Every now and then when I am sitting at my loom, I am reminded of the years that I spent teaching English here in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The institute had received a visit from a teaching consultant from the U.S State Department who introduced us to the concept of what she called “barefoot teaching”. She had developed this after having spoken with many teachers, especially those living in countries of the developing world like Bolivia, who had convinced themselves that they simply could not teach effectively without flashcards, computers, interactive boards and all other kinds of audio-visual aids. The barefoot teaching idea basically involved setting yourself the challenge of leaving all the tools at home and going into class with nothing more than a lesson plan and a piece of chalk (as well as a lot of enthusiasm and creativity)…in other words “barefoot”.
Then I get to thinking about Maxima, my favorite weaving teacher in the Bolivian highlands, and what simple tools one really needs to get started in backstrap weaving…basically your back, some thread/yarn and a toe! (and instruction or guidance, be that in person, or virtually via books, blogs, video or a multitude of other ways to connect online). Real barefoot weaving! Maxima doesn’t even use a backstrap.
Maxima has made a picking cross and is selecting the warps from each side of the cross for her design. Her warp is attached to her toe and for a while so was mine. Then I also attached my warp to her toe when mine had had enough! Finally we moved to the post to tie my warp up and later Maxima did the same.
There’s not a single stick in use.
Ten-year-old Peruvian weaver Juan Miguel, above, has a stake driven into the ground to which his warp is attached – his only real piece of equipment. If it were a shorter warp, he could use his toe. (Maxima deals with longer warps by wrapping the warp once around her toe to securely grip and tension it. A string passed through the end loops of Juan Miguel’s warp goes around his waist and acts as his “loom bar” and “backstrap”. He is using a string loop for one shed and string heddles for the other. He isn’t even using a beater or sword. His hands do the trick. After passing the weft, he opens the other shed and pulls the upper layer of threads up while pulling the other down in order to squeeze the last weft shot into place.
A warp can be wound in a figure-eight around a finger and a toe. The thumb and a finger of the free hand are used to gather up the cross when the warp is complete while the weaver uses the other hand to tuck one end of the warp into the waist-band of her skirt. The other end stays on the big toe. A length of yarn is inserted to hold the cross leaving two hands free to make string heddles.
My weaving friends in the Bolivian highlands were excited about the opportunity to try out cotton that had been donated by Cotton Clouds.
Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be tossing out my loom bars. I like using them even for the tiniest of warps but it is nice to think back to how I got started. We used pencil-width sticks about five inches long for loom bars, slightly longer ones for cross sticks and we had a beater. My teacher tied a cord around my waist and lodged the stick under it. Cord was passed through the other end of the warp which was attached to a bush so we could weave tiny pebble weave bands.
Twenty-six years ago, I sat on that pillow between my mother-and-daughter teachers to take my very first “watch and do as I do” lessons in weaving on a backstrap loom.They were lessons not only about the pebble weave structure, but also about how to use your body to operate the loom. Most importantly of all, they were lessons in how to learn by simply watching.
Last year was the twenty-fifth anniversary of that very first experience and I wove a piece as a representation not only of my vision of a post-pandemic world, but also as a recognition of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the happy scene above. The very first pattern that these ladies showed me was a hummingbird (although it took me several years to recognize it as one!). Hummingbirds, therefore, also became a part of the piece that I wove. In it, we are together again. The bush has grown into a tree with strong and extensive roots and although our warps have widened, the simplicity of the tools remains the same.
Panel 4 from the Within These Walls series.
Even something as simple as long thumb nails can be very useful. I appreciate them most when I am making string heddles. Sometimes I am unaware of the part they play in other stages of the process and only realize when I have had to cut them. Then I really miss them.
I love the simplicity in this picture….one’s entire weaving kit rolled up and neatly stored away.
And I wish that I could be organized enough to create a simple, clear weaving space like this…
My teacher Felicia’s weaving space…sticks, a bone tool, a bit of plastic-wrapped wire, and a sheep skin on which to sit. Simple tools don’t necessarily need to be made from natural materials. Hat and cat are optional. She was weaving for a museum’s gift shop and needed to adhere to precise pre-agreed measurements…hence the measuring tape.
I have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind way of operating and so my weaving space is strewn with things that serve to remind me of ideas for future projects as well as samples and works in progress. Yes, I now have a lovely weaving journal in which to jot down those ideas but it’s not the same as being constantly reminded of them when I have to step over and around them every day..
The thing that really motivated me to write this post was the completion of the simple fabric with which I will, hopefully, construct a bag….a simple blue bag to go with the highly decorated and comparatively complex reversible three-color strap. I even opted out of adding a motif to the cloth here and there using supplementary weft. One of the joys of supplementary weft is that you can treat your base cloth as a blank canvas and just add pattern wherever you please. The cloth can be covered with pattern from edge to edge or just show a few scattered motifs here and there. I used both options in this scarf…
60/2 silk fabric for a scarf on the loom with the simple tools that were used to create it.
One of the other many joys of using supplementary weft is that if you decide that you don’t like the motif you have woven, you can simply cut it out. Your base cloth will remain intact. I started adding a motif to the cloth for my bag, decided it was too much, and removed it. I actually unwove to remove it rather than cut it out.
Having got the urge to decorate the cloth out of my system, I sailed along enjoying the simplicity of the “dance” of just rhythmically operating the two basic sheds on the loom and passing my shuttle. Well, “sailed along” might not quite be the right way to describe it. It was a sticky wool warp and required a slower pace, stopping to advance the warp more frequently and performing strumming and other operations a lot more gently than I normally would….but I so enjoyed weaving it!
A wool warp of 776 ends.
And here’s the contrast between the simple and the complex in the finished cloth and strap….
The cloth is in industrially-spun wool and the strap is in my own spindle-spun wool.
I am showing the string heddles because they are almost perfectly clean despite the stickiness of the wool warp. There is the faintest film of blue fluff on their tips which makes it look like the tips have been dyed.
I will leave you now with this lovely hummingbird piece that showed up in my Facebook feed from the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino. I visited that museum many a time when I was living in Chile but haven’t been there since its major renovation some years ago. They were even selling my woven bookmarks in their gift shop at one point…wow, that was so long ago!
Why “Bubble, Bubble”? Because I seem to have spent more time at the pot dyeing yarn and boiling my hand spun cotton than anything else these last days. And that’s okay. I can stand there stirring and thinking about what I am going to weave, or continue with the Bananagrams game that is always in progress nearby. I kept a careful watch over the cotton because I am notorious for letting things boil dry. I don’t know how many times I have stepped away from rice, beans or quinoa on the stove to weave “just a few rows” only to be alerted to a dry pot by the smell of something burning. The pencil cups that I showed in my last post have been working out well for holding these samples of my newbie hand-spun cotton singles under tension. I got a few suggestions from Facebook friends for alternatives when I start producing larger quantities….mostly involving pvc pipe.
I put my juggling balls into the cups to weigh them down and then set them on the window sill to dry. The wind was so strong yesterday that I had to go down the three flights of stairs twice to retrieve everything from the garden below. Versions 2 and 3 seem to to be similar enough to use in a piece of sample weaving. I am not ready to go with the sheer-cloth-and-sizing idea yet. I am thinking of using these samples in my finest reed to weave some balanced plain-weave, something along the lines of this silk sample that I wove some time ago….
I’d like to weave in some tufts of very lightly twisted colored cotton into the cloth now and then. I have a few shades of natural brown and a bit of green. I saw a lovely scarf on Instagram that had been created like that with tufts of wool.
That’s taking second place on the to-do list because I am first weaving fabric for the bag to accompany the three-color pebble strap that I recently finished. It’s funny that this whole project has sprung out of the desire to weave something in the reversible three-color pebble structure and use it in something that would allow both faces to be seen. A bag strap is what I came up with. And so, here comes the bag fabric.
I over-dyed some pale green yarn to this dark blue, hadn’t thought through the project properly at all, and ran out while creating the warp. So then I had to over-dye some pale yellow to finish the warp and have enough for the sides and separate flap. Of course, I can’t expect for a minute to be able to create the same shade of blue when over-dyeing yellow instead of green but this is what happens when you are working with diminishing stash. You either have to plan more carefully around the quantities that you have or just go making it up as you go along! I am usually much more in tune (to the extreme!) with the former of the two strategies and it is interesting finding myself being fairly content with this more carefree approach this time.
I found out when I dyed cotton black for the scarf project above, when it was already too late, that not all blacks are alike. You can probably make out the two strips of darker black in the cloth. They could have been placed at the two selvedges if only I had noticed earlier. What chance do I have, then, of perfectly replicating blue on two different base colors? At least this time I was aware that there was going to be a difference and I placed strips of the “new” blue on the left and right edges of the warp to balance things out. I am weaving in warp-faced plain weave and will add a hummingbird and a flower motif in supplementary weft to one lower corner of the front of the bag and perhaps another pairing in the center of the back. The cloth needs to be fairly “quiet” because the strap is so lively.
I christened the Weaver’s Journal that I had covered with my woven cloth. I haven’t even tried to make my notes neat and pretty because I knew that the effort would not last long at all. Besides, I kind of like my scribblings. 🙂
I haven’t made notes in the Dyer’s Notebook yet because my latest dyeing has been of the more desperate never-to-be-repeated variety.
My Weaver’s Journal covered with cloth in 30/2 silk and patterned with supplementary weft.
This kind of stash scrounging reminds me of when I weaving Navajo-style tapestry pieces in southern Chile in the mid 1990s. I had brought back some Wilde and Woolly wool from the States and topped up my stash some months later via mail order. The rich “Ganado Red” color that I had ordered didn’t arrive. Instead, I got this kind of dusty pink. It worked out okay. I gave this piece to my brother when he visited here and he keeps it under glass on his dining table.
The way the diamond pattern was meant to be aligned.
After that, I decided that I wouldn’t order more yarn by post and that I would only buy in person. I wove several pieces and eventually the bottom of the yarn barrel was in sight with no plans to travel to the States. I had to get into “make-do” mode with whatever I could scrape together. I didn’t want to stop weaving.
Joanne Hall had written a book on tapestry weaving. I had a used copy and I loved some of the Mexican patterns that she had included. The main motif of intertwined black and white lines was meant to be woven as a diamond shape sitting within a square. The square was supposed to be positioned with horizontal top and bottom and vertical sides surrounding the diamond motif….that is, not like I had woven it on the loom.
Because I didn’t have enough of any one color to weave the whole surrounding square, I had to swivel the pattern 45 degrees. And I didn’t have enough yarn to be able to weave the two inner motifs in the same colors. It didn’t look like the picture in the book and I just wasn’t crazy about it when it was done. When I moved to Bolivia, it got left behind in Chile hanging on the wall of the little cottage in which I had lived. I wonder where it is now. Of course, I wish I had it now. What you see here are photos of the only photo I have of it.
The way I had to align it on the loom.
I remember tapping away at a calculator to plan out this piece so that the pattern would fit into the four-selvedged limits and use just the right amount of yarn. My boyfriend at the time asked me if that was how the Navajo weavers plan their pieces….with a calculator…lol. I had obviously put more thought into planning this around my available yarn quantities than my current bag project!
And then I threw almost all the left- over bits and pieces into a pot, dyed them red and wove one last piece….another odd piece with, naturally, multiple shades of red. I got to use the Navajo saddle-blanket structure at the top and bottom of this four-selvedged piece before running out of the tan color and then filled the center with plain weft-faced pattern. Sound familiar? Here I am in 2022 doing the same thing with dye to make the most of my supplies. I like the challenge. I like just making do with what I have on hand.
The twined edging tassels in the corners were sewn down to make the piece less interesting to my cat (who had chewed off the tassels on one of my other pieces as well as a chunk of corner!)
From the archives! 1996 and weaving with my backstrap warp attached to the bottom of the Navajo-style vertical frame.
Of course, it didn’t matter in the end that I had run out of tapestry wool yarn for weft because shortly after all this I went to Peru for the first time and it all became about warp-faced weaving on backstrap looms when I returned, using locally available cotton and the high-twist wool singles that I had been using for warp for my Navajo-style pieces. It all got used! My Navajo-style loom was only used as the anchor point for the end of my backstrap-loom warps after that, except for a couple of quite wide warp-faced pieces which I wasn’t yet ready to handle on a backstrap loom.
Now I am looking at a tiny amount of powder at the bottom of my pot of red-blue dye. My friend Mog had given me some of her supply the last time I was in Australia and it’s almost all gone now. That’s okay. I had a good run with it in some fun projects mixing it to get a variety of blues….
I enjoyed creating different intensities of blue on 30/2 silk for this book cover project.
More fun with dyeing blue on this 60/2 silk ikat warp.
I still have a good amount of a green-blue (again, thank you, Mog) as well as a teal, so who knows what might come of that.
I am reminded that I have credit with Southwest Airlines that expires in September and an empty Traveler’s Diary. But everything is still so unclear and confusing, isn’t it? In the meantime, I am trying to coax my book-writing mojo back into existence. I made a good start but a tripod-fail let me down. I finally got a new one…no excuses now! Please check out the eight books I have published so far at Taproot Video. They’re available as PDFs to download as well as in the form of spiral-bound books. Here are a few…
My relationship with Time seems to be changing. I know that I am not the only one who got lost during these last two strange years, overcome by the feeling that time was speeding by… weeks and months merging into a hazy uneventful blob. Even now I struggle to separate 2020 from 2021. But I just recently realized that the passage of time is slowing down for me and starting to resemble something like normal, something recognizable from the pre-pandemic days. The calendar map that I have always carried in my mind’s eye is starting to reappear.
I resist the urge to go back and try to account, in terms of productivity, for the 24 months that have passed since we first went into lock-down here in Bolivia. Today marks the anniversary of the confirmation of the first known Covid case here. That any of us achieved anything meaningful at all is cause for celebration. And now I am talking as if it is all over. Of course, I know it isn’t, but there is definitely a change in my state of mind.
Three-panel wall hanging: Textile Trails
On the theme of Time, I am reminded of a question that I am very often asked when I show my woven work….. “How long did it take to weave that?”
I am trying very hard to think back to a time before I started weaving to see if perhaps I would have asked this question myself to a craftsperson and what might have motivated me to do so. Would it be because I was thinking of trying to make the object myself and needed to see if the time involved was worth my effort? Or perhaps I would want to know if the asking price for the object reflected the amount of time that had gone into creating it.
In any case, I find it a very difficult question to answer. How long does it take?…As long as it takes! I honestly don’t keep track. I don’t sell my work and so I need not consider time in order to fairly price an item. I am not weaving to a deadline. There is usually no exhibit for which the work has to be completed…the three pieces above were an exception as I had woven them for an exhibit at the ANWG conference in 2015. I would probably have to go back to my blog posts if I wanted to give an accurate answer in terms of the number of weeks on which I worked on a project. However, I would be at a complete loss when it came to the total number of hours.
I met a craftsperson some years ago and witnessed his response to the question…
“How long did it take to make that?”
His response:
A l i f e t i m e
I can only imagine that he very rightly considers that a lifetime of his accumulated knowledge, experience, skill and inspiration went into this and every piece that he has completed. I love his response.
So, I am willing to pour as much time and effort as is required into every piece I weave. There have been a couple of times, though, when I just wanted to get the thing done! One such time was when I had volunteered to weave six lanyards for a conference. The long piece of half-inch band with its small repeated motif did not excite me at all when the time came to weave it. I installed eleven sets of string heddles to move it along. I didn’t have to do any pick-up and that rather unique experience suddenly made the project very interesting as I came up with ways to remember which heddle came next in the sequence.
What I don’t like, is making silly mistakes and wasting time. Okay, I will admit that a mistake is always a learning experience and valuable for that reason but sometimes you just turn around and do the same old thing again!
A circular warp for a cotton scarf
Like the time I was using a coil rod for the first time on a circular warp many years ago. The coil rod (sometimes called rolling stick) is the uppermost stick in this cotton circular warp and I was using it because it seemed like an important part of a circular warp set-up. At the time, I didn’t fully understand its purpose. One of my aims for using it in this project was to figure that out. While trying to move the rod as weaving progressed, I mishandled and broke the coil rod. I did it once…I learned something. I did it a second time…I cursed…but then I learned some more. The third time I broke it, it got flung to other side of the room and I continued without it. It was then that I started understanding its purpose because it was very much aware that it was a different experience weaving without it. And so I was happy to sit patiently and install it once again.
(Note that I am talking about circular warps here. I do, however, continue to use the coil rod on both circular and single-plane warps if I am doing plain weave with cotton or silk (materials that have little to no stretch). I have written a lot about this tool in blog posts over the years. If you are interested in learning more, you could start here.)
Maybe this is something that we don’t consider when we ask the craftsperson how long it took to complete the project. Do we want them to include the time used to fix “oopsies”? After all, the fixing of the oopsies adds to that lifetime of experience about which my craftsman friend was speaking.
The first six inches of this warp were woven and unwoven twice before I found just the right weight of material for the supplemental patterning weft.
While the amount of time needed to weave a piece is not important to me, I am always interested in learning about techniques that weavers have developed to help make the whole process more efficient, like the use of multiple string heddles and pattern storage sticks, for example. However, there is one thing that I have always been a bit stubborn about and that is the use of sizing.
In weaving, sizing is a substance that is used to coat warp threads that are hairy or “sticky”, or have other characteristics that make it difficult to achieve clean sheds. Basically, it smooths the threads. I resist using it purely because of the “ick” factor. That is, I hate to think of the mess of dunking my warp into a bath of starchy goo and I don’t think I would enjoy the feel of the stiffened coated threads as I weave. Keep in mind that my hands are usually in almost constant contact with the threads as I weave pick-up patterns. Of course, it all washes off in the end and you are left with the original softness of the yarn but yech, I just don’t like the sound of it. I prefer to stay away from the sizing and just adjust my loom-operating methods instead.
Adapting my methods to the materials in use: I was able to weave with Knit Picks Palette….a soft, loosely-plied wool and create a four-selvedged piece.
My approach when working with sticky materials is to adapt the way I operate the loom…take a lot of care when opening sheds by working the threads in sections, using my finger tips to help release the grip a thread may have on its neighbors. I advance the warp more often so that sticks and heddles are not sitting on and abrading any one section for too long, causing it to shed and pill. Yes, it does slow things down but, as I said, I am not in any hurry. I suspect that using a sized warp on a floor loom is a different experience in that the weaver isn’t necessarily handling the warp threads during the weaving part of the process.
Another way to avoid using sizing might be to add extra twist to commercial wool yarn to make it smoother. My weaving teachers here create relatively smooth hand-spun yarn by using a high amount of twist. They also add twist to the synthetic thread that they buy in the market. This kind of yarn creates a certain kind of cloth. The thing is that I don’t always want that kind of cloth.
Two wool lap-size blankets that I wove using Mora yarn. It’s worsted spun which helps somewhat with the stickiness issue. I didn’t add any extra twist.
My latest project has been with mill-spun wool singles….sticky stuff. I could get a tiny heddle shed which I would then proceed to open further with my fingers. I didn’t want to use sizing. I didn’t want to ply it or add extra twist. I love the way it feels. The supplementary weft is my own plied hand-spun wool.
From the 27-inch warp I got 21 1/2 inches of cloth and my string heddles came up remarkably clean.
I always love the way the back of these supplementary-weft patterned pieces look.
There was a small amount of curl in the cloth at its opposing corners. Folding it to make a pouch for my phone and edging it with a patterned tubular band took care of that.
The fresh warp in the above photo was for a small closure tab. I used my plied hand-spun for that. I used a dense structure of three-span floats (intermesh) to produce a sturdy band…hence the two sets of string heddles.
The finished pouch.
I wet-finished the small piece on the right under the sword. The warp threads shifted slightly closer together, I took measurements, but I didn’t notice any real difference in the feel of the cloth. I didn’t wet-finish the pouch piece as I was a little concerned about color run in the supplementary weft. I had bought that roving already colored. As the supplementary weft is tightly wedged between the two layers of warp in several places, I don’t think that even a color-catcher cloth would stop the color from bleeding onto the grey wool. If wet-finishing had made a significant difference to the way the cloth felt, I may have reconsidered.
I hope that I get a chance to show this, the first of many projects in the mill-spun wool singles, to the farming couple whose sheep provided the fleece. My original plan had been to use this yarn for a shoulder bag project. I would dye the yarn to match the three-color strap that I had already woven…
I used my plied hand-spun wool for this strap. I don’t feel that I was heavy-handed in the amount of twist I used. The strap lies perfectly flat and the yarn was beautiful to weave with.
However, now that I have seen the cloth that this yarn produces, I can’t bring myself to dye it. I love all the subtle color variations from this blend of natural white and black. I’ll be using it as is perhaps for a pillow cover and will add color with supplementary weft instead.
So, I will turn once again to my Mora yarn for the bag project. I over-dyed a pale green color that I didn’t particularly like to get a dark blue that is close to the strap color. It will be mostly plain blue and with a very narrow strip of three-color pattern in the center. I have used Mora for a bag project before and know that it performs well on the loom as well as with use.
Fabric for a bag with built-in pocket woven with Mora wool.
If you are curious about the Mora yarn, here it is. It’s 20/2 worsted spun and I know that both Vavstuga and Eugene Textile Center carry it in the USA.
One skein of Mora goes a long way. It gives me material to work with for dyeing with cochineal for other projects. It’s taken two years but I finally got some alum. Just before the pandemic I had been out and about looking everywhere for the “precious” stuff…precious only because I suddenly could not find it anywhere. The usual pharmaceutical supply stores weren’t carrying it any more. The little hardware stalls in the market (there are dozens of them) didn’t have it. I tried the Mennonite market because I know that they can and pickle but they told me to go to the pharmaceutical places. The little McCormick jars of alum are not available here either. I am guessing that the Mennonite folk have a massive supply of it at home and are possibly not yet aware of it no longer being available. My friend Dorinda sent me some from Cochabamba a couple of weeks ago.
I have used cochineal in the past to dye my hand spun llama yarn. With an alum mordant I get the crimson color you see in this image.
The stones you see are a mineral that goes by the Quechua name millu. Dorinda sent it along as a bonus. It is not something that is required for dyeing with cochineal but she thought that I might enjoy experimenting with it. In the co-op, they use it to darken colors. It is also sold as a home remedy and it is in those stalls that it is found in the street markets. Now that I know what it is, I will most likely be able to find some here in Santa Cruz although I suspect that the amount Dorinda sent me will go a long way. Maybe I will also dye some silk with cochineal for an ikat project.
These are all time-consuming processes. I am not concerned about the amount of time it takes. If you have ever tried ikat, you will know what I mean by time-consuming. Slow processes are just perfect for someone who is working with dwindling stash!
When I told a friend of mine about having finally got hold of some alum via Cochabamba, he took on the challenge of hunting it down in Santa Cruz and came up with this in a very upmarket store of natural vegan-friendly cosmetics. One large chunk came contained in a cloth bag inside a fancy carry bag as if it were something terribly precious…and yes, the price was precious. The accompanying card shows someone applying it to their armpits. So I guess supplies, at least here in Santa Cruz, have been entirely diverted to the cosmetics industry.
Another “slow” project is my learning to spin cotton on a takli spindle. Version One didn’t have enough twist. Version Two had…you guessed it… what I suspected was too much twist. Version Three, which is in progress, is bound to have some other problem. And on it goes. I love the little takli spindle! And Joan Ruane’s video class on it has been so good. I’ll never forget the time I was with Joan at the Mannings. I had set up a backstrap loom and she had wanted to see what that was all about. I was doing pick-up and her reaction was “Oh my god, it’s slower than tapestry!” This from a woman who spins her own cotton for weaving! She made me laugh. I guess we all have our own feelings about Time.
As for Version Two with it’s crazy amount of twist, I decided to see if it was possible to set the twist on my singles (because that’s how I want to eventually use this thread…as singles) and did some reading about that. I have Stephanie Gaustad’s book on cotton, flax and hemp and there are also online resources about simmering and immersion. The trickiest part was having to immerse the thread under tension. My solution for that is a bit wacky. It worked for these small samples.
The thread went into the pot tightly wound around these metal mesh pencil caddies. I do want to use this thread as singles so that I can once again try to weave something approximating the sheer cotton cloth that is woven in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala. I want the thread to be finer than the hand-spun that I used last time in this piece…
Woven with hand-spun cotton singles that I had bought in Guatemala.
And this is where that icky topic of sizing comes back into it. I will probably give in and size the thread. I wove the above piece using a bamboo reed to maintain sett. The weavers in Alta Verapaz don’t use one and I am curious to know if the stiffening of the thread from the sizing is one of the factors that enables them to maintain the sett without the aid of the reed. I stress ONE of the factors because, of course, their supremely high level of skill gathered from years and years of work is going to be the main contributing factor. In videos, I have been able to hear the sound of their picking stick on the threads. The weavers are in the habit of slowly scraping the pick along the warp threads from selvedge to selvedge right at the weaving line as if, I am guessing, to encourage the threads to remain separated and not drift into warp dominant positions. That sound is not one that I would expect to hear from naked hand-spun cotton. The sizing that is used gives the threads a coating that produces that sound. Perhaps I will need to use sound as my guide when I try this myself.
All time-consuming stuff. But I am not here to just consume time. Hopefully, I will be using it to continue learning. When I recently explained to someone my plans for my own hand-spun cotton, they asked how long it would take before I would be ready to start the weaving. I sensibly replied….years.
It’s been a while since I last heard the scritchy sound of hairy warp threads releasing their grip on each other as I open sheds on my backstrap loom. I am hearing it now because I have taken on the challenge of weaving with mill-spun wool singles that I bought from a farm while traveling in California. I don’t really know what I had in mind when I bought that yarn. I had just wanted to buy something as a souvenir of that part of my travels from the lovely people who had allowed my friends to gather and weave in their barn.
Because traveling to far off places to buy yarn like this is off the table at the moment, this is another case of my exploring my dwindling stash and enjoying the new challenges that this presents. My idea is to use this yarn to weave the body of a bag that will go with the strap I just finished. I used a three-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave structure for this strap and the wool yarn that I had been spinning and plying on a drop spindle during pandemic Zoom gatherings.
Despite the dark colors, I think it’s a happy garden scene of flowers and hummingbirds.
I did start off with the idea of creating an orderly, cohesive pattern layout but the temptation to play with the three colors and pop those hummingbirds wherever I wanted took over and I had a lot of fun doing just that.
One thing that I had wanted to do was use one color for the pebble spot that represents the hummingbird’s eye and another color for all the other pebble spots that sit within the figure’s body…but you know, I forgot to do that every single time! Well, almost every single time. I was determined to remember to do two things before I eventually finished the band…take a picture of myself at the loom working on it and get those colored eye spots in!
I once met a bird photographer that told me that it is really important to capture the little spot of white light in a bird’s eye in order not to have it appear lifeless. I have looked for it in every bird photo I have seen since. In the same way, I think the different colored eye spot on these last two hummers makes an enormous difference.
I didn’t hear any woolly scritchy sounds while working with this hand spun of mine. I had been concerned about how well it would stand up to this rather dense structure but realized after a while that I had completely forgotten all my concerns and was able to enjoy how friendly it was and how lovely it felt.
I remember the first time I wove with my hand spun. It was with some rather nasty dry and dusty llama fiber that I had bought from the animals’ owner up in the highlands. At the time, the scritchy tearing sounds were freaking me out and the yarn I had spun was anything but soft and lovely to handle. I had put a tremendous amount of twist into it so that it would stand up to warp-faced weaving. I don’t do that any more.
And now, there is a new experience…weaving with these mill-spun singles. This is a first for me. Yes, there’s some “scritchiness” but I am actually finding it pleasant…almost like the warp is whispering to me. That llama fiber had seemed to be screaming at me in that first-ever experience. I made adjustments to the way I was spinning it, it became friendlier, and I was able to enjoy weaving with it more. 🙂
This is my sample for the bag fabric that will follow. I wound a warp of 27″ length and 160 ends. The idea was to weave and allow it to settle into a consistent width so that I could then make calculations for the bag fabric. I most typically start off too narrow with new-to-me yarn and have to let the piece gradually widen and settle. Once I am happy with that, I put it aside and work on the real project. This time, however, I was enjoying working with this wool so much, I decided that this piece really needed to be something and I figured that my cell phone, which currently sits in a case, could do with a pouch. So, I unwove a good 3″ of fabric so that I could start over at the correct width. The fact that I was able to unweave the warp-faced cloth woven with wool singles yarn without losing my mind, tells me that this yarn and I are going to have a happy weaving relationship.
And I decided to use some of my plied hand spun as supplementary weft to weave in a pattern. This is some of the thicker “Zoom” hand spun that I first created and used to weave a wrist cuff before deciding to try and go finer. It is making a very nice supplementary weft. I am using the outlining technique of supplementary-weft patterning in which the weft does not travel from selvedge to selvedge. I can make my hand spun yarn go further that way. It is precious to me and I don’t want it to be just hidden away between the layers of warp as it travels to the selvedge. I can’t tell you how much fun I am having with this!
Wrist cuff with the initial run of hand spun.
A couple of observations: There had been a tendency for me to think that the action of the heddles against the wool would be the cause of most of the abrasion and subsequent pilling or shredding. Lately I have found that with good loom-operation technique, this isn’t so. There is actually a point of layer exchange that sits between the heddle and the shed rod where most of the abrasion is occurring for me. This exchange happens when the threads that lie on top of the shed rod are lifted and brought down through the heddles to the weaving line. (I keep my shed rod stationary and don’t slide it forward to the heddles as some backstrap weavers do which explains why the point of layer exchange on my particular warp is in that position.) That abrasion point is the one I need to watch and I notice that a little bit of fluff accumulates there. I am particularly gentle there and tend to spread the threads with my hands and lift them through that point in sections. It is also important to advance the warp as often as possible so that the abrasion point is constantly changing position.
I love the multiple tones in the warp and its rustic look. I had considered a hummingbird pattern but decided that this one better suits these natural earthy colors.
But despite all that gentle handling, the warp does continue to whisper to me in its scritchy voice, possibly just as a reminder not to get cocky and careless when I open the sheds. This talk of sound playing a part in our weaving, reminded me of some thoughts I had posted way back in 2013 that I thought I would revisit and share with you.
Back then, something a weaver had posted on the Weavolution website had resonated with me. An Australian gentleman, Hakim, was learning to make cut pile knotted rugs with an Iranian teacher in Australia. He said that when he is at home working on his practice piece, he can tell that the tension of the warp threads is correct if they make the same sound when he handles them as they do when he is working on his learning piece with his teacher in class.
What a piece of priceless knowledge!
(At left you can see an example of a set of tools that Hakim was able to get for me from his teacher for the day when I try this technique. It’s on that long, long to-do list).
Hakim’s comment made me think about the different sounds that are connected with weaving on simple looms and how much I enjoy them.
I am not one for placing things in my ears and listening to music while busy with something else. I can’t stand that. I like to be in touch with the sounds around me. They form a very important part of my memories of places and experiences.
In my skiing days, I would wonder at people who skied with headphones on. I would never give up the pleasure of hearing the wind and the swish of the skis on the snow, or the sudden change of sound as snow turned to ice giving me time to react and adjust position. Back then, no one wore helmets. I am told that the helmets being worn now don’t affect the skiers ability to enjoy those sounds.
I learned to fly a glider when I was 19. There is nothing like the sound of an engine-less craft rushing through the air. There was so much with which to be occupied while learning (especially for someone like me who was so utterly un-coordinated at the time!) but I could always simply rely on my ears for certain information. For example, if the sound of the rushing air suddenly disappeared it was a sure sign that I had the nose up too high and that told me that I had better do something quickly before the glider stalled!
When we first went into pandemic lockdown here in Bolivia, I remember finding the sudden absence of sound really disturbing and almost frightening. Then I realized that what was missing were familiar sounds of human activity and that they had been replaced by much more pleasant ones…bird song and the sound of leaves being blown across the cobbles…sounds that normally were drowned out by the hum of city living.
As for sounds while weaving, I love using multiple big swords. I so enjoy the musical tok tok sound they make as they knock together in the sheds. And I love the chuckling chatter of all the sticks on the loose as they fall together when I release tension and roll up the warp at the end of the day. Below, you can see the sticks I used in a wall-hanging piece….many different kinds of wood making interesting sounds. It can become quite a collection.
Then there’s the plink plink sound as the tip of a delicate Guatemalan pick-up stick slides from one taut warp to the next as the weaver counts out threads for supplementary-weft inlay.
The dancing dangling bobbins used in weft twining go clackity clack as they twist and jiggle.
And they enable my teacher to create such beautiful work as this:
Examples of kteh work by my Montagnard weaving teachers.
I loved the opportunity to drag the llama bone tool across the strong highly-twisted wool threads that my teachers in Peru had prepared below…scritch, scritch, as I strummed to help separate the warps. Only warp threads with certain characteristics will tolerate this.
Listen to my teacher doing it…
If you stroll around a village of weavers in a certain part of the central highlands of Bolivia, you will know in which houses a weaver is at work by the LOUD THWACK!! THWACK!! of the llama bone hitting the sword as the wefts are slammed into place. That sound is one that is not really pleasant, at least not to my ears, when I am seated right next to my teacher. Here is one of my teachers in Candelaria at work at her loom:
When I stayed in the stilt-house home of my weaving teacher in Ecuador, I was often awoken at dawn by the muffled thump, thump and accompanying vibrations as Trini drew down her heavy beater while working at her vertical loom. This was combined with various house shaking and creaking sounds as the loom was connected to floor and ceiling beams…a part of the house itself. You can see that big sword/beater lying across Trini’s leg below and get an idea of the muscle that goes into operating this particular set-up.
The sound of threads in a warp-faced weaving rubbing past each other as a shed is opened can range from a soothing smooth swish to a seemingly painful tearing protest depending on the yarn being used and how it has been prepared.
When weaving with new backstrap weavers, we even learn to be amused by the constant clatter of swords jumping out of their sheds and hitting the floor. Each sword has its own musical tone…nowhere near as much fun on a rug! A cement floor like the one in this picture greatly enhances the melody.
By the way, I am in charge of picking up the fallen swords….gives me something to do. It is funny that as time goes by we have people weaving in silence. What happened to our musical accompaniment? Well, new weavers, without even realizing it, get a feel for the right amount of tension and the sweet spot in the warp where the sword will sit happily upright and not leap to the floor. Or…they just get rather good at catching the sword on its way down!
Maybe one of the nicest sounds for me is the fwip fwip fwip fwip in rapid succession as I pull my heddle string quickly but carefully (or else it will tangle miserably!) off its heddle stick. This means that the piece is finished.
And with that soft, happy sound in your head, I will leave you.
When I last posted, I had just wound this warp using my “Zoom” hand spun, that is, the wool that I had been spinning and plying on a drop spindle during the various pandemic Zoom sessions that I have been attending. It took a while for some participants to get used to my sitting there with my arm raised as I attempted to get maximum drop distance for my spindle. I was often asked if I was signaling my desire to ask a question. I hope I wasn’t too annoying!
I dyed the blue and tobacco colors so that I could have three colors that would work well together on both faces of this three-color warp. Basically, I wanted to work with a dark, a medium and a light color and the challenge was finding a medium color that contrasts well with both the light and dark.
I am not sure why I always seem to find myself working with wool at some point in the hot, steamy summer months we have here. It kind of made sense when I was traveling a lot as these summer months used to be the longest period of uninterrupted time I would get to spend at home. I would work on as many different projects as possible before having to think about workshop prep, packing and traveling again. But now I have all the time in the world as I play it safe at home and can be more selective about which project I tackle, and when. I suppose stash limitations may have something to do with my choices now.
In my last post I told you that I had bought Joan Ruane’s video class on Spinning Cotton on a Takli from Taproot Video. I am using Joan’s spelling of the word takli. I am only 30 minutes in on her 2-hour 20-minute class and have already learned so much. I get to spend a little time with Joan via Zoom as she is part of the Taproot Video team and I was once her roommate at the Mannings. However, I had never seen her in teaching mode and I can tell you that it is no surprise that she is fabulous.
The blue and brown above are my early attempts with the takli from a few years ago. The white is the remainder of what I bought from a spinner in Guatemala back in 2008. It’s what I used to weave the little sheer-cloth sample that you can see in the photo.
I got some lessons in spinning cotton with Trini and her mother, Luz in coastal Ecuador in 2007.
Now I just need to figure out a way to use the takli comfortably while participating in the Zoom gatherings. I had a few wool plying mishaps when I got too engrossed in what was happening on the Zoom screen. I expect I will be presenting a furrowed brow of concentration to everyone as I try to put what Joan is teaching me into practice. I have a wooden mortar that I could clamp between my knees to use as the platform for the takli. Joan says that using something wooden has the advantage of being virtually noiseless although she does say that it is better if the bowl does not have high sides. I’ll see what I can figure out.
What to do with the cotton? Well, I guess that I would like to use singles in another sheer cloth piece using one of my bamboo reeds. This is what I wove using the hand-spun singles that I brought back from Guatemala. This is part of a scarf that I wove.
But of course I am getting way ahead of myself! I know that I need to put in lots of miles of practice before I can produce something with which I am satisfied.
As for my current hand-spun wool project, I have always said that warp-faced weaving really flatters my hand spun. It’s a very forgiving structure for those thick and thin bits in my yarn. When the threads are all pressed up close together they look wonderfully even. I am pleased to say that my yarn is holding up beautifully. I don’t have to think anymore about the possibility of it being abraded to the point of breaking and am focusing on the colors and patterns instead now.
Which is where the “what-if” comes into it. I have given up any thought of creating an orderly and cohesive design on this strap because I simply can’t resist the urge to explore the what-ifs. What if the hummingbird is outlined in white with a tan filler, for example….what if I reverse that…what if the body and wings are two different colors…what if I change the pebble spot color…how many variations can I create? And so on!
5 hummingbird varieties.
I have a nice assemblage of tools by my side…swords, pick-up sticks and a tool I use to press the weft extra-firmly into place. I have to add my long thumbnails to that group. They really are my favorite tools! I am blessed with having nails that grow as hard as rock. I usually have to cut them back now and then to a socially acceptable length.
You’ll also see some leafy what-ifs here.
This is destined to become a bag strap. I have some lovely wool singles that I bought from a co-op farm while in California. The owners used to allow my group of backstrap weaving friends to gather in their barn. It will be nice to weave something with fiber from their sheep that they had sent out to be spun. I guess I will dye it dark blue and use it for the body of the bag. I am thinking plain dark blue with perhaps a three-color edging to which I will add this fancy strap. And what if I add some lines of color in weft twining to the body of the bag? I love those what-ifs!
Wool singles from the farm.
Fond memories of weaving in the barn.
Maybe I’ll have some of my hand-spun cotton efforts to show next time. And before I forget, you may remember my mentioning, Allen Berry as the maker of beautiful swords for backstrap weavers (allenrberry on Instagram) when my weaving friends gifted me two of his gorgeous pieces a few years ago. Here’s one…
An Allen Berry sword with some of my wrist cuffs.
He doesn’t have a website and so you will need to go to Instagram to see his work. You can contact him via a direct message there. I am not sure if he still making the swords but the reason I am telling you this is because he has added, along with his many other wooden spinning and weaving tools, ADORABLE dishes for supported spindles. Here’s just one example. Go check him out on Instagram (allenrberry).
And while you are there, you might like to follow me. I am on Instagram as lavernewaddington. I post quite a few things there between my blog posts. See you next time.
