Here's what's on the loom, and there's a complete post about my experience with Katu backstrap weaving in the weaving section (I know, it's silly, but I like to keep things categorized.)
After reading that post, look at this photo again and you'll see what I mean about the warp being too short: the split loom bar has to roll a bit to hold the warp firmly.
I just spent the better part of an hour winding two balls of yarn. Particularly gratifying in this case because I went to Luang Prabang's Phusi market on my own, completely forgetting to arm myself with a sample of what I needed, and yet ultimately succeeded in buying black yarn. I wandered agog through warrens of clothing and shoes and plastic goods fruitlessly for some time, trying to squint into the tarp-covered distance to discern anything yarn-like or weaving related.
Finally I stopped at a booth carrying elaborate, gilded skirt borders because she had thread, which is close. I gestured at the thread and said that I weave and needed this... big, weave.... Then I showed a photo of Mone warping with the balls of yarn on the floor. She pointed me in the right direction, and I eventually came upon the shelves of yarn. Soon after, Iwas happily winding balls back at the guest house, to the sound of neighboring roosters and the distinctive, musical ringing of the Lao mortar and pestle, wood against clay pounding papayas or chili paste.
Whenever I wind balls of yarn, I can't help drifting into philosophical musing about it. It's one of the things I do differently from most of my weaving/knitting peers in the US (who tend to use a ball winder and swift), but in a similar way to traditional weavers around the world. Weavers spend an awful lot of time winding balls of yarn, especially if we also spin the yarn, and ply from two-stranded balls.
I learned my affinity for global, traditional ball-winding on my first visit to Luang Prabang, when I met my Katu backstrap weaving mentors, Keo and Mone. I'd been hanging out watching Keo weave, and when I started to wind some cotton I bought into balls, she offered to help. When Mone arrived and was able to translate between us, Keo told her "Look, she winds balls like we do." I was surprised and happy to hear it - I'd known that weavers in Ladakh, Arabia, and Peru used balls wound in courses, and that was more or less what I tended to do, but had no idea it would be identified as a recognizable style, especially since I wasn't that good at it.
It seems appropriate that the first time I met another weaving mentor, Laverne, we immediately set to winding balls together. I could see that she was preparing a number of little yarn balls, and I offered to help. As we wound, she pointed out that it is really a learned skill, and one can't count on people knowing how to do it, even if they knit or weave. She advised teaching it as part of a course in spinning or weaving. I see it as a very basic fiber skill, but obviously part of the knowledge necessary to be an independent weaver, not relying on an array of complex tools apart from one's body to manage yarn. There is a technique to starting a yarn ball from scratch - I noticed that even Mone preferred to wind onto a ball already in progress, since starting from the beginning is fiddly.
My favorite ball of yarn, though, has to be the tiny one found at a recently excavated Bronze Age site in the UK known as Must Farm. Seeing this ball of (probably) linen, wound in courses some 3,000 years ago, adds another dimension to the sense of ball winding as part of global textile tradition.
Did I mention not seeing Hmong batik in the indigo show in Seattle? Well, I'm getting my fix now in Luang Prabang. It was pure serendipity - making my jet lagged self take a walk down the peninsula, I decided to turn up from the Mekong at a certain spot amidst the monasteries. Not a road I knew, and not much on it, but suddenly I saw an abundance of truly fine Hmong pieces hanging outside a small shop. A young woman hurried from next door to greet me and invite me in, and I spent the next half hour (hour? time stopped for a while, I've no idea) surrounded by exquisite work and her stories.
Detail of batik and embroidery piece, which is bordered with linen.
Sho Ly has collected pieces and old fragments from her village near the border of Loas and Vietnam, and has on display traditional garments, blankets, and accessories like belts and "cravats": long, narrow, decorative pieces worn from the neck, like a tie but way more elaborate.
Cravats from the Yao people, with intricate cross stitch embellishment
Many of the old batik and embroidery fragments have been bordered with linen fabric, to make wall hangings or table runners. These are nicely done and the linen adds strength and stability to the more delicate pieces. Sho Ly's sister designed and made these, as well as the various well-constructed bags in the shop.
Pieced wall hangings, weighted with coins.
I kept up a continuous stream of questions, about the batik technique, the intricacy, and whether people are still working in the same way. She had her own recently made jacket on display, which shows how the batik looks when it is new. Her aunt did the batik work, and it's as intricate as some of the older pieces.
New jacket with batik sleeves.
However, no one in her generation of her family has learned to do batik. Some people her age in the village are keeping it up, but it's less popular now. She said younger people are more interested in a highly textured type of embroidery, which she knows how to do. She had many samples of this, including a jacket and belt which she was happy to model.
How stylin' is this ensemble?? Wow.
Close up view of the work - the entire surface is embroidered.
I saw an example of the same work on a belt in the collection at Ock Pop Tok, where I'm doing conservation work.
Sho Ly told me that for this embroidery thread, they buy undyed silk in the market and dye the colors they want. So even the thread is locally produced. There is endless beauty and fascination in this shop, and I plan to visit often. If you find yourself in Luang Prabang, you should check out Hilltribe Heritage, near Wat Xieng Thong. Sho Ly will be happy to see you and tell you about everything here.
I had to go to Seattle the other day, so I took advantage of the chance to see the Mood Indigo textile exhibit at the Asian Art Museum. I'd been hearing about it, and knew it was a must-see sometime before October. I'd also heard from Rowland Ricketts that he'd just hung a show in Seattle, but I didn't put two and two together until I saw this interview.
The prospect of seeing Rowland's work in person was galvanizing. I'd seen his presentations at the Textile Society symposia, and knew from assisting him at an indigo workshop that his work is deep and resonant. Steeped in the traditions of Japanese indigo processing, and constantly manifesting awe and respect for the materials, it seemed utterly appropriate that his work would feature in an indigo-focused exhibit.
Rowland Ricketts' installation piece: dried indigo plants hang along the wall, and a pieced work of dyed plant fiber created a cylindrical space in the center of the room. There is also a soundtrack playing, which is derived from aspects of the indigo processing.
A view from inside the hanging fabric, looking at the indigo on the wall and into the next room. I like the way that the patchwork can be layered with the shapes beyond, creating a secondary patchwork.
Beginning with his work at the entry, this whole exhibit felt like a gathering of friends. Each piece was familiar to me in some way, from the Yoruba eleko cloth to the Lao supplementary weft weaving. I've encountered these things before, and the commingling of their stories made for a polyphonic celebration of skill, with the powerful undertone of indigo holding it all together.
Some of these pieces I just knew from seeing images, or seeing things like them, such as the Nigerian robes and the Japanese futon covers and fireman's clothing. Others were more technically familiar, such as the Yoruba resist-dyed cloths. The year I spent at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was focused on a resist-dyeing course taught by Stanley Pinckney, who studied with the Yoruba in Nigeria. He taught us the techniques one by one: elo, eleso, alabere, sabada, eleko.... all different manners of tying, stitching, folding or otherwise resisting the dye on cloth. We did not get to use indigo in that class, but were shown countless images of the traditional cloths from Nigeria, intricate and stunning.
Another piece that felt strikingly familiar is the Mapuche ikat weaving. I've been admiring this bold design and impressive technique since I saw it on Laverne's blog post a couple of years ago. Since then, she has reproduced the technique quite successfully, and I attempted it, with less success - but constantly felt inspired by these strong shapes. Wonderful to see them in indigo.
With the shifting of the warps while changing sheds, the top and bottom layers drifted apart, and the disturbance only got more severe later on. So it's an interesting piece, but the ikat is extremely rugged. I've since heard some tips and tricks from Laverne, but have yet to try them out.
There were also familiar supplementary-weft weavings from Laos, Indonesian ikats and batiks, and ancient Peruvian tapestry-woven pieces. Each one spoke to me in a known language, each containing a wealth of technique, traditional expertise, and cultural significance. Since I surround myself with this sort of thing as much as possible, I felt at home, but of course the quality, antiquity and sheer volume of textile wealth of this exhibit are nothing I encounter very often.
Even so, I could think of things that were not included, such as Hmong handwoven lengths of indigo batik hemp, used in skirts. The hill tribes of southern China and Southeast Asia use a lot of indigo in their fabric for clothing.
Leaving you with images from my collection and my own work, and with the urge to use more indigo. It just never gets old, this true color.
So this weaving. I decided to try weaving from the other end, just because I wanted to experience that. Normally this is done to achieve four selvedges, but since I didn't have a nice selvedge at the beginning, it wouldn't matter for this piece. I simply did it to see how it's done, sacrificing a few inches that I might have added to the length of the piece - because I knew I wouldn't be able to close this gap completely, even with plain weave. The sheds are too difficult to open, and I reached the limit of my sword size at this point. I had predicted that I would not get closer than 3 inches, and this shows I was right. Now I have to face cutting it, unless I plan to display it forever like this. Then a bath, and then finishing. Still unsure what this will look like, finally, but it will most likely be what it is - a piece of weaving: flat, rectangular, as long and as wide as it is.
Then there was a natural dye workshop. It's hard for me to resist this kind of thing, especially when it features the expertise of someone like Emily of Local Color Fiber Studio in Bainbridge. I've done natural dye classes before, and they're always a little chaotic, but they produce beautiful images, beautifully dyed yarns, and give me a nudge toward doing more of this myself.
The pot above is made from grapes, gleaned from a vineyard where Emily works part time. They're especially dye-friendly grapes, and they made a beautiful lilac shade on the mohair yarn we were using.
Another attraction of the class: spending a beautiful day by the water in Port Townsend. Just watching the yarns come out of each dyebath and hang in the sunshine was pure sensory delight.
Madder dye, before and after...
I took some fiber to dye, and came home with nice colors - they will look good as stripes in another backstrap weaving, along with the green Targhee I've been spinning during the Tour.
I'm currently working on a piece that is all handspun wool, and relatively large for a backstrap weaving.
It's traveled around with me, and I've given demonstrations to weavers, friends and students in Seattle and Kansas City. I don't have many good photos of it, but I'm honored to say that Laverne posted some here.
As I've been working on it, this weaving has become a kind of home base for me - an experience I haven't had before with weaving.
At home, I check in with it almost daily, putting in a few rows in the early morning. Already, before taking it elsewhere, the weaving felt like a space, a separate place to go for a while. When I'm there, I'm in the weaving, in the world of it, which has certain rules that I needed to learn when I began. How to manipulate these yarns, and open these sheds, slightly different from any other project I've done. The pickup is a different set of patterns - so although the technical process of pickup is familiar, I had to learn to read them.
The first time I demonstrated, I remained silent, and was able to weave along, without mistakes, for several picks. The second time, I was trying to explain the process to students, and I couldn't fathom my pickup, then forgot to pass the weft (which, by the way, is a good way out if you have made pattern mistakes during a demo - just don't pass the weft!) I learned that people just want to see you change sheds a few times, so "pretend weaving" is good enough for a warm-up. After a few minutes, I got to the point where I could weave for real and answer questions.
These experiences made me bond more with the weaving, in a way. I had to master its language enough to do it while semi-distracted. Not arguing for multi-tasking, but it's interesting how the distraction made me focus more, and go a bit deeper into my relationship with my weaving. Which is what I'm trying to talk about. There's a relationship with this weaving, as a process and as a piece. My time with it is valuable, and necessary. Like feeding a friendship, the time weaving solidifies something good in my mind, something deep and true.
So when people ask what I'm planning to do with it, I have no reply because I'm not thinking of it that way. Not trying to get something done, but just doing. Something important.
I love watching this pattern take shape. Warped up a quick band of al'ouerjan, just to make sure I could still do it. I tend to combine Joy Hilden's instructions from her Bedouin Weaving book, and Laverne's tutorial to remind myself of the slightly odd warping technique. (The beautiful little sword is one that Laverne brought from a maker in Bolivia - adds joy to the process!)
Having woven a bag with this pattern, which I'm proud of and use so much it's nearly wearing out, I wanted to revive my familiarity with the lovely dotted strips.
I've already written about why I like it so much, so I'm going to link to my old blog post celebrating al'ouerjan.
I didn't consciously reverse the colors of the diamonds in the new band - they just happened that way. we will see where this leads....
These textiles were not encountered in the wild. They were part of an organized program, I knew I would be seeing textiles from the collection of Marilyn Romatka. But still, it's hard to be prepared. Marilyn filled a long room's worth of tables with samples from her collection - fascinating, impressive pieces from around the world, old and new. I remained enthralled with one of the first ones she showed, however. It's a yurt band.
These things just thrill me, largely because I want to learn to weave like this, in the terme style of Central Asia. I've done some small samples, with the help of Laverne's tutorials, but I have yet to grasp the all-over patterning, or to be able to copy designs on my own. Laverne's recent blog post about "Length" resonated with me. The sheer yardage of these bands is awe-inspiring. This piece is about 5 yards long, and it has been cut.
Here's another piece that lay near me and absorbed a lot of my attention. It's from Burma (aka Myanmar):
It's a narrow, long piece, used as a belt which is wrapped many times around the body. In the image above, the white section at right is the back of the weaving. Uh-huh. The red work doesn't show up at all on the back. How do they do it? No idea.
(ETA: Laverne has weighed in with her knowledge of the technique and this link to a tutorial - thanks, Laverne!)
And here's the full table, with Marilyn at the far end, standing and explaining. It was quite an overwhelming array.
Between that, and my recent experience with Pinterest, where I've encountered all manner of stimulating and inspiring textile images, I've been thinking I need to make my own collection more visible. I'd love to do as Marilyn did, and bring choice pieces to the weaving guild for show & tell. But I can also share and educate online - and that's what this website is for, after all. At first, with the "textiles" section, I had been thinking I had to get studio-quality, full-view images of each piece, and create a detailed entry with full information. However, I'm seeing the value of glimpses, detail shots and stacks of fabric on my own creative psyche, and I can easily share that sort of thing. So keep an eye on the textiles tab, and I will get to work with tidbits from my collection.
I say that tongue-in-cheek, because I am very far removed from what might be considered a production spinner, or weaver, or maker of anything. But the last few days have involved making things, and doing it more quickly than usual.
For example, I spun a whole skein of coils in one day, in preparation for teaching a textured handspun class.
That was pretty quick, but it's bulky, and was done on the wheel, so a skein in a day is not surprising. The other project I'm working on, though, is pushing limits. In the post "two spindles full", I traced the slow progress of Romney spun from hand-teased locks on Peruvian spindles. Those two spindles got plied, and made a nice, hefty ball of weaving yarn.
I was inspired to make a warp in mostly grey, using this nice Romney as a ground. It would be an Andean pickup piece, with bands of pattern in the center and on the sides. Accordingly, I starting winding a warp, picking how many rounds to use for the plain fields based on previous weavings. I wound 20 rounds for the border, then a pattern band, then 50 rounds, then the center pattern band, then ...29 rounds, and the yarn was finished. Hmm.
Given the limitation of my warping pegs, I'd already taken the first half off and laid it aside, so there the 29 rounds sat, warped and taking up space, waiting for 41 more rounds' worth of yarn. I got to work spinning, and spent most of the next day spinning what looked like a sufficient amount on one spindle, then on the second one. Plied them last night and wound on... anther 20 rounds. So 49 rounds sit there, awaiting the rest of the warp.
Many lessons rolled into one, here. I never weighed or measured the original yarn, so I had no idea how much more I would need - it's all just eyeballing, and clearly my eyeballing is not well developed in this area. Another lesson is that I should probably just keep spinning, making more than seems necessary, because the only problem then would be having more than enough. Another lesson has to do with this yarn not necessarily being ideal for backstrap weaving. I was enthusiastic about spinning it from the lock, and continue to enjoy that, but the crimp and fluff of this Romney make it challenging to spin with perfect smoothness. I will be grappling with this lesson as I weave, but I'm in that too-deep-to-back-out situation at this point, and I'm going to follow through.
As I consider the fact that I'm spinning in a few days the same amount I spun over a year or more, and mentally struggle with the prospect of spending another day or two devoted exclusively to spinning this one type of yarn, it makes me laugh to come across the photos of Ladakhi phangs and plying balls in my archive. This is what production spinning really is - the same thing, again and again until there is more than enough.
I'm offering a spindle spinning class in May, through the Port Townsend School of the Arts. It's a slow-paced, deliberately discursive path. I hope people will join me.
I also have things for sale on Etsy now - Tracy Hudson FIBERWORK. Much excitement!
It's all yarn at the moment, but some other types of items may be added....
I've only been doing this for three days, but it's been so gratifying. I discovered that Jude Hill has made certain workshops available for free through her website, and I began to explore Whispering Color.
The first day I listened and pulled out fabrics, and ended up with a very quiet, neutral arrangement. The phrase that stuck with me was "a reflection of the day." The day had been gray, and dull, inside my head as well as outside, and this exploration of neutral barely-colors was a good reflection.
The second day, I worked more with the spectrum of color, and seeing it against different grounds, finally pleased with one that seemed like light in the forest, making the colors sing clearly their different tones, the way they would if you saw them in nature.
I've made a point of actually sewing the sample each day, which takes it to a level of commitment. It makes me exercise my stitching skills, and the pieces look different when sewn. I'm also thinking about the color of the thread, since it shows just a bit.
Thinking about color in the form of cloth has allowed me to reacquaint myself with my fabric stash, which is now gathered together in a new space. The timing is perfect for exploring the options. Digging through the stash, I came up with a palette to match one that I recently painted in watercolor: the colors of Beckett Point, with its driftwood, grasses, evergreens, lichens, and weathered boats and houses.
Moving between paint and fabric could be very fun.... thinking about that, and meanwhile just enjoying this page of color swatches.
The third day was about colors in between, making for an even more dynamic rummaging and choosing. The colors jumped at me, playing and shifting and urging me to follow along. Jude talks about personalizing the color wheel, using what you like, and paying attention to your whims. It's a color journal, really, and such a valuable experience.
I have to go away from this for a few weeks, but I know I'll be back for more. I'm leaving everything as is, and already there are more ideas brewing.
The workshops are offered for free, but there is the option to donate, which I've done - such a generous offering from a great mentor! It's wonderful to hear her voice, and the way she opens up her own process is just that: an opening, a door one can walk through. Very grateful!
When I'm at home, I surround myself with handmade textiles. I also seek out any opportunity to see exhibitions or other showings of textiles. But it's especially fun to come across them unexpectedly, as when I wandered into The Artful Ewe, a yarn shop in Port Gamble, and found this vignette next to a comfy knitting chair:
The strip of supplementary warp is a long band, wound into a roll, and Heidi, the shop owner, informed me "It's a yurt band - not for sale." She has her own textile collection interspersed among the fibers and yarns throughout the shop, and I had to spend a long time just taking it all in. Anyway, the yurt band (sitting on top of a beautiful Bolivian weaving.... sigh!), was fascinating to me because it is so similar to the Bedouin sh'jarah method of warp substitution. The floats are loose on the back, in the same way.
I kept trying to get my mind around it: this kind of weaving, done in Central Asia?? Most of the yurt bands I've seen, and I've only seen pictures, are woven using what Laverne calls simple warp floats, where the colors of the warp alternate in plainweave, and warps are lifted on the front to make the design. There was one of those in The Artful Ewe, as well:
This is the technique I was working on earlier in the year, with aspirations of weaving a more complex design someday.
The bands were given to Heidi by a friend, and she had no information on their origin. So I'm left to wonder, and keep looking at my photos of the beautiful weaving.
Meanwhile, I now have my own shipment from Qatar to contend with, so there are plenty of textiles to ponder at home. Need to figure out where all these are going to live.
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!
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.)
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.
North American readers may be confused at this point, because robins look like this:
Robin, state bird of Connecticut - image from history.com
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.
Robin, in Wales. Image from bbc.co.uk
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.
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!)
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.
Robin, image from wallpaper-kid.com
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.
