraz, during the textile conference last year.
We had all been fascinated by this dress, and wondering how it was worn, and had found some references in books that showed the belting, blousing of fully half of the length of the dress over the belt, and wrapping or tying of sleeves around, behind, etc. Then someone found an excellent documentary video in Widad Kawar's archives, with a woman demonstrating the belting and arrangement of the extra large dress.
This made me happy to see real examples of such a garment from the early 20th century, and especially happy that the church sold postcards of some of the old photos.
(The photos, from which I have excerpted bits with bad snaps, are credited to R. Savignac and A. Jaussen, and are shown in Madaba courtesy of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem.)
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During our wanderings in the beautiful valley of the River Wye, we were treated to an inside view of an old stone chapel. England is full of small, old churches, but Brockhampton is special because of its tapestries, designed by Edward Burne-Jones and woven in the William Morris studios.
These were mentioned in the tourist maps of the Wye Valley sights, but the church also contains lesser known textile delights.
Each pew has a stack of little hymnals, no more than five inches long, and each hymnal has a hand-embroidered linen cover depicting local flora, with the name of the plant and "Brockhampton Church" written with thread. I was so charmed by these hymnal covers, so understated and uniform, but with such loving detail work in the realistic images.
The intimate sense of place conveyed by this creative act, giving to the local church and parishioners by illustrating the local flowering plants: so tender and unexpected.
Our English friend said it's common for the women of the parish to decorate the church in this way - they had also embroidered covers for the pew cushions, with larger botanical motifs and written memorial messages.
Trying to identify the local breed of sheep... Romney? Or Cheviot? I could not get any closer than this without startling them all into a run.
At the annual Dhow Festival in Doha, we are treated to demonstrations of some of the old traditions relating to boats. One never knows what one will see, and this year I stumbled onto the festival quite by chance. I stopped to watch the man who was weaving baskets from some part of the palm tree, stiff flat sticks, in a way that formed 6 pointed stars at the joins. Having recently tried willow basket weaving for the first time, I had an increased appreciation of basketry methods, and watched attentively as he tensioned the strips against one another.
The men could see my interest, and they showed me the finished trap, similar to this one, with a tapered entry point for the fish - although this one had the entry point in the side wall of the basket, with a back door that could be latched and opened to remove the fish. A different style of wide open basket was also made for carrying fish. The lighting was not great, so I didn't try to take many pictures.
After I had examined and admired for a bit, the weaver asked me if I knew anything about fish.
While I thought I was observing and talking to a weaver, I was actually talking to a fisherman. This struck me because it demonstrated, once again, how artificially separate craft skills are to those of us who learn them outside of any context of traditional use.
The other day I saw a robin.
Well, wait, that's not true....
The other day, I saw the sweetest little bird. Small and smooth, plain brown for the most part, but with a vibrant, deep orange throat and chest, and white on the belly. The brilliant red-orange color forms a bib that comes to two scalloped points. I observed these details closely, so that I could look up what kind of bird it was. I saw it several times, perching near my windows, and was stopped in my tracks by the lovely trilling song while walking outside.
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North American readers may be confused at this point, because robins look like this:
Although the most familiar bird name since childhood, culturally, might be "robin" - songs, poems, and nursery tales bringing Robin Redbreast to early prominence as a concept, I had never been very attracted to the robins I saw around me. A large, assertive ground bird with mottled plumage around his head, white flecks breaking up the smoothness of the color, the robin was interesting to watch, poking in the ground for worms. But I never considered them pretty or charming, and I was certainly never arrested by any song. Call me prejudiced, but little, round birds with big eyes and tiny beaks are just way cuter. Our American robin, by contrast, is almost roguish, not the kind of bird that attracts a child.
So imagine how mystified I was to find that the charming wee bird with the striking orange bib is a "robin." Otherwise known as the European robin, but for all intents and purposes that is the English name for this bird. Which means that all the nursery rhyme delight in robins that we inherited from Britain is addressing a totally different bird.
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I had a real crisis of knowledge for a few moments - everything I associate with "robin" is different from that which is meant by "robin" in the land where my language originates. The only things they have in common are red chests and a taste for worms. This raised all kinds of inarticulate questions about perception and language, culture and assumptions (because of course anyone in the UK reading this would have been wondering what I'm going on about - a robin is a robin!)
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And so I can't say "the other day I saw a robin," because at that time, seeing a robin is not what I was doing. I was seeing a little, unknown but charming bird, and if anyone had asked me, "Did you see that robin?" I would probably have said no.
Why does it matter? Because so often we make assumptions that others know what we're talking about, or that our version of acquired understanding is the truth. It is something I often think about and observe, and to learn that I have made it to middle age without knowing what a robin is to an English person struck me as a remarkable demonstration of how removed we can be from even those cultures that seem most closely related to our own.
The icing on the ruminative cake was the description given on the Wild England website, which says that robins are "often found on Christmas cards." Oh really? You can find these birds standing around on top of Christmas cards? Hmm, food for another day's thought.....
A good-natured mini-rant, more of a pet peeve, really just a way to show off a rug or two.
I get impatient with rug dealers' penchant for pointing out the 'mistakes' in a handwoven rug, and explaining that there is "always one mistake, because only God is perfect," or some such explanation. This story is told often, and not only for handwoven rugs. I heard a similar note about Japanese ceramics (only the Emperor's bowl is perfect.) And I don't doubt that some people, somewhere, at some time, have practiced adding a deliberate anomaly to their work, as a sign of respect for some entity, or as a demonstration of humility, or to avoid the evil eye. That's perfectly plausible. But this endless game of finding "the mistake" in a rug, which is repeated by the owners of the rug at every opportunity, is tiresome because it misses the point. And the point is that the rug is handmade, of course it's not perfect!
The rugs I own have not one, but many delightful variations of shape here and there, and I see them as signs of the humans who wove them, making choices as necessary and weaving along without too much concern for perfection. I don't believe that they considered picking it out and making it 'perfect', but decided not to because of some traditional practice. I believe they didn't much care, as long as the whole thing worked and looked harmonious.
This is most obvious in a soumak rug from Dagestan, purchased from pilgrims in Damascus. The design has concentric rectangular borders, building out from a central grid. Concentric borders, as anyone who has made a quilt top knows, present the challenge of numerous corners. None of the repeated patterns in the Dagestani rug borders are perfectly aligned with their length, making for some entertaining improvisation in each of the corners. This rug, more than any other I've seen, highlights the tendency to make it work. Because the motifs are not simple, and they do work within a grid, but clearly counting and planning it all out ahead of time to fit just right was not part of the agenda. Someone familiar with the tradition might even be able to tell in which direction the rug was woven. Certain motifs are more condensed on one end and spread apart on the other, and I wonder whether the condensed end is the beginning (which would be my guess, knowing from my own experience how the enthusiasm for intricacy can fade later in a project.)
The variations on motif shapes and placement are a view into the mind of the weaver. They not only attest to the handworked nature of the rug, but show the thinking, responsive person who put him or herself into the piece. If something is perfectly executed, we can perhaps admire the skill, but we don't connect with the humanity of the craftsperson quite so easily as with a more improvised work.
To clarify, because some may say that spinning and weaving with extremely fine, strong yarn is not about 'knowing' but rather the acquisition of skill: I see the acquisition of traditional skills as a way of knowing, and my own work shows me the extent to which I live and learn outside of any particular way. My efforts are self-motivated, not integral to my culture or the expectations of my community, and I have only for very brief moments learned from anyone in person.
So in this sense, I really know almost nothing, set against any given way of knowing. Because a way of knowing is an immersion, a living-through, an acquisition of technique that goes beyond technique to the understanding of how it fits in with one's role in life, to one's purpose as a human being. This is the ineffable quality one sees or senses in the master's work, the craftsperson who is so completely at home with the work that every stage of the process looks like fulfillment.
It is also the quality of a living textile making tradition, that each skill and facet of knowledge is essential and integral to the person and the community. It is a belonging, and the reason I'm talking about it is because I feel the lack and the longing for it in my own explorations. I have the freedom of the unattached. Not locked into any tradition or community, I can play the dilettante, exploring Bedouin ground loom weaving here, and Katu foot-tensioned weaving there, but I miss the sense of home, the grounded identity that comes with being a weaver in a weaving culture, and the connection of my community with my work.
The state of not knowing is quite welcome to me, because it means I am open to learn. The first time I sat down as a weaving student, in a Tibetan handicrafts cooperative workshop in McLeod Ganj above Dharamsala, India, my teacher and I had only a few words in common, in Hindi. I imitated the Tibetan way of looping a double strand of wool yarn around the metal bar and the cotton warp threads on the vertical loom, and she would watch me and periodically say, "Aisa nahi... Aisa," which means "Not like that.... Like this." Often I would feel the explanations rise to my mind, the reasons why I was doing it 'like that,' because I thought blah-blah-blah..... Since we couldn't speak, I could never explain, and it was just as well, because I was stripped of my American defensiveness and the wish to prove that I understood, and could only ever prove it by doing it right.
So when I experience the truth of how little I know, it means that I'm fit to learn, and it often means I'm actually faced with a teacher, in which case it is even more welcome. Acknowledging my own ignorance is a way of appreciating the wealth of knowledge carried by so many textile cultures, and it is this ignorance that motivates me. I don't weave and spin in order to keep creating something I know, but in order to keep learning about what I don't know. As long as I have the freedom that comes with technical ignorance and cultural homelessness, I should exercise that freedom by learning as much as I can, anywhere I can find it.
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Sometimes it feels that not much is happening, but still there is a lot going on. Just on a small scale. I'm preparing to travel, and trying to finish up (or start) a few things before I go. It seems that I always have fiber-project deadlines in the days before any trip.
There is quilting in progress, a quick stitching up for a new small person I will meet.
And there is spinning, or more accurately, plying, of handspun cotton with handspun silk, then with itself, then cabled with the first 2-ply. Making a yarn strong enough to incorporate with some cotton/acrylic for a WIP.
Also in the middle of transforming handspun into a very warm scarf/cowl. But this does not need to be finished this week, so it's resting in a basket.
Then there's the random casting on, unrelated to anything that Needs to Be Done.
I love this stage of a toe-up sock. Like a little talisman on three needles, it holds so much potential - and it grows so fast at this stage, with all the anticipation of a new beginning. It's good to have socks on the needles again.
Despite all the studying I've done of Andean pickup weaving, and my own attempts to learn it, I had never seen real Chinchero weaving in person, with the exception of the wee tanka ch'oro jakima strip sent to me by Laverne Waddington. Finally, at the Textile Society of America Symposium in Los Angeles, I found CTTC represented by ClothRoads, and could get my hands on pieces woven in Peru. This small bag is from Chinchero, and is being compared to my own recent weaving. It reminds me of the childish taunt "Shows what you know!"
I say this with good humor, but it's decidedly humbling to see my best effort to date, made with handspun that I'm relatively proud of, next to the real deal. The S curve, or kutij, in the middle of the Chinchero piece, woven by Martha Quispe Huamán, is the same number of warps as the curves in mine. It's mind-boggling, really. Look at the size of the yarn ends, all 2-ply handspun.
Mine look monstrous! And we're not even going to talk about the beautiful, intricate ñawi awapa border, which is simply par for the course in Chinchero weaving. I have not learned that yet - I'm still in backstrap pre-school.
So this shows what I know, and don't know. But there is freedom in not knowing. It means I can weave things like this:
Because there's no one to tell me I can't do it like that. Yarn spun from old clothing? Warped as singles and woven clamped to my kitchen counter? Why not!
Spinning with a different handmade spindle - made by Janet and modified by me. Using a new bowl from my friend Cathy Broski's kiln. Her jewel bowls are excellent for supported spinning.
Well, I finished this at about the same time as finishing my Master's thesis, and I don't know which one I'm more proud and excited about.
It actually spins, which is amazing to me because halfway through this process it was just going blup....blup... in a lopsided manner, and I picked up one of my Ladakhi spindles and just marveled at the speed and smoothness of the spin. I have a new appreciation for hand-carved spindles that spin well.
But as I said, this one does spin, and the yarn I'm making with it proves its success as a tool. It's definitely not the most beautiful spindle, and mistakes were made, but for the first time I've turned a stick into a spindle with my pocket knife, and that speaks of promise!
The pith is showing in the photos, and it's on the side like that because this stick was slightly curved. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get a straight, balanced spindle out of it, but my whittling mentor David Gowman said it was possible: I just needed to 'find the straight line.' This is why it was lopsided for a long time - I was reluctant to remove too much of the bulge, because I like phang-shaped spindles that have wide, substantial swells to them. But on the bulky side, more had to come off to allow for the spin.
This one wee project taught me so much, and I see my Ladakhi spindles and those made by my friend Janet completely differently now. I'm wishing for more willow sticks.
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Another beautiful thing going on.
A piece of willow, carved with a knife. Not very well, but as a process of discovery and growing understanding. The crisp facets of the wood, in its creamy whiteness, are mesmerizing.
Somehow this will be a spindle.
Sometimes the simplest thing I'm doing seems so beautiful.
I hope to expand these parts of my life, this way of being.
(It's a sweater I'm knitting with Berocco Remix yarn - recycled linen, cotton, acrylic & silk, and needles I made from sticks.)
There were many beautiful and impressive things about the Traditional Textile Craft: An Intangible Heritage conference in Amman in April, 2014. But the most beautiful and impressive were the various women who are dedicating themselves to textiles through research, preservation, support of craftspeople, and the pure enthusiasm and love that goes along with such work.
We were very fortunate to be able to visit Widad Kawar's costume and textile collection at the new home she has created, called Tiraz: a home for Arab dress. Even more fortunate was her participation in the conference, her invaluable presence in this group of textile scholars and enthusiasts. She gave one of the opening talks, in which she explained that she didn't start out intending to collect, but things started happening, and "the more things happened around me, the more I collected." Poignant words from a woman who grew up in Palestine.
Widad also emphasized the importance of documentation, that the collection must be accompanied by as much information as possible. In her case, she conducted extensive interviews with people who created and wore the types of garments in her collection, gathering stories and historical facts. The wealth of knowledge represented by her textiles is awe-inspiring, and international groups and students work with her to help register and retain this priceless store of culture.
Widad is a joy to be around, constantly discussing textile traditions and practices, and eagerly examining any new textile that comes her way, whether in the slide presentations of the conference or worn by the participants (all of whom were usually wearing something interesting and handmade.)
During our visit to Tiraz, we were also treated to the collection of Layla Pio, an Iraqi woman with deep knowledge of the textiles of her country. She gave us a tour through the examples she had on display, including the Samawah kilim she is showing here, a woolen twill weave with dense chain stitch embroidery. I see these in the souq in Doha often.
Another woman by the name of Laila Tyabji, resplendent each day in different hand-crafted saris, runs a wonderful organization known as Dastkar. She gave an inspiring talk about her work, illustrated with so many beautiful images from India that I wanted her to just keep talking and show them all slowly. Craftspeople in the most difficult of circumstances, but given strength by their skills and traditional knowledge. Laila noted that it was craftspeople who recovered more quickly, after the massive earthquake in Bhuj, than other livelihoods. She said that when the skills exist, it takes very little to revitalize a craft tradition, and she gave delightful examples of the ingenuity and creative involvement of the craftspeople, when they are given the chance to participate in the design. Her work carries so much insight into the process of supporting traditional craft, insight that she has developed through myriad ongoing interactions and observations of what is successful and what is not. Overall, her conclusions were quite encouraging and affirmed that the living tradition simply needs to be allowed to function, in the way the people have learned and taught for centuries, and that this can be a very resilient system that need not be threatened by modern consumerism.
Until I have time to write more, I include some more details of this over-saturated week.
Sometimes I forget that I live in an exotic place, to the sensibilities of people back home. A trip to the souq usually corrects that lapse. Even on a normal day, Souq Waqif smells of spices and incense, and teems with shopping Qataris, groups of small schoolchildren, the odd tourists, and of course the mounted traditional patrol, above. They are, ostensibly, some kind of security force, but really it's for show.
I was determined to find the 'handicraft section' of the souq, since I'd heard about it from people who moved here recently. The reason I hadn't known of it before was probably because it didn't exist. Anyway, entering the alley helpfully labeled "Handicraft Market", I found some guys working with their hands. This is a bhisht shop.
A bhisht is a traditional robe Gulf Arab men wear over their white thobe. They used to be made from handspun camel hair, and some of them probably still are. This one appears to be wool, and is a dense, warp-faced weave, as opposed to the more open, sheer plainweave often seen in diplomats' and political leaders' bhisht.
While I've taken an interest in the wool of the robe, the metallic thread embroidery is so dense and shiny, I always kind of assumed it was made by machine. But these guys in the souq showed me how wrong I was. There they sat, earbuds in, fingers flying across the fabric stretched between their knees.
Some of them were couching the gold threads with another thread, as above, and others were actually making stitches with the gold. The bobbin of choice for metal threads is a cassette tape cover. I imagine them salvaging the tape boxes long after they have discarded the tapes in favor of their MP3 or iPod.
Given that this was an entirely male, Muslim space, I was timid with the photographs, and didn't get right up in their work to see the details of the stitching. But an examination of the finished pieces shows an impressive array of stitches and patterns, and I gained a new appreciation for this traditional garment.
There are many spindles in action at the moment.
I've just started spinning a batt made by the young daughter of wooldancer. I had the good fortune to visit Michelle's studio in the Blue Mountains... was it really 3 years ago? As we talked fiber and yarn, her daughter gathered supplies and drum-carded a gift batt for me.
I've paired the sparkly, fairy magic batt with a spindle made by Devrim in Turkey. Makes for a great portable project.
This yarn is one element of my fourth Revolution yarn. The challenge is called Revolution 5 (Ravelry link), and we spin a yarn from multiple ingredients, then use the leftover fibers from that one as the base for the next yarn. They become a stream of consciousness, feeding into each other and subtly related.
The previous ones:
Realizing that I had spun a singles, a two ply, and a chain or 3 ply for Revolution 1, 2 and 3, I decided that the fourth must be a four ply, or a cabled yarn (two 2 plies, plied together.) Then of course a five ply for the last one.
Don't hold your breath. This has been a long, slow process, and shows no signs of speeding up. I wonder if it will take me a whole year....
Spinning a 3-year-old batt, in a months-long project of five spins. This is an art not to be rushed. One of my favorite things about spinning yarn is that it accompanies me through life, taking place over time, absorbing and reflecting the moments during which it is created.
That's right, these boats are stitched. This detail shows some rusty nails and plastic string, but traditionally they're entirely done up with coir, coconut fiber, which expands to fill the gaps in the wood but doesn't let water through.
I saw a lot of these stitched hulls in Kerala, when we spent a week in Aleppy, the 'backwater' town full of canals and waterways. It's wonderful to see everyone going about in boats. Boats with this construction are used for everything from minimal one-person vessels to cargo barges.
I was even told that the massive houseboats are made this way. While I'm not sure the hulls are still stitched, there is certainly a lot of handiwork in the beautiful boats.
At the third annual Dhow Festival in Doha last weekend, I got a chance to see the work in action. Two men were stitching a boat on the beach, with another man giving explanations and answering questions.
The men pass the rope through drilled holes, and it secures a bundle of coir fibers and a layer of rope on the inside. They use spikes, chisels and wooden dowels to tighten the stitches, levering the tools against each other.
I didn't manage to fully grasp the process or retain the Malayalam words for this art, but it was a treat to see the work in progress, after admiring not only the boats in Kerala but also the ones owned by the Qatar Museum Authority.
Welcome to the celebration