eine Saite

I always feel better if I have a warp on the loom. Either patterned or plain, something waiting for me to rejoin it and put in a few rows or inches. It’s a continuity I want to maintain, and for a short while I’ve had empty loom bars, so I’m glad to be back in. This is an exciting exploration of a complex design, typical of Chinchero, Peru (the bit in the middle, at least), that I have never tried because I was trying to work my way up to understanding it. Learning patterns in my mind without charts is a deep aspiration, and has gone slowly. Then a friend designed, created, and released a great program for charting weaving on the iPad, and that gave me the impetus I needed to just work from a chart and weave something above my actual comprehension level.

How fun is that? My weaving on screen and IRL.

So I’m off and running. This is meant to be a phone case - another reason I just wanted to do it and move on. Speaking of weaving from a chart and above my actual level, I just finished another piece, which I’m writing about in more detail in the weaving blog realm of this website.

Handspun yarn, wide warp, confusing Central Asian pattern made for a challenging weave, but I’m very happy to see the end result.

Finished spindle bag, with Japanese fabric band, Peruvian chak-chak spindle

I didn't know I was going to focus so much on this weaving today, but it just sucked me in. I've been spinning for backstrap weaving for a while now, trying to build up a collection of different colors that are all spindle-spun and suitable for warp. Not a huge range of colors, but enough to choose from to make a bag-sized weaving.

I was in the midst of warping this handspun for a striped piece with Andean pickup bands. It needed to be warped in two bouts due to the width of the piece in relation to the size of my warping pegs - that's why I stopped in the middle. So today should have been just finishing up less than half of the warping. But, after doing that, and laying the two bouts side by side on loom bars, the second bit was clearly much tighter, so I did it again: 30 rounds of dark, some stripes, a pickup band of 8 pairs, border, then 20 rounds of green. Much better results. Got it heddled and felt good, apart from noticing a stripe I'd left out - ah well, it wouldn't be my weaving if there weren't something odd in there.

When I needed weft yarn, I was able to wind a shuttle from the green at the top of my discarded too-tight second bout. Then I started to consider patterns for the pickup, and was looking at Nilda Callañaupa's book on Textile Traditions of Chinchero. The book includes patterns that have been found in old textiles and reproduced or documented. One was a variation on the cutij/kuti or "hoe" pattern, an 8 pair design I've worked with.

Kuti is on the right (left band works with doubled kuti and variations)

The pattern in the book seemed to have the same number of pairs, so I lifted the 8-pair pickup section off the discarded bout of warp to test it out (the discarded bout of warp was coming in very handy!) After a very focused half hour or so, I had a replica of the double-bar kuti pattern, in 8 pairs. At this point I was very proud of myself.

My test band on the picture from Nilda's book.

Usually it takes a workshop with a teacher to get me to focus so intently on one thing all day, and to slow down and sample to figure things out. But today I got to have my own private workshop, and it was so gratifying to dig a little deeper, all on by myself (with help from Nilda, of course.)

This will be my side pattern, and I still have yet to choose the pattern for the center panel of pickup. We'll see what tomorrow brings.