eine Saite

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.

I left the reed half-constructed in the previous post, but it was finished within the three-day workshop, I love how it looks like something maritime while on the stand, with its twin masts and hanging bobbins. There was a scary moment when Bryan discovered a problem with the width, but he corrected it with some selective pounding. Soon enough I had a finished reed!

Don't try this at home. Bryan hammers the bobbin against the bound string to correct a widening problem. Then he showed us how to measure to make sure this doesn't happen.

Bryan double checks and admires the work of an early finisher, before taking the reed off the stand.

My reed, finished and awaiting shoji paper along the edges.

When I got home I immediately cleared the deck to weave with it, rummaging in my weaving yarn bin to find the right warp. I chose an undyed cottolin a friend had given me, and found some handspun for weft.

I wound a long warp, more than 3 meters. When I first tied on, I had to open the door behind me in the photo, and sit in the closet. Some astute observers may be thinking that those two balls don't look like much weft, and that is correct. I was so eager to get started, I didn't even think of measuring for weft, and they were already wound in balls without recorded yardage anyway (I had the idea I would ply them with something else eventually), so I plunged in with about three bobbins' worth of weft. Needless to say, I had to spin more as I went along. But I was weaving! With my handmade reed! Longer, finer, and wider than most of my backstrap weaving so far.

Somehow the fabric felt Japanese. The width is similar to kimono cloth, but the use of this tool seemed to put the whole project into a certain cultural mode. I always like the state of mind I have while weaving, but this time it was even more transformative. Bryan had talked about the Japanese aesthetic and the deep roots of the mindset, and I felt tapped in to the sense of making "egoless cloth" with this piece.

The end result feels Japanese to me, too, in an intangible way. I'm grateful to Bryan for helping me access this way of weaving. Although I spent three years in Japan, I was not able to engage with textile making in that context, so it has been elusive for me.

Meanwhile, I went to work on another, smaller reed. We had enough supplies to make a second reed of 8 inches or so. I set this up and tied it slowly, relishing the process. I very much like doing the work of making this tool.

I carved the nearer pair of binding rods myself - they're rough but they worked.

The second one ended up with about the same dent (22 epi), wide enough for 8 inches of weaving. I hope to to some sakiori with this one, using my stash of kimono silks as weft.

Oh, and by now I have my second large piece on the loom with the wider reed. It's handspun wool warp & weft, only about 2 meters long this time, and less than 12 inches wide (I measured the yarn this time.)

intensive workshop for one

bamboo reeds, continued