le guin onion skin all of a piece

A rainbow halo around the sun, over the Pacific Ocean at Kalaloch. Here, because somehow I need to share it, and the focus of my wonder keeps shifting like this, from the vast and epic to the miniature and daily - expanding and shrinking, but continuously stimulating wonder and amazement. (And I saw another one again today while composing this post, a rainbow halo around the sun, following a rain storm on an otherwise warm and sunny day.)

Gathering promise from Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Undrowned and Lola Olufemi’s Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

A glimpse of the table. (Handspun continuous cord from cat’s cradle textiles, a bit of fiber magic)

Daily practice of writing, reading, painting, sitting and watching carries on. Interactions of poetry, paper, paint, birdsong, water, weather, war, wisdom and the lack of it, wrangled through arrangements of objects, words, and thoughts.

I’m reading Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home, a rich, indulgent tome of her brilliance and insight. So much resonance with the backwards-headed people, for those who know this work! I don’t have the capacity to get into it, really - the post title was a working title, but I like it so much I’m just going to leave it at that, with hopes of revisiting the LeGuin when I can be coherent. Let your own mind make the necessary connections in the meantime…

Having cooked two more stitched salvage sketchbooks with onion skins, I once again took an indulgent number of photos while opening them up. The unrolling is the most exciting part, because the colors are most saturated when wet. Each segment has its own serendipitous story to tell, and the unexpectedness of it makes each book a thrill (as I’ve mentioned before). Above and below are all unrolling images from the same two stitched books, as I gloried in the effects, both bright and subtle.

Spiraled to dry in my studio, they look like like a huge rose, and I hate to even move or fold them….

The books, these stitched rolls of paper that are colored and folded and written and painted, keep shifting and growing, in the manner of lichens: multi-textured, slow, subject to weather, force, accident…. One thing I love is the way paper changes when it gets wet, and the way these books can accept water, unlike most books. The texture will change, and things may get very blurry or mushy or require reinforcement, but that’s part of the never-ending assembly project that they are.

The focus on slow growth in silence and solitude is my way of being with the world right now. With offerings of awareness and acknowledgement to Arab women and everything being asked of them. It’s a couple of years old, but I’ve just seen a video highlighting Bedouin women, which features an interview with my weaving mentor from Doha. I knew her as Umm Hamad, but she introduces herself as Noura Hamed Salem Shehayeb in this film. It’s wonderful to hear her stories - we did not have enough language in common for me to hear them when I was there.

Working on a handwoven camel halter in Souq Waqif, Doha, Qatar, 2011

I believe the film accompanied an exhibit at the Qatar National Museum:

Qatar Museums film Woman on the Move

Spinning sheep’s wool in Doha, 2011

And another beautiful Arab woman whose work I know and admire was interviewed here (Instagram link - the Lebanese film maker’s profile on Vimeo is here). Widad Kuwar’s Tiraz home for Arab dress has been much on my mind, given the continuing destruction of Palestine. Memories of visiting Jordan and seeing the bounty of textiles ten years ago…. there was definitely a sense of needing to preserve and hold the knowledge, history, and beauty of these things, but it did not feel as desperate as now. Nothing from a few years ago feels as desperate as now - is that the right word? It’s a feeling of having the wind knocked out of me, a kind of continuous shock, where it’s impossible to accommodate the understanding of what is actually happening.

But, given that I have the unutterable privilege of peace, home, food, love, and solitude, I make use of it to grow on behalf of all of us, and as I wrote at the beginning of some time alone in February, “The details of things gather around me like patient friends, offering supportive gestures in their mute beauty.”

moss energy

What I love about the picture above is that I really can’t tell you what is going on there. I still don’t know yet. But the alchemical invitation of combined elements feels activated, there is potential for an emergence of some kind, however small and searching. That’s the nature of my studio space these days. It holds and pools and mixes together images, textures, acts of mark making and folding and tying - possibly generating amulets, or maybe the assemblage itself is the amulet, a protected and protective space to hold thoughts that wish to heal and halt destruction.

This rock also felt strongly of healing and wholeness. Such a wise and soothing design, so smooth and comfortable in the hand. I carried it along the beach, my first time back since an incident of local violence, and I left it there to mark the site with its calm assurance, another hope for healing and reparation.

I only feel capable of temporary offerings these days, momentary indications of care and tentative hope. I gain reassurance from these ancient forms that don’t need us humans, really.

A cedar showing me the beauty of a difficult life.

In preparation for a moss walk with the land trust study group, I was thinking about two aspects of mosses’ being. First, their extreme delicacy and sensitivity: with leaves only one cell thick, mosses have no protective layer filtering the outside world. The environment permeates their cells, making them highly susceptible to toxicity and air pollution. At the same time, many mosses are drought tolerant, can essentially go dormant until conditions are suitable to flourish, and when land has been depleted through mining or deforestation, they are often the first to come in and begin to find ways to grow. As some of the oldest plants on the planet, mosses have an ability to make soil habitable for other organisms. So they are simultaneously more sensitive, and more likely to create the conditions for communal thriving. These sound like the kind of characteristics the world needs, and it’s encouraging for those of us who have the experience of being too sensitive, feeling too much and too easily, to recognize that we also may have the capacity for encouraging better conditions for everyone, for starting over with small-scale care and attentiveness.

I roll it around in my mind as I visit the mosses and watch the birds and handle fiber: slow, gentle delicacy as teaching and strength.

Cotton from Traditions in Cloth, leather-whorl spindle by Allen Berry

Recycled paper stitched together and dyed with onion skins.

Maybe that’s where hope resides - with those of us who are unable to tolerate bombing of children, hospitals, libraries. Maybe our very intolerance, our inability to harden against this unacceptable reality, is what will create conditions where more of us can grow together.

A Bigleaf Maple offering shelter & embrace.

Small, persistent offerings feel small, but also crucial, as so much is being wantonly destroyed. Like the stitches in this Palestinian embroidery, creating meaning and preserving an attentiveness to life, to identity and place.

Palestinian cross stitch, found by chance in a local consignment shop. Someone tells me it has West Bank motifs from the Bethlehem area (thank you, Dot Ranch!) Along the right side are cedar/cypress trees of life.

affirmation of faith

Quilt made by Florence Mallory of Prescott, Kansas, circa 1960

It occurred to me as I sat wrapped in my great grandma’s hand-stitched Double Wedding Ring quilt, and again as I contemplated an intricate tribal embroidery from Gujarat - these hand crafted things are expressions of faith.

Sleeve fragment of an embroidered blouse, purchased in Kutch, Gujarat, India, in 1994

Not necessarily a particular religion’s faith, although handcraft is often aligned with prayer and a sense of service to the divine. What I feel from these textiles is faith in the craft itself - the belief that it matters that we do this, that something is made with a person’s full attention of skill and years of practice.

Lakota tent lining, hide and beads, Plains Indians Museum in Cody, Wyoming

The way people carry on making beautiful things in difficult circumstances shows me this faith, and also hope. It was almost an overwhelming feeling, seeing multiple collections of Plains Indians textiles in recent days. The care, attention, skill, and faith in oneself and one’s community traditions held in these objects, large and small, is breathtaking.

Beaded band, Indian Museum of North America, Crazy Horse Memorial

Horsehair bridle, Indian Museum of North America, Crazy Horse Memorial

Sewing/beading kit, with work in progress, strands of beads, and sinew thread, Plains Indians Museum in Cody, Wyoming

Even when exiled onto a reservation and given ration cards to receive food from the US government, people made beautifully decorated bags to carry the little piece of paper.

Beaded bag and ration card, Plains Indians Museum in Cody, Wyoming

This devotion to craft tells me it doesn’t matter who gets it (since so many people nowadays don’t), —that there is value in the doing, in the joining of heart and hands and materials, even if you’re all by yourself. That in making a thing, something is given and received, offered with love, in contrast to the hurry and press and hard bargaining that surrounds us.

Embroidery of nomadic Banjara people, purchased in India in 1994

The faith spoken by these exquisite offerings sustains me, and encourages me to keep offering my own stitched and woven and handspun affirmations.

winter plans

I’ve got big plans for the next couple of months. They do not involve any travel, but possibly lots of walking. They are not about getting out, but going in. Digging around in my house and studio and digging on what I find there. Given that I’ll have a decent amount of time at home (if all goes as planned,) I hope to share some of what I do and find. Like this little piece, for example, about which more detail in the Akha page (under the textiles tab - I know, lots of pages, that’s how it is around here. Kind of like my studio space.)

Akha pouch with seed beads and metal discs, mounted on stretched linen, hanging in my studio. Purchased in Chiang Mai, Thialiand, 1998

I’m in my burrow and growing my peace and skills, with the help of fiber and textiles and the many people around the world who have given of their skills, over time, to enrich us all.

Action in the studio ranges from the always-in-progress weaving, to hand stitching, to machine piecing a quilt, to reading and writing and collage and sometimes all of them together. I’ve been modifying an 1895 tome on women’s health as a form of ….. resistance, or therapy, or radical optimism? Somehow it feels right to mark out all but the most positive, affirming words in this book of pompous misogyny masquerading as scientific knowledge. And often, the happy words are very few.

Book page, collaged and marked, with the words “support future friends now” remaining visible.

Book page, collaged and marked, with “CHILD - life - life” remaining.

But that’s an occasional exercise - as with many situations, I find it more fulfilling to engage and uplift the things that move me rather than to try to block out all the enervating, maddeningly entrenched negativity and ignorance. So many excellent people are moving along with their important, responsible, loving and living work. Voices I value right now are Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tricia Hersey, and Reverend angel Kyodo williams, as well as my forever homey R.M. Rilke, whose Book of Hours I’m moving through very slowly in German, dictionary in my lap and helpful translations nearby.

about that string

A word about the string. Eine Saite, a string, is the title of this gathering place of  thoughts and images. It comes from a poem by Rilke, Am Rande der Nacht (On the Border of Night), which sets up the speaker, the person experiencing, as a string: 

Ich bin eine Saite,

über rauschende breite

Resonanzen gespannt.

 (I am a string, stretched over rumbling, broad resonances.)

The full poem and translation are posted in the about page. I recommend reading the German aloud, if you can come close to pronouncing it. The rhythms are wonderful.

RIlke loves a wide open space - field of Queen Anne’s Lace and big firs during the heavy snowstorm days.

It has appealed to me to have “A String” be the title of a website that is mostly about spinning, weaving, sewing, textiles. However, I’m feeling the need to admit what German speakers must already know - although have been too polite to bring up: the string in Rilke’s poem is a musical instrument string. The word in German would be different if he were talking about yarn, thread, spun fiber. Strings for instruments are usually made from sinew or metal - a different material entirely. So there you have it, I admit to knowing that the stretched string in the poem is not the same kind of string I have stretched across my studio for weaving.

Beginning of a walknut-dyed weaving. 10/2 cotton warp and weft, mill spun.

And yet. We are in the world of poetry, where meaning is specific and also deep, layered. Any string of any material can be stretched across rumbling, broad resonances. The strings of my warp contribute to the vibrations within a vast space (more so, if I’m weaving outside.)

Weaving linen outdoors last summer.

The poem culminates in the realization: 

Ich soll zilbern erzittern - I must silverly shiver! 

(My translation, my exclamation point) The person who is a string suddenly knows how to participate, how to create something that will cause “everything” to “live under me” - or as I interpret, to enliven in that space over which I am stretched. And this is another parallel - when my yarn is spun, and stretched, and woven, I silverly shiver. I choose my participation, that will resonate around me, through all the enlivened things. 

Handspun cotton catching the sunlight

This is elusive, but it has been deeply known to me since I first read the poem: that there is a way to be in the world, activating your own sound, evoking harmony, resonance, dance, light.

My writing slows as it becomes harder to make the words say what I understand from Rilke - but it’s there in the poem.

In Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows’ translation, they say:

A silver thread,

I reverberate:

then all that’s underneath me

comes to life.

My neighbor finds resonance in shaping found wood sculptures and suspending them.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time, and about other things Rilke… so many unwritten Rilke thoughts! But especially lately, I’ve thought about poetry and translation and what words mean, because it’s important for subversion, for questioning what we’ve always been taught.

I learned about and ordered this book, an interpretation of the Therigatha, delving only slightly into the stir that it caused around the question of whether it could be called a ‘translation.’ (The current subtitle, “original poems inspired by…” is modified, post-stir.) Without going into my own reading of the original Pali text and various officially sanctioned translations, I will just say I’m more interested in finding out what a poem can do for you, how it cam make you feel and possibly change. (And this version of the poetry of enlightened women does more for me upon first reading than years of referring to the literal translations.)

And I also tend to think that anyone reading poetry, even in a native language, is engaged in translation to some extent, because we each bring our own history of understanding to all words, and we cannot say or know what a poet “means” with a certain word, apart from how it affects us. (Ooh, intent and impact… there’s another thick topic.)

I truly hope to bring more poetry here, alongside the weaving, since they are intertwined in my body and mind. This pulling of myself in the two directions, from words and intellect to hands and technique, makes me feel that they are two ends of the same string, and that all these meanings are present and vital, if not for Rilke then for me, through the intersection of his words and my life.

weave on

As long as I have one, or two, or maybe more, weavings in progress, I feel secure in the knowledge that I have Something to Do. I can always put in a few rows or inches, especially if one of the projects is plain weave. I was happily, if slowly weaving along on the gold warp with a mishmash of weft yarns, destined to be several yards of 15” wide cloth for sewing, when another project suddenly took hold.

Double decker weaving. When you have one tie-up spot for larger pieces, they have to make way for one another. The gold warp is chained and secured at one point, so it can move side to side. I weave it while sitting in the rolling chair. The wool warp is secured on a loom bar, so it faces the tie-up (antique treadle sewing machine, that is) directly, and I sit on a cushion on the floor to weave it.

It all started with this Navajo churro fiber that Ameila G. was unloading before a big move. I happened to mention that I like that fiber, and a huge box came home with me. I spun the white and dark brown a few years ago, and the medium grey-brown just recently, a soothing pandemic spin. I had the skeins posed on my table to share a photo with my weaving friend.

Three shades of Navajo churro fiber, from the large stash I acquired thanks to Amelia Garripoli, spun and plied on my Louët S10 wheel.

Well, backing up, it all started when I had the idea to try to do a Bedouin-style weaving with the churro. Back in 2017, I started weaving the side panels - two strips that would mirror each other, with the patterning of al ‘ouerjan. The plan was to have a center strip with the shajarah supplementary warp technique, an improvised pickup which allows for the choice of dark or light color in each pattern warp in each shed. I’d learned the weaving methods while living in Doha, Qatar, through a combination of visiting Um Hamad, a Bedu/Qatari weaver in Souq Waqif, and consulting Joy Hilden’s book, which gave me the vocabulary to talk about the techniques with Um Hamad. I set up at home using my backstrap arrangement, rather than the ground loom or frame loom typical of Bedouin weavers, and while I wove a few practice pieces and made some projects with al ‘ouerjan, I only ever did the shajarah once, on a band which I later gave to Joy Hilden. So this idea for a larger weaving came from an urge to give “real” Bedouin weaving a try. What I mean by that is to use handspun wool of a heavy carpet weight, to do a warp-faced piece with multiple panels, and to use both types of supplementary warp technique. The pounds of churro fiber I had handy were just the thing.

In sending the photo to my friend, I then got out the side panels to show her what the yarn was for. And with everything sitting out and looking tantalizing, it was only a short step to winding a new warp. (This is why it’s important to have weaving friends.)

Brown and white wool side bands, and the three colors of yarn in the middle. Yeah, I can’t really figure out why the patterned bands are so different in these two, but I’m ignoring it. Symmetry is not my strong suit.

It had been so long (and had predated the sensible weaving notebook I now use) that I did not remember what length I had wound for the two warps. I decided, based on finished length, the most likely answer was “the full length of the table” - which is a standard unit of measure, at least in my studio.

Should I have put this behind a spoiler, for those who are made twitchy by the sight of a hectic warp? Sorry, this is my M.O. I wound in three bouts. I fixed tension issues in one set of white warps later, while getting set up on the loom bars. Joy’s book is open to some shajarah designs, to help me decide on the number of pattern warps to use.

For this supplementary warp technique, you wind one of each color held together for the full number of rounds equalling your desired pattern warps. I went for 30. Each shed thus gives all 30 warps, with the option to choose either dark or light for each one. Much improvisational freedom, with an emphasis on the smooth diagonal lines that are easy to achieve. The textiles I’ve seen seem to show a disregard for long floats on the backside, but I find myself designing in order to catch floats before they get too long. And as I wove, I realized this could explain the role of a certain type of framing I see in the pattern bands of Bedouin weavings. See Um Hamad’s work, below.

The very beginning - working out some kinks. A simple repeated hourglass pattern gives me a feel for the numbers and the pickup method, as I try to snug the warps closer together in the pattern section.

Um Hamad points out the patterns in a weaving. The rows of black diamonds seem to make boundary lines between designs, and would also serve to catch any long floats.

A weaving Um Hamad made in 2011, spinning and dyeing the yarn before weaving. Repeated rows of black diamonds again frame improvised sections of pickup.

The back of Um Hamad’s handspun piece, showing the floats in the shajarah section, and the bright orange, blue and red of the narrow stripes - dyed with packaged dyes from India, in a loosely plied skein. The yarn is plied tighter after dyeing.

Bedouin traditional looms have string heddles that are raised on props, with a shed stick behind them. The shed is opened in opposition to the raised heddles with a wide sword, or simply punched down, leaving the heddled warps raised. Raising my heddles with my hand and punching down the wool is a physically satisfying experience, getting me deeply involved with the wooly, three-dimensionality of my warp.

Heddles being raised, shed opening.

Having an improvisational design entices me to weave, with the promise of the unknown and the chance to experiment. This weaving has been a good place for me to settle during the past month.

More thorough explanation of Bedouin weaving as seen by me in Qatar, and lots of pretty pictures here.

Woven cloth with pickup design in the middle, grey stripes to either side, white borders that will join the white of the side panels. String heddles and shed stick behind. Heddled shed is open, design is picked up.

Souq Waqif rug arcade, Doha Qatar, 2011 Layered examples of different weaving styles.

madder, indigo, persimmon, cloth

So why all this knitting and spinning and weaving and sewing and stuff? Well yes, handmade clothes and fabrics are wonderful, but the truth is, many of us do this because we love handling the materials. Fiber, yarn, and cloth are sources of discovery and wonder, and so we’re forever coming up with new ways to explore with them and through them.

Ending up with reliable results is a sign that we are gaining in knowledge and skill, but getting there is often most of the fun - including the dreaming stage, the beholding of some material that compels us, either ineffably or viscerally. The Japanese shirting was doing that to me. Both the ochre version from which I made my petticoat, and this striped blue and neutral. They kept talking to me, insistently, requiring that I pay attention to them. I realized the striped one reminded me of indigo and persimmon, natural dye colors that are commonly seen in Japanese textiles.

I bought a remnant, again (when I can’t think of a concrete project for a fabric, I wait for it to be a remnant, then bring it home as a pet.) This sat in my basket, on view, for a while. Here it is with a Japanese indigo dyed piece my husband bought me while we lived in Japan (late 1990’s). It is loosely woven asa fabric - asa is a generalized term for native plant fibers, from what I can tell. The base yarn is colored with persimmon (kaki) and overdyed with indigo, in a way that involves folding and dipping.

Striped Japanese shirting and indigo/persimmon dip-dyed plant fiber cloth, detail.

Large scarf made of plant fiber dip-dyed with tapered horizontal stripes of indigo in alternating light and dark tones. Creased from being folded….

I found that I had enough for a sleeveless bodice, and began looking for a skirt. Enter one more beloved Thai sarong. This is apparently the year for me to use my Thai sarong fabrics. I wore this one quite a bit. It was a functional garment already, and had been sewn into a tube. When I put it next to the Japanese shirting and knew they belonged together, it struck me that this fabric also had a natural dye referent - it reminds me of madder and indigo. It’s not even a true batik, just a print, but I suspect that people dye and print commercial fabrics with colors that are traditionally pleasing, consciously or unconsciously hearkening back to natural dyes.

Print sarong, showing underside. Intricate batik-style patterns in shades of pink/brown and indigo blue, with black and white highlights.

Button band of sewn bodice, with 19th century China buttons in blue and white. These are my first machine sewn buttonholes, ever.

I don’t have to go far to find examples of madder and indigo among my fibers and fabrics. They are my favorites, and make their way into the stash with ease.

Madder-dyed wool spinning in progress, on a Peruvian spindle. I dyed the fiber in a workshop with Local Color Fiber Studio of Bainbridge Island. The weaving underneath I made with my rigid heddle loom, two shades of indigo cotton from Laos.

Working with these colors and fabrics is the joyful part - placing them next to each other, seeing how they communicate and what they have to tell me. Being able to wear what I make with the fabric, practicality meets delight. I made a sleeveless Hinterland dress which may serve as an undergarment until it gets warm out again.

Detail of dress, Japanese striped shirting on top, China buttons, Thai sarong on the bottom. Soothing blue and muddy cinnamon….

Another example of persimmon (painted onto stencil paper for use in stitch resist dyeing) and indigo (handmade paper made and dyed by Laura Mayotte.)

Natural colored flax yarn, spun by me, indigo dyed hemp yarn from Rainshadow Fibers, a Japanese bag made from plant fiber and dyed with indigo and possibly persimmon, but maybe walnut, underneath.

I’ve done that thing again, where I write about another topic and put it on a different page. Still thematic to the textile riches of my life, a contemplation of a camel trapping in the threads page.

sturdiness

Another couple of garments, or more.

I’ve been on a quest to make clothes that are suitable for yard work and walking in the woods, because on any given day I may suddenly start doing one of those things, and it can be inconvenient to have to change clothes first. So comfortable, warm layers that also work for outdoor work or adventure. I knew I wanted skirts. I love wearing skirts. The only problem with skirts is that they are often designed to not be sturdy, but flowy, or dressy, and such garments are liable to catch on things, and tear easily, and otherwise cramp one’s style in the forest. But there’s no reason a skirt can’t be a perfect forest garment, if made from the right fabric. So when my husband gave me some old khakis for the donation pile, my mind went ka-ching!

Plotting and scheming - my sewing notebook has the idea and measurements, fabric is being auditioned for pockets. I added the orange fabric by sewing one side to the khaki, then putting it on my body and drawing a line where the other seam needed to be to give me enough flare. Not very scientific.

Inverted leg of khaki pants, spread flat and bordered by orange cotton blend - half the skirt in side view, with drawstring, before pockets.

It so happened that a trouser leg, cut open and free from pockets, waistband and zipper, then flipped so the cuff is on top, is just the right size for the side of a skirt. The two cuffs nearly fit around my waist, and I just had to fill the front and back wedges with another strong cotton cloth. I had this orange stuff from Thailand - may be part synthetic, so I wasn’t in love with it, but for this purpose it was just right. Threaded a drawstring through the cuffs-now-waistband, and added huge pockets using some of my hand-dyed fabric (also unloved, in theory, but perfect for this job - it’s amazing how that happens.)

Side view of garden skirt, showing full inverted trouser leg panel, with large yellow & green pocket, discharge dyed with square grid stencil.

Back hip pocket with secateurs, taken while on my body, so not great. Pocket cloth is brown Thai sarong fabric, same as back of Lichen Duster skirt.

This immediately worked as a gardening skirt. All I had to do was add a back hip pocket, since my secateurs are hard to retrieve from the voluminous side pockets. What a revelation, that a pant leg works as a skirt panel. I hope Sharon Kallis is proud - it’s the sort of thing she would figure out. I would plan to do this again & again, except that this skirt will probably serve me for a good long time. It is hard to give away high quality fabric, though, so if more donation pants come my way, maybe in a darker color…..?

The second new garment is made of new fabric. When I saw the rust denim for sale at District Fabric, I knew it would be my next Sturdy Outdoor Garment. Priority wardrobe items for me are those I can throw on over top of whatever else I’m wearing. I am big on layering, and live in a place conducive to it. In the last couple of years, most of the clothes I’ve made are of the tunic/apron/jumper genre. (And I say jumper in the American sense, not the British sense of sweater or pullover.) This rust denim jobbie is what I grew up thinking of as a jumper. As you can see, it goes on over everything I’m wearing, in this case sweatpants and a wool sweater (a jumper over a jumper, wot?) And yeah, I’m really happy with it.

Rust denim jumper over sweatpants and neutral wool sweater, as worn indoors (over my basic house clothes, that is)

Huge pockets again, an enlarged version of those from the Odacier Elizabeth Shannon apron, which I’ve made three times now. For the dress itself, I started with a base of 100 Acts of Sewing Dress No.3, and made large armholes in place of sleeves - I did sew a mock up of the top section, to check the fit. This is such a great, warm, rugged outer layer. It’s exactly what I need and has been into the woods with me several times already.

Ok, this is a lot of clothing and sewing and me pictures, so here, have some clouds and sky.

Clouds and tree silhouettes over the bay and the low, distant mountains. A beautiful evening.

I gotta say, for everything I write about here, there are a dozen things I don’t write about. There are usually about a gazillion thoughts in my head that I would love to share, but the process of getting those into this “space” in a meaningful way is kind of clunky, and so there is usually less here than I intended to include.

Anyway, we’re still on the theme of making clothes. Another category of clothes I love is the underlayers. I’m happy when I can put something on over everything, or under everything, and I made an underneath layer recently, too. At some point during perusal of historical clothing and sewing videos, I saw the 18th century style of petticoat, which is made from two rectangles, with a split at the top, and tied from back to front, then from front to back on top of that. This struck me as brilliant, because cloth is not cut and shaped and yet, it can be sized large enough and gathered at the top to fit nicely. I am a big fan of rectangular cloth as garment, but in many cases, such as Southeast Asian sarongs, the fit leaves something to be desired on this body. I knew the 18th C petticoat would work, and I fully enjoyed the calm demonstration of its construction by Burnley and Trowbridge on YouTube.

Detail of the slit where the two halves join below the waistband. There is a small bar tack sewn at the base of the slit, instructions for which are included in the B & T video. This is one of my favorite details!

Super closeup of the tape, sewn to the pleated top edge of the skirt. I did all the basting recommended in the video, which gave an added sense of security. Color is more true in this image. The shirting looks ochre yellow overall, and is actually woven from dark brown, rust orange, and bright yellow threads.

I had two remnants of a beautiful Japanese shirting fabric that I bought for the admiration of it, not knowing what it would become. This is cotton, but it’s a tight weave, so as a layer, it adds warmth. I often wish for something underneath skirts or dresses, and like my other handmade garments, this is not part of a conscious outfit, but a needed element that will fit nicely who-knows-when (or possibly all the time.) The tape I was weaving a couple of posts ago was finished with enough length to make the back and front ties, and I stitched the entire thing by hand, just because. Half the reason I sew clothes is to work with the nice fabric, so sewing by hand adds to the pleasurable experience - and this was an exercise in honing my hand-sewing skills (that video really got me going - see captions.)

Apron pattern from Odacier on Etsy. I have another one of these, closed-back style, that I wear All The Time. It can be thrown on over everything for instant presentability and pockets!

Back of apron. I had fun centering the floral motifs of the sarong - and the floral border at the bottom was a serendipitous surprise.

Here’s a picture of me wearing the petticoat, under the Elizabeth Shannon apron I impulsively made from another long-treasured Thai sarong. See? The petticoat is going to go with everything. And this is apparently use-the-sarongs year. I’ve sewn no less than four into garments, so far. I know! I’m making tons of clothes! But it’s constructive self-soothing, and for the most part I own the fabrics already, or have long wanted the type of garment being made.

As the post title says, the point lately has been sturdiness. Each of these should last for years and years, and I’m not afraid to get out and do stuff in them. They can handle it, which is another reassuring aspect of this activity. Nothing like being able to make what you need, and knowing that it’s well made.

thoughts, revisited

A bit of context: I write in my journal a lot, and have since I was 10. I often like to go back and re-read past journals to see if I said anything personally noteworthy. Sometimes I tap back into ways of thinking that were helpful, and that I want to revisit and continue. The excerpt I’m posting today was written the end of March, when the pandemic experience was still relatively new. It was also prior to the sudden death of a very dear relative, which changed my outlook dramatically at the beginning of June. I developed a second layer of “before and after”, so it’s interesting to go back into that first layer and see how I was thinking.

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Pencil and oil pastel on paper

3/31/20: Already, for the last few years, I’d been trying to examine the system of valuation I was raised into, and this process continues in the midst of, and highlighted from various angles by, the pandemic. (Everything is now framed in terms of “before this”, and whether certain lifestyles pre-existed this situation or not. This is another reason writing has been difficult: everyone’s lens on oneself is now distorted in some way by the current, somewhat inconceivable, reality. And so to continue any prior current of self-examination, we have to make adjustments, calibrations to account for slippage of reality.) However, the pandemic seems to be mainly exaggerating things I was previously aware of and questioning. All the more reason to continue.

So, walking around outside my house spinning, I was thinking about the innumerable forms of valuation that come into our daily lives, and to what extent this grows out of a culture of measuring, comparing, competing, seeking productivity. Now, possibly more than before, there is a sense of needing to account for our time, to give evidence (on social media especially) of the things we are doing, which have accompanying valuations of healthy/not healthy, active/lazy, stressful/relaxing - along with the subtler nuance that distinguishes between indulgence and “self care.” It’s as if there is a spreadsheet (some actually have them, or bullet journals) that list and account the actions and inactions and where they fall within the overall plan for how to live. What I’m noticing is that while I can see this to some extent objectively, I have also internalized it, and part of my mind is weighing and valuing in spite of my resistance to it.

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Spider web sparkling with dew, spindly cherry branches and leaves behind, my house in the background.

There must be a term for this in the context of feminism or other struggles - the attempt to resist the system from within it, which is ultimately ineffective because the system itself has to be exited. One has to step out of the self-perpetuating cycle, and to extract its residue from one’s own way of thinking….

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Winding sunlit yellow handspun yarn off a spindle onto a reel, Afghani and Bedouin rugs in the background.

In concrete terms, I was thinking that if someone can report, “I went for a walk,” it carries more value than to say I was wandering around my yard spinning and standing there looking at things. But what this means is we have, in focusing on currency and valuation, we have taken away the value of that which cannot be valued. I already knew this, I’ve thought about it for ages re: textiles - the inherent benefits in an activity are diminished as soon as one tries to commodify them. And it’s this very effort, this idea that it even needs to be measured, valued, etc, that eats away like acid at people’s capacity to engage with the immeasurable.

(weaving content also posted, on this page)

time of two robes, part 2

I call the shelter-in-cloth robe Inhabit, and I call this one Flourish. This one, made from the Sew Liberated Lichen Duster pattern, is more suited for showing off, going out, being seen.

I challenge anyone to resist twirling in this duster.

May still have the stay-at-home face, but I’m working on that.

While I love to wear a big huge square or rectangular garment, there is something to be said (in this my home culture), for the slightly more fitted and tailored look. I mean, here’s a beautiful huipil that I wear an awful lot. I got it at the weaving guild auction, knowing it was handspun cotton, and later found out from Charlotte Kwon at Maiwa that it’s from Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Oaxaca huipil stack, Maiwa collection, Vancouver, B.C.

Backstrap woven cloth, being normally not very wide, is suited to big huipils, ponchos, and mantas made of panels joined together. This one is three panels wide. It feels so secure to be completely swathed in handspun cotton, giving away no hint of actual body shape. I dream of hanging out with these women in Chicahuaxtla, and trying out the floor-length huipil. (Instagram link, because otherwise I’m only getting Pinterest, and I’d rather send you to Ana Paula Fuentes.)

But the Lichen Duster! It’s a completely different approach, very distinctively shaped pattern pieces, meticulous and fascinating construction. It’s kind of the opposite of the Cut my Cote zero waste method - however, I did discover that the pieces are narrow enough (apart from sleeves and upper back) that one could use handwoven fabric of 14” wide to make most of them. Exciting! Food for thought!

And since I intended to use fabric I already owned for this first duster, it was a process of matching fabric to pattern piece, based on size. I started by printing and cutting out the pattern pieces (size 12, for roominess,) so that I could see exactly what was needed. I rummaged around in my bins, prioritizing some Indian khadi (handspun cotton) first. I have a large but dwindling amount of this, but individual pieces are not all that big. At the time of collection, I was buying a meter or so of each, just going for variety not quantity. I actually had to piece the two front khadi panels to get long enough sections - those center front pattern pieces wrap behind the neck to form the collar, so they’re long.

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Close up of two khadi fabrics. The upper left piece is used in my duster (from the pockets to the hem, side front.) The other one plays a bit part in the Inhabit robe.

As soon as I saw the dark brown Thai sarong in my bin, I knew it had to be used for the gores, at least. Since living in Thailand in 2004, I’ve used, worn, and given away a number of different sarongs, but this one I always held onto as fabric, because it’s so striking. The audacious color combination - deep chocolate, with a rusty dark cinnamon brown, and bright fuchsia, black, white, and taupe - it had to be featured someday. Letting those flowers peek out at the base of the skirt sounded perfect, and as it happened, I needed this for the center back skirt as well, since other fabric pieces were not big enough.

A little more rummaging produced a very large piece of cloth, one I’d dyed myself during the year I studied with Stanley Pinckney at SMFA in Boston. I want to link you, but Stanley is not an online-presence kind of man. Utterly brilliant as a teacher, he created an ideal space for cooking up far-ranging ideas, through the medium of Adire, resist dye techniques as practiced by the Yoruba of western Nigeria.

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Triptych made in Stanley’s class, using the eleko technique of wax resist. The wax was applied with wood blocks, which I cut and made myself. Stanley convinced me to make a “negative space” block, with the pattern removed from the block, to add depth and texture to the resist dyed design. The middle panel has an underdye of elo, the technique of binding and wrapping.

I could go on indefinitely about Stanley and his class, and his shipshape studio, and the slides he showed weekly of all his former students’ work, and the way he asked, “Are you plotting and scheming??” with a wicked grin on his face. Rarely have I encountered such unequivocal support and such systematic, organized teaching by someone passionate, focused and full of love for the work. So when I put this eleko fabric into this robe, it speaks all of that. It reminds me of how much I loved that studio, and how hard I worked that year. This piece was not ‘finished,’ but in its current state of pale lavender with sage green and the blush of pink, it somehow harmonizes with the fabrics I’d chosen. And it was plenty big enough for sleeves and (almost) upper back, so that brought me to here.

I laid the fabrics out, mimicking the robe shape, and was satisfied that this would work, visually. After that came the focused effort. It was remarkable how this project fit my needs at this stage of pandemic, isolation, mourning, outrage, and so on. Earlier, I needed the amorphous pulling together of cloth that was the Inhabit robe - no plan, just basting and adding stitches, solving problems in a loose, musing, stream-of-consciousness way, knowing I could always backtrack and take stitches out. At this point, I was ready for some step-by-step, intricate puzzle work. I’d read the pattern, looked at the tutorials, and even sampled all the different seams that might be used, so I was fluent and prepared. There was something appealing about doing everything just right, honing skills and being meticulous. It engaged my mind in an all-consuming way, which was a different sort of productive ‘escape,’ or let’s say alternative to the spiral of worry, despair or frustration that daily threatens. Because I don’t think making clothes is running away from anything - more of a running towards the priorities I wish to see reinforced. This project made me learn, think, and do in a very satisfying way.

Intersection of khadi and sarong, at pocket and front gore. The pocket construction is so cool.

And a secret, hidden fabric on the inside of the pockets - a good way to stretch the featured ones, since this part is folded in. I used a lighter weight fabric, to reduce the bulk of pocket seams.

I used FOUR different seams on this baby: flat felled for the back of the skirt, bound seams on the front, French seam to join back skirt and upper back, and faux-French for the sleeve join. Only a small amount of hand-sewing, on those sleeve seams, otherwise my trusty machine was a trooper.

And as I was saying at the beginning, a more tailored look. This pattern is so classy. I was pretty sure it would allow me to use a variety of fabrics while avoiding a radically eccentric, motley effect. I wanted it all to hang together and be convincing, and the structure helps with that. The collar, for example. With interfacing, the collar and front edge are nice and crisp. I didn’t even mess with the collar during this photo shoot - it behaved itself without intervention. Belted, this is a functional dress, suited for working with my hands and puttering around, which is key. I don’t need garments I can’t work in. A scarf was handy for immediate belting, and I’m working on a backstrap woven belt, using some sock yarn as warp.

Well, that’s about it. I may have forgotten things I wanted to say, and please ask questions in the comments if you have any. I’m quite sure I’ll be making this again - there are so many possibilities. Oh, the front facing cloth was over-dyed with walnuts, back in May. I collected them last fall and let them steep all winter long (the neglect-on-the-deck technique.) Shown below is my little Dye All the Things Walnut fest. The deflected double weave is a scarf made by Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, an esteemed weaver, teacher, and good friend. It was a snowy white, which was beautiful but I’d never wear it. Now it’s ready-to-wear, and will go with my Flourish duster! And hey, it’s almost time to gather more walnuts….

One more thing: if you live in the United States, please check that you’re registered to vote, please vote, and if you want to help ensure the process, here’s a website called Power the Polls.

inspiration intermission

Yes, it’s an overused word, inspiration, but I encounter it and rely on it, and seek to foster it as much as possible with regard to the realm of people who make things with love and devotion and goodwill. Lots of ands, and be warned there may be run-on sentences, too. This being an intermission (between the two robes, of course), it’s loose and unpredictable and does not adhere to rules of composition.

What matters to me is that people keep making things, high quality things, with their hands. It’s very important to me that I keep doing this, and keep learning and improving my skills, and I find that seeing other craftspeople, especially master (consider that word ungendered) craftspeople, is some of the most valuable food for this ongoing effort.

Josep Mercader weaving with willow. Vancouver, BC, 2014

Whoa, that took a while, finding that photo. Will try to stay on track and keep the topic focused. But Josep Mercader, the Catalan basket weaver, was one such person, observing whom I felt encouraged and fulfilled. It doesn’t matter whether I’m interested in weaving baskets - although I did make two willow trays that day, and developed a strong appreciation for willow as a material. It’s the work of hands, the mastery of those materials, that inspires and gives food for my own work.

Ok, that reminds me - here’s another one. This dry stone wall, being built in Kansas City last summer under the direction of Andy Goldsworthy. I got to watch the wallers work, and I could have stayed there all day. Again, it was that certainty, the confidence of people who know what they’re doing and enjoy doing it well. Somehow, there’s a connection between us as craftspeople.

Yes, that wall is walking down the steps. Do check out the link - every phase was beautiful.

Which brings me to the thing I wanted to talk about: the architect Abdel Wahed El-Wakil. By chance, I got to hear him speak, and see his work in the slideshow that cycled during his talk. It was in Doha in 2011, at a seminar hosted by the Qatar Foundation, and I don’t even remember why I ended up there, but catching Professor El-Wakil’s talk was one of those lucky, unrepeatable chances Doha tended to offer (others included seeing Venus and Serena Williams play against each other, and seeing Angelique Kidjo live, both of which were accessibly priced events - but I digress…)

The talk in the link may address some of the same points - I haven’t listened to it, but I’m happy to see from it that his work in Qatar went ahead. Someone was smart to choose him. The topic, using traditional materials in contemporary construction, is dear to his heart. He finds steel and concrete harsh and inappropriate, unsustainable in both their finished state and their creation. Traditional materials, those that are locally available in the Arab world, require and sustain traditional skills. So that when you build with them, you are supporting an integrated network of crafts.

He was speaking directly to me, addressing so many questions that were coming up for me about how to support traditional textile making - noting that crafts don’t survive in isolation. The spiritual, communal, and economic aspects all have to be involved. The work needs to be part of people’s lives, their character, their community. He spoke of the craftsperson’s generosity and nobility, that this person gives out of love. One of my notes says that man discovers his character through craft, and that manual work has been scientifically proven to be therapeutic.

The whole time he was speaking, a slideshow of his work was projected behind him, cycling through more than once. I kept trying to sketch certain arches, they were so serene and imperfectly beautiful, like a natural feature. I have never been able to find those same images, but his buildings all have a serenity, an integrity, that speaks through the lines, the shadows, the light, and the muted voices of earthy materials. I was utterly transported by this presentation, and felt uplifted as a person who works with my hands.

[Update! The arches that I kept trying to draw are from the Island Mosque in Jeddah, and the image is in the talk linked to El-Wakil’s name above - at 33:24. I took a screenshot for myself, but don’t want to put the image here because it would violate his copyright. Other stunning imagery throughout, especially at 27:45.]

A mosque built in Johannesburg, designed by El Wakil. He said that while people work, the Quran recitation is playing, so that the building is a spiritual process for all those involved.

Detail of same mosque, 2015

After the talk, I made a point of going up to him because I wanted to shake his hand, and I said only, “I am a craftsperson!” I felt full of honor, and he acknowledged my statement with happy confirmation.

I went looking for my notes on this experience because I have an urge to create, through reading and writing and gathering, an edifice: a multi-entranced, open-air dwelling place of the mind that would attract and welcome travelers walking similar paths. And in my imagination, it is something like the structures designed and built by El-Wakil. Clean lines and natural tones contrasting with the blue of sky, arches allowing a flow, and exchange, a flux of content. Nothing fixed and rigid here, except the commitment to keep learning and thinking.

time of two robes, part 1

Back in April (insert joke about how long ago that was), Jude Hill had this concept of ‘shelter in cloth as place.’ A compelling idea. I haven’t been hand-stitching much lately, but was drawn to the project of finding some cloth and living with and in it. I have plenty of cloth worthy of that task. I thought of the word inhabit.

This is the robe, Inhabit

This is a Lichen duster - will post more soon!

Jude’s paper doll measuring method and rectangle base provided an easy way to get started.

This post, where Jude plays with the plain rectangle as robe base, and all its many possibilities, gave me a way in. My own lifelong fabric stash provided the rest.

The robe was built from the inside out, because the first cloth I knew I wanted to live in was silk charmeuse dyed by Laura Mayotte, aka indigonightowl. It was in a gift packet years ago, and I’d always wanted to wear it close, but hadn’t come up with the right garment. So this piece became the inner lining, embracing my shoulders and back, full of the good energy of indigo and friendship.

You’d need to feel this - it’s like water, so soft.

A robe! A cloth with neck opening, tra-la…

The main outer rectangle is more silk. I know, so indulgent, all this silk. But I owned it already, this time from my art school dyeing course with Stanley Pinckney, who required us to work huge, practicing resist dye techniques on 5 x 8 foot pieces of cloth, in order to immerse and become proficient. I had a large piece of silk shantung that was dyed with a wonderful color - Procion MX “Pearl Grey”, which turns mauve on this silk, overlaid with a couple of long stripes. Like Laura’s indigo piece, this cloth was already soft as if worn for years, mellowed by the dyeing process. I took Jude’s advice and tried it on from the earliest stages.

I immediately basted these fabrics together, and they let me know right away that this was good.

Cutting open the front from the neck down.

The next thing I knew for sure was that the front would cross over in the Asian style, and Hmong batik hemp would be the collar. The extra piece for the front was again silk, from a dye workshop at the first fiber festival I ever attended, in Sedalia, Missouri. We used resist and stamping techniques with natural dye extracts (I forgot the teacher’s name but she used to own Table Rock Llamas in Colorado Springs.) These precious and unique fabrics had rested in my storage bins for years, awaiting their time. The Hmong batik came from the night market in Chiang Mai, Thailand, around 1998. Well-worn and still pleated from its life as a skirt, this cloth is not only soft and strong, but full of the skill of ages.

I stitched the long seams with the machine, but for the collar I worked by hand. Dwelling with this robe meant slowing down, which was part of the appeal. Of course the world in general was slowed by the stay-at-home orders, but my mind still buzzed, and I was not inclined to sit still. Once I started the robe, I found that it gave me pleasant problems to solve, questions and puzzles to occupy my mind deep in the night, a welcome change from random worrying and wondering about questions with no answers. I’d lie there and think about how to attach a button, or what fabrics might be best for the next step. Basting and hand sewing also gave me the chance to admire these fabrics which had been dormant for so long, like the glorious Japanese printed silk I used for the lower half of the lining.

I put a button on both sides, so it can be worn inside out.

The stitching and patchwork has gone slowly, after the initial rush of choosing and assembling the large pieces. I’ve added pockets (obviously essential, as soon as I started wearing it), and select bits of special fabric, even thoughts and hopes.

Another sample of Laura Mayotte’s indigo work became a medallion on my shoulder.

Embroidering a word makes you think about it more.

For the back of my neck, a place of vulnerability I want to transform.

This one is certainly not yet “done”, and I don’t know if it will be, ever. I’m sure there will always be something else to stitch. It’s also unrefined - very little of the stitching is as precise or tidy as this embroidered label. Some of it feels almost desperate - but such are the moods flowing through and around me lately. The main guiding idea is still to inhabit the cloth, and the robe is serving that purpose, welcoming me to wrap up on a cool morning. I reinforced the lower back lining with Japanese cotton, wanting some strength in there for outdoor sitting.

This robe may be silk, but it’s not meant for disengaging from the world. I wear it like anything else, for wandering in the wooded garden, for spinning and general household puttering. It is a stay-at-home garment, but that’s not the same as stagnant. It’s a reminder that the skill of my own hands can keep me company and guide a troubled mind, while reinforcing a supportive place in which to dwell. In my wanderings I have gathered and made these fabrics, and now that I’m staying home for a while, I inhabit them.

Basting the layers allowed me to keep wearing the robe as it was made. Sleeves of handspun cotton khadi from India, which are shaped because the fabric was cut for pant legs.

And yes, I did say two robes. I made a Lichen Duster - and it’s done, too! Shown up at the top of the post. But it deserves its own post with lots of photos. Coming soon….

feet

Finally, I have another warp on the Katu loom - the foot-tensioned backstrap loom which I acquired and learned to use from Keo and Mone Jouymany in Luang Prabang, Laos. As with other backstrap “looms”, it is a collection of specialized sticks, but the way it is warped and operated is different enough from my standard backstrap weaving practice that I had to work up to it. This is the fourth time I have tried this type of weaving, and I can possibly say I see a little improvement in my handling of the loom and the circular warp.

Warping with two-stranded balls of fine cotton from the market in Luang Prabang

The circular warp is wound directly onto the loom bars, using a frame of 2 x 4’s. The string heddles are added as the warp is wound. Preparing the 2 x 4’s and setting this up were a necessary part of the process of incorporating this type of weaving into my life. Last time, I warped using a wooden ladder, which sort of worked.

I was thinking about how the foot-tensioned style of loom developed in areas where people are often barefoot, due to climate and culture (southern China and the peninsula to the south, and islands in the region such as Taiwan.) This barefoot life gives the feet enough habitual dexterity to work the loom. Going around in shoes all the time limits sensory awareness, as well as foot dexterity. And somehow Western civilization decided that less use of the feet equalled intellectual advancement - an odd equation. Even now, having foot and toe dexterity is something that startles adults in modern cultures - it is the reserve of small children, hippies, and indigenous people pre-contact. We no longer use the word ‘savages’, but the uneasiness with bare, wide, skilled feet persists.

Tim Ingold observes in his book Being Alive that European historical and philosophical separation of the upper and lower parts of the body, with the mind in the head and to some extent the hands, has led to shod feet which are mere mechanical extensions, best for marching, pumping, treadling. Which brings us back to modern loom development, and the increasing mechanization of what the legs do, keeping the focus of skill in the hands.

The typical, unskilled foot shown here, in my first attempt to use the Katu loom. The default for those of us who grow up wearing shoes is to brace with the feet, as if the loom bars are pedals. My toes don’t even know they’re supposed to be involved. (Ock Pop Tok Living Crafts Centre, Luang Prabang, 2013) You can see this stance in The Weaving Sisters’ students in their Instagram and Facebook photos. Mone and Keo do a great job of coaching awkward Western students through the use of their loom, but we all seem to start like this, with feet planted as if on the ground.

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Compare with Keo’s feet and toes, which are fully engaged in the work - not simply applying force, but holding, manipulating, and controlling the tension of the loom bars. In this video, you can see that her feet are continuously making micro-adjustments as she works, then completely changing position to loosen the tension when the heddled shed is opened. Her toes work separately to hold the bars in different ways. It’s so cool to watch!

I had originally been thinking only of the practical, climate-related realities of loom design. Backstrap and ground looms persist in cultures that spend more time outdoors, with foot-tensioned looms (necessitating bare feet) in the warmest of those regions. Meanwhile, Europeans in colder climates developed warp-weighted looms, usually found inside the remains of buildings in archaeological sites. Then of course it was in Europe that treadled machines took off: spinning wheels, floor looms, eventually sewing machines. Asian spinning wheels appeared earlier, but were turned by hand and used a driven spindle, as they still are in many places, such as in Kashmir for fine fibers, and Laos for cotton.

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Cotton spinning in Laos, using a hand-turned driven spindle wheel (and recruiting the foot to hold the wheel in place.) (Ock Pop Tok Living Crafts Centre, Luang Prabang, 2013)

The reason this matters to me is that I want to use my foot-tensioned Katu loom, so I’m keeping my feet bare as much as I can, and trying to move and exercise them in a way that restores some foot and toe dexterity. One of the points Ingold makes is that the habitually shod foot is not anatomically different from that of the lifelong barefoot person. They just develop differently based on constriction or freedom, lack of toe use or the reliance on toes for additional work. I’ve seen enough feet in India, Laos and Thailand to demonstrate the range of possibilities of foot shape based on lifestyle. And the way I’ve seen weavers not only in Laos but also Qatar recruit feet into the work shows a clearly different attitude from those of us stuck in shoes. The feet are accessible and available, and can be relied upon for assistance (shoes may be worn, but they’re easily and quickly removed, so that the transition to bare feet is not hampered).  Laverne had a nice post about working with feet a while back, which included some of my notes about Keo. Of course with the Katu weaving technique, feet are essential, and this is what drives the whole inquiry and physical effort on my part.

Getting my toes into the game. Slightly less awkward, fourth time around….

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You want to know about that gorgeous piece lying underneath my current weaving? Keo wove that, and I bought it soon after I first met her. We had a photo session with Mone, shown here. It’s usually draped over a table, but I’m using it to wrap my weaving when I roll it up - maybe it will add good vibes from my teachers. If you’re not familiar with Katu textiles, all those white bits are beads, embedded with the weft yarn. I’m still working on my basic weaving skills before attempting much beading. For more of these sisters’ amazing work, look for The Weaving Sisters on FB or IG (linked at the beginning of this post), or if you find yourself in Luang Prabang!

For now, I want to avoid the whole West vs. the rest trap, and simply think about how skill develops, how there is hope for anyone who uses the body assiduously, with trust. Somehow along the way many of us have been taught not to trust our bodies (thus, the buy-all-the-tools approach.) There’s a reluctance, in extra-traditional learning (by which I mean learning skills without, or outside of, a community of handed-down, traditional methods), to believe that the hands, feet, or whole body can change over time, can acquire skills as an adult. As adults, we tend to think “I can’t do that” is a true statement, case closed - whereas if a child says the same thing, we encourage her to keep trying, knowing that “can’t” may be temporary. It can be grown out of - but also grown into. Too often we are given a pass as adults, provided with excuses. And of course, we each have our own physical limitations, but functioning limbs and appendages can be trained to work in new ways. As I challenged myself to pick up a pencil with each foot, one after the other, I remembered Christy Brown, the artist featured in the movie My Left Foot, who drew, wrote, and painted with only the one working limb.

A woman spinning wool in Doha, Qatar (2011) uses her toes to hold a large distaff, freeing both hands to spin.

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Toes are good for holding Peruvian spindles while winding a plying ball, too.

The fascinating thing is that western man (and I do mean “man,” since that’s where this agenda is coming from,) would deliberately cripple himself and then call that the ideal form - this limited, narrow, pale and soft foot with useless toes. And yet this is just what western civilization does again and again - cut off options, and then declare that this limited, narrow way is the way, in fact it’s the pinnacle of achievement. Ok, I did not avoid the trap, and I’m stuck in an epic eyeroll, but when I’m done I’ll get back to flexing my toes and weaving on my foot-tensioned loom.

Since this is a circular warp, there is an unworked layer of warp threads underneath the working shed. This also means the tension of the warp has to be correct at the winding stage - something that still needs much work, in my case.

fundamental

An excerpt from The Late Homecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, by Kao Kalia Yang

Grandma liked to work by the window in the natural light. Sometimes she mended her skirts…. Sometimes she used her scissors with the long handles to cut plastic bags from Rainbow Foods, from Sears, from Kmart, from Wal-Mart,... the white “Thank You” bags from the Asian grocery stores, into long strips of light brown, mostly white, sometimes red and green. In the last years of her life, she would spend hours before the window twisting the plastic strips into ropes, carefully massaging the lengths of cut plastic into the exposed, wrinkled skin of her leg. Wearing her thick reading glasses, she spent her days making bags and bags of twisted plastic ropes. She said that there were always uses for ropes in life, things to tie together.

Adding twist to strips of plastic bread bags with a Bulgarian spindle. I did this about a year ago, trying to quit wasting so much plastic. I wanted to crochet bags from it, but then would need to learn crochet.

Such a fundamental process of skill, fiber, material, joining. Someone who cannot not work with her hands, make useful things. It got me thinking. Some of us have been focusing on the fundamentals for a while now.

Like Sarah spinning coffee filters

Sally breeding sheep and cotton

Neanderthal 3 ply plant fiber cord

Jude moving from old bed sheet to temple robe

Abby explaining traditional irrigation

Spindle made from half an avocado pit and a stick. Spinning cotton from a pill bottle.

Handmade bamboo reed - sleying with commercial cotton warp acquired in estate destash.

The essence of who we are, as people, can be seen in our use of fiber. We who have distanced ourselves immeasurably in 150 years from these processes of hands, from the knowledge that grows from handling plant stems, pods, cocoons, locks of wool, wriggling lambs --- from the intelligence inherent in managing various sticks, knowing their size, weight, heft, details of purpose and potential --- how many of us have tools that are worn into softness by our hands’ continuous use? Not many, in the industrialized world. I don’t - I’ve only been spinning for 15 years and weaving for 10, and I use lots of different spindles and sticks, not the same ones daily.

Flax singles on vintage Bugarian spindles….. need more practice with this.

We can look at a culture, at the clothing and use of fibers for multiple layers of shelter or containment, and know how these people relate to their environment, how the lifestyle developed in a way that honors the processing of fiber into cloth or basket, net, bag, rope, blanket, house wall or roof. The expressions of textile making speak the essence of a traditional community.

Sweater from a Spinner’s Eden Farm fleece - a CVM/Romeldale ewe named Glenda. Bow fleece sale, Washington. Whitehorse sweater pattern by Caitlin Hunter, modified.

The modern world’s depletion can be likewise observed, in the lack of understanding and skill in fundamentals of fiber - in the assumption that clothing is a ready-made thing to be purchased, along with bags, nets, rope. Fiber needs are manufactured at a remove, by machine, with minimal human intervention, and the only relationship the mainstream modern person has with cloth is as a consumer, who chooses using money.

Money and the abstract ‘economy’ have come between humans and cloth, driving a wedge that separates us from the knowing of hands. As industrialization progressively took humans out of the equation of cloth making, even a weaver became someone who operated a complex machine, and understood not how to work with fiber and yarn, but how to troubleshoot the machine.

Hand carded Shetland wool rolags, from a Marietta Shetlands fleece. Bow fleece sale, Washington.

Getting our hands back onto the fiber is crucial. It’s the only way to really learn. Touch, handling, and practice inform the neural pathways that give us skill. It is the way back to knowing.

It starts with picking up a stick.

Coyote brown cotton from Fox Fibre, spun on Mexican spindle made by husband/wife team (found through Cloth Roads.)

Spindles made by friends, cotton and wool/silk handspun, Gee’s Bend quilts, Indian and US handmade wooden vessels.

There’s an essay in here somewhere, waiting to happen. But at this point, it’s just a collection of thoughts, piled in with some images, in hopes of taking your mind toward the small, important, hands-on things.

a little rant

This rant, or maybe I should say “response,” will be held on the ‘threads’ blog page (textiles tab), because that’s where I want it to be stored. It has to do with assumptions people make about backstrap weaving, and the pervasive ignorance that Western academics keep generating. It is a backstrap weaver’s rant/response, and an informative one (with footnotes!), so join me.

Evidence of backstrap weaving. A ridiculously long warp. Wish me luck.

sakiori pictures and unrelated thoughts

Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent,

which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape,

to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why.

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

My sakiori (behind) with a traditional Japanese piece.

I read Annie Dillard and feel urgent, often. Her sense of duty is compelling, and it motivates me. But it motivates me to very minimal actions, since the imperative is, as I’ve mentioned before, to pay attention. To look, to see, to witness. In another passage, she writes of seeing a bird dive in free-fall before deftly landing on the grass: everyday, commonplace, and extraordinary. She concludes that “beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

So more often than not, her words compel me outdoors, as do Mary Oliver’s poems or Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essays on our participation in this world. Participating, as a seer, a person trying to have what Rilke called “the right eyes,” is a full-time occupation. Unless we get lazy and neglect our duties, which is easy to do. Easy to get pulled into online discussion or news, easy to binge-watch something as an escape from the arduous act of thinking. I try to increase the time away from such distractions (unless the online stuff is truly feeding a worthwhile train of thought, which happens.) I turn to Ursula LeGuin and her mother’s wonderful writings about Ishi, their tragically famous friend. I read David James Duncan and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tim Ingold and Dr. Leticia Nieto. Most recently I read Elaine Pagels Why Religion?, a gift from my father-in-law who, as a Biblical scholar, has always been a fan.

They are all pointing down a similar road, leading away from colonialism and the old, destructive narratives that I somehow grew up with. I’ve been trying to dismantle that ideological box for a long time, and I keep finding new tools. But it is an uphill trek. For every sentence I manage to write here, there are countless thoughts and potential words swimming around, uncaught and fleeting. At any rate, I’m trying.

The sleying process. Reed is 8” wide, 22epi. (Ok, this photo was in the last post, but here it is again.)

My first project with the smaller bamboo reed that I made at home, on my own, is a sample of sakiori, a weaving made from torn up fabric. The weft is made of strips of kimono silk fabric. I’ve been preparing the strips for some time, and this is the warp I impulsively wound when I arrived home in December (last post.) It wove up quickly, and was finished in time to show friends in mid-January.

As with most of my weaving thus far, it is nothing more or less than an attempt to make a certain type of fabric, to see how it might be done with my backstrap loom situation. I’m pleased with the result, am interested to work with finer strips of fabric, and do not know what I will “do” with this piece at the moment.

Here’s the setup. Don’t be confused by the rolled up weaving on the floor beneath (extra sticks at the top of the photo.) This one has lease sticks, a fat shed stick, string heddles, two swords and a reed. I had to beat with the sword rather than the reed to get this packed nicely.

Need to work on tidying up that selvage, apparently… (actual Japanese weaving on left)

home again

Whenever I come home from being away, I tend to re-assess, to inventory my projects, ideas and materials. I need to go around and touch things, fluff the space, remind myself of what was going on. At the same time, I tend to be most open to doing something completely new during this re-entry phase. This was the case yesterday. I’m home, only for a week, with warps on the looms, fiber on the wheel and spindles, and plenty of things in some state of generalized progress. But as I moved through my studio space, every corner, bin, and shelf called to me with fresh voices, things that wanted to jump the queue and happen now.

Glancing at these papers in a baskets, I had the urge to use them all, immediately.

I see papers and paints and pencils, and itch to pick them up. Then I see fibers lurking in a bag and start to think about enticing new combinations.

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Wouldn’t these look great together? Recent acquisitions from Abstract Fibers and Abundant Earth. (I seem to have lost the ability to resize photos in this website, so bear with me as I go from too big to too small.)

What I ended up doing, though, was pouncing on the box labeled Saki Ori, and saying This is it. This happens today. It had been a long time coming. I prepared the kimono silk weft many months ago, maybe even a year ago, I knew what I wanted to use for warp, and I knew I would use my 8 inch bamboo reed. So it was all ready to go, awaiting the moment of ignition. I spent the day preparing a whole new warp, musing on the materials visible through the warping frame as I wound.

New warp on frame, with handspun Nomad Caravan peeking through.

Sleying the bamboo reed. I think this is 20/2 cotton (unidentified, from a destash sale), and the reed is 22 epi.

This part is really quite relaxing, if I’m in no hurry.

And then we’re off and weaving. I’m happy to be doing something new, but also a planned thing: it was on the list, but it has a spark of excitement because I’ve never done it before. I have a beautiful example, an obi that I bought in Japan 20 years ago. Ever since I made the small bamboo reed, I’ve been wanting to weave with kimono silk weft. My silk strips are wider than those in the vintage obi, but this is my first go, just getting acquainted with the possibilities (I have a lot more silk scraps.)

Japanese sakiori obi, on top of a patchwork camel trapping.

Work in progress. I find the irregularities mesmerizing.

Kimono silk strips for weft, hanging around with some random yarn.

The various vignettes in my studio continue to intrigue: the sakiori weft balls themselves, before being wound onto shuttles, begin to make tentative conversation with some aged handspun cops I picked up at the guild auction. The air hums with possibilities, even as I commit to a single project for hours and days.

never too much

I was fortunate to catch a high quality exhibition of textiles in Seattle while Laverne was visiting - details in the textile blog. The array of cultures and techniques was impressive, and the quality of each piece impeccable. Below is a detail from the bodice of an embroidered Mexican dress.

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Mexican dress, collection of Leslie Grace

The floating animals filling in the blank spaces, and the random dog with collar, reminded me of a rug hooked by my Great Aunt Jean. I recently came into possession of this wonderful rug, which looks very Persian to me in its composition and designs - with the exception of a cartoonish black poodle among the stylized birds and geometric shapes.

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It makes perfect sense, for someone who owned a black poodle and worked as an artist for Hallmark cards. I find this rug brilliant, so I made sure it came home with me. Apologies for the overbright reds. There's my freeform textile association of the day: pet dogs in Mexican embroidery and American rug hooking!

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Detail of Aunt Jean's rug, showing black poodle.

a chance to share

Some things take time. This is one of the gentle lessons of getting old (which is a very relative term, and I use it knowing that with any luck I have only just begun the process.) You have to learn to wait, and be patient, but without abandoning the effort.

I moved to this town a year and a half ago, and was soon trying to spread the word about what I do, what I can offer, what I'd like to share in the form of teaching or speaking. I proposed textile talks in different settings, without getting much response. Finally I wandered into Maestrale, an import store, and happened to meet the owner. In asking her about some Hmong batik cloth, I found out she is a real textile enthusiast, with a weaving and dyeing background herself, and a strong interest in traditional techniques and cultural context. "We need to talk," I told her. That was last September.

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Kutch embroidery pieces from my collection, on display at Maestrale during my talk.

And so it happened that I'm giving a series of textile talks, with slides and collected pieces, at Maestrale this winter. The first one happened on February 1st. The topic was Indian bandhani dyeing and embroidery from Kutch, Gujarat.

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A work in progress. The pattern is tied, and the first layer of dye has gone on. My photo from Mandvi, Gujarat, 1995

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The dye workshop in Mandvi, 1995

The wonderful thing is that these images, scanned from printed photos and slides, were taken on my very first trip to India in 1994-5. The pieces I shared were also collected at that time. And this is what I meant by "some things take time." I headed to Mandvi, in Kutch, in 1995, to observe and document bandhani dyers for a day, hanging out in their workshop, being fed an amazing and spicy lunch, taking loads of photos and buying finished pieces. My goal was to write it up, or share the information somehow, and I never have until now. That first little foray into textile research lay dormant for over 20 years. Long enough for me to lose track of any notes I took (I was less organized then, and didn't have everything on a laptop and backup hard drive, of course.) But the images can still tell the story, and the technique still fascinates, and it was extremely gratifying to present this information to the group of women who came to Maestrale full of interest.

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Some of my collected bandhani textiles, including a garchola, at left, on display at Maestrale during my talk.

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An exquisite embroidered festival top I bought in Bhuj in 1995, a block print skirt to go with it, and two bandhani scarves. Slide show in the background at Maestrale.

The fun continues this week, with Lao weaving. Here's the flyer for my whole series this winter - I hope it's legible. I'm really enjoying digging through my textile collection and all my images to create these presentations, and it's wonderful to meet my fellow textile enthusiasts around here.

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indigo interlude

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.

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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.

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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.

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Detail from a Japanese resist-dyed robe

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Yoruba agbada - a traditional embroidered robe. I've admired these in images for many years, but this was the first one I saw in person.

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.

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Yoruba eleko cloth, made with a starch paste resist, painted onto the fabric and allowed to dry before dyeing.

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The main African section of the exhibit: the two pieces on the upper right are alabere, using stitch-resist techniques.

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Stitch-resist sample (alabere) from my class with Stanley at SMFA (not dyed with indigo!)

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.

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Mapuche woven cloth, Mood Indigo exhibit Seattle Asian Art Museum

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My warped and dyed ikat piece - looks okay while still tied.

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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.

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Hmong batik cloths in the middle of the pile, interspersed with Japanese fabrics and my own weaving at the bottom.

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Handwoven from Lao handspun indigo dyed cotton and my own handspun wool 

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Detail of a cotton scarf dyed in an indigo workshop with Rowland Ricketts