Category: Bedouin weaving

Backstrap Weaving – “Al Sadu” and Warping a Bedouin Pattern

I would like to share something that Alaa wrote in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group this evening quoting from the book published in Kuwait  Al Sadu: The Techniques of Bedouin Weaving.

“The word Al Sadu in Ibn son of Mandhurs’ Lissan* Al Arab* The Tongue Language of the Arabone of the earliest known encyclopedia dictionaries of the 13 C denotes the extension of the hand towards an object, as when camels move forward with their forelegs. The word Sadu equally implies the movement of the head as in the way camels and horses move their heads thrust forward. Earlier, Al Jawhari (d. 398 Hijri) in his book Al Sahah also means the long and gentle stride of the camels. Al Sadu is the term used for warping and means what is extended.

In its widest linguistic meaning Al Sadu means: to extend or to stretch and spread, and, as used by Bedouin of Kuwait it means the process of wool weaving, the actual woven objects as well as the loom itself. Thus, it is an old Arabic term that evokes images and meanings derived from the desert environment and the Bedouin traditions.”

Extending, stretching and spreading…fitting words to have in mind when one thinks about the process of warping or even to apply to this idea of the Worldwide Weaving Web that I often refer to…which allows designs and textile techniques from people thousands of miles away in a dry sandy desert to enter the home of someone in humid jungly lowland Bolivia.

I read so many comments in the online weaving groups about the “joys and traumas” of warping. I don’t think I will ever think of it in quite the same way after that lovely description of the meaning of Al Sadu….that graceful extension of head and limb and thread….beautiful!

Some people love warping and see it as relaxing, some detest it, while others fear it.  And then there’s the old “back-to-front” versus “front-to-back” debate…that’s floor loom talk…I have little idea of what all that means but I do know that there usually isn’t just one right way to do things.

I love learning about the way warps are created for the simple looms I see in use here in South America and around the world, whether they be for backstrap weaving, or for the horizontal, vertical loom or leaning loom.

Sometimes all it takes is a toe and a forefinger…two points around which the threads can turn and measure out the length of the warp with a simple cross between.

For certain woven structures a startling amount of stakes are required so that the weaver can carefully place all the threads in their correct positions before the warp is transferred to the loom. Of course it also depends on whether the weaver is creating a circular, dovetailed, discontinuous or single-plane warp.

For those not familiar with circular warps, think of the inkle loom. You can see above left the very short sample warp I wound on my inklette and removed for this picture. When the band on the inkle loom has been woven, it is cut and opened up to its full length. Above right you see the same circular warp next to a warp that was created in a single plane for my backstrap loom. The finished inkle band will open out to be longer than the other one. Both kinds of warp are commonly used for backstrap weaving. A circular warp provides a practical way for long pieces to be woven on a backstrap or other loom without needing a large space in which to work.

Warping for a large single-plane warp-faced piece may require two very long stakes between which the weaver walks carrying the thread. The weaver who was creating this warp in Chinchero was working alone. I have been told that often two weavers will sit, one at at each stake, and roll the ball of yarn to each other.

A belt with a complementary-warp pattern might need four stakes for its warp with the weaver sitting and carrying the threads at full stretch…

Some weavers, like my Montagnard teachers in the US, have a permanent warping set-up that stands on its own which they can pick up and transport from place to place. Below, Ju Nie is teaching other Montagnard ladies to make a circular warp in a community center. (picture by Andrew Young)

Her process will create the circular warp that you can see here…

The warp end nearest the weaver must be clamped or stabilized, as you can see, so that it won’t slide around the loom bar as the weaver beats.

I love the improvised warping set-ups…

Indoors at a gathering of weavers in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Chinchero weavers used table legs around which to warp practice bands.

The same table was even used by a Guarani weaver to demonstrate the dovetailed warp that she uses on her vertical loom. The dovetail warp occupies one end of the table while an Aymara weaver from Chile winds her single-plane warp on the other.

Often warping can involve more than one person. Above, Hilda and I in Potosi Bolivia, are warping the horizontal loom for warp-faced double weave embedded in plain weave. She is about to roll the ball of yarn to me so that I can turn it around the loom bar before rolling it back to her.

Mapuche weaver Marta and I warped together at the recent exhibit in DC which meant I couldn’t get a video of the process but warping with her rather than filming was much more fun!

Beth from Beer Sheva in Israel gave us a link to a wonderful set of videos on Bedouin weavers in Lakiya village in Israel. One of the videos shows how it takes three people and a lot of walking to warp their long horizontal looms for the making of warp-faced carpets.

You may remember the next video that I posted some time ago of the poncho weaver from Paraguay warping her tremendously long single-plane backstrap warp, carrying the thread up and down on her own for three hours.

I love watching that weaver at work!

Which all brings me to the warping tutorial I promised this week for the Bedouin al’ouerjan patterns which are woven with the warp substitution technique.

Tracy in Qatar and Helena in Brazil have been playing with these patterns as well as a couple of other members in the Ravelry backstrap group. You can see Tracy and Helena’s work above. We have all fallen in love with these patterns.

We had fun playing with one of the many versions of this pattern when I wove with friends in California. We combined the technique with weft twining.

And look at Tracy’s latest project!!

You will find the tutorial on warping the al’ouerjan patterns here. The weaving technique (warp substitution), which you will need to learn first, is detailed in a tutorial here. A tip for securing the warp floats that are typically created on the backs of pieces woven in this technique is within this blog post.

And, thanks to Alaa in Jordan and several other people who pointed out to me the Interweave newsletter this week that included a link to a  video on Bedouin weaving on the UNESCO site which is definitely worth watching. UNESCO were kind enough to give me the embed code but WordPress doesn’t like it! So, here’s the link. I just love how the loom is perched over mounds of desert sand. Nothing could be further removed from this moist jungly place in which I live.

Earlier I mentioned a link that Beth in Israel provided which leads to a page with several videos on the Bedouin weavers of the Lakiya Negev Weaving Project.

The one on finishing techniques is very nice. And here’s the link to the page with all eight videos.

I have a feeling we will be seeing many more projects inspired by Bedouin textiles in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving group…a lot of black, red and white which also happens to be the color scheme of my latest pebble weave project. It is coming along…

Here it is all rolled up and reaching the end. It will be a wall hanging so it doesn’t need to be any specific length but I would like to weave as much as I can on it. I will change those thick cross sticks for thin ones and replace the end loom bar with piano wire and then lash that to the loom bar. That will give me more working space. I am still thinking about twining a design into the end.

In the meantime I am itching to warp up the next wide piece in these same colors…another wall hanging inspired by the Chilean chamantos.

And more things come into my inbox to inspire future pieces in this color scheme…

Roman K sent me this image of this beautiful man’s wool sash that he owns which is from western Podilia which Wikipedia tells me is in south-western Ukraine.

This sash has been woven in the simple two-color warp float technique but we are not sure as yet what kind of loom was used. Roman is a great resource for information on traditional folk clothing and embroidery. My online friend Sharon first sent me a link to his post on Central Asian embroideries and, while looking around his extensive website, it occurred to me that he may know something about the origin of the complementary warp weaving technique on some of the Russian Old Believer belts that I have been studying.

He has sent me pictures of other gorgeous sashes and belts which I will save for another post.

I know that my weaving friend Annie will be eyeing that sash. She is building a nice collection of sashes from around the world which I got to admire when I stayed with her this last fall. On top of that she weaves guitar straps and sashes of her own design on her inkle looms…emphasis on the plural…I think she has about seven inkle looms and is forever creating new and unique patterns.

It really seemed to me that her creative process was completely natural and effortless. There was no charting and not a calculator in sight. She just seems to pick up this color and that, move her skeins and balls of yarn around and then come up with something fabulous.

I think it is a wonderful opportunity to add a splash of color to the end of this blog post by showing you some of the guitar straps that Annie, aka AspinnerWeaver, creates and sells in her Etsy store.

These are done in plain weave with all the patterning created in the warping, letting the colors do the talking.

She has taken the supplementary warp technique and really run far with it working it into her own unique patterns.

Color!! She has made minimal but very effective use of the simple warp floats technique in these next two straps and turned out two gorgeous designs.

Mental note: never fear the half revolution on the warping board…a lot of these clever warp designs that Annie has created require half revolutions when winding a single-plane warp which is something I usually just don’t bother with to avoid having knots at my starting end (not a problem with circular warps)but, then again, not really a problem with single-plane warps either especially if you plan on starting with a fringe.

More plain-weave beauties…

And  one last supplementary warp color burst and a two-color warp float strap that is one of my favorites.

Have this got you all keen to warp up something on for your inkle or backstrap looms? If you are in need of even more inspiration check out Annie’s Flickr guitar strap album.

I was asked recently to make a guitar strap for a friend. I chose to make it in my favorite pick-up technique…you guessed it, pebble weave. I added in a couple of extra heddles which made it quite fast to weave.

 I happened to mention to Annie that I had to make a guitar strap and the fact that I would need to buy the hardware to finish it. In the mail arrived a package from her with all the pieces necessary to complete my project. What I didn’t realize at the time is that she actually cut the leather pieces and put it all together herself. Better still, she is selling this now here so you can weave your own guitar strap and have everything you need to finish it off beautifully.

I definitely owe my boyfriend a new guitar strap. The pebble weave one I made him is constantly being confiscated and taken with me on the road to show friends.

There has been some buzz in the inkle and backstrap groups about Anne Dixon’s book which is due out next summer I believe.

I am happy that I will get to meet her at the Braids 2012 conference in Manchester next August….400 warp-faced weaves. Imagine!

It seems so far away now but time is bound to fly. And what about Convergence and Maryland Sheep and Wool? Are you planning to go? I hope I will meet some of you at at least one of these events.

Well, back to my red, black and white pebbly Starry Night piece and hopefully I will have the start of piece number two in this series to show you next week.

Backstrap Weaving – To Float or not to Float

An inkle loom? I bet you didn’t expect to see that here! I have been playing with my Ashford inklette this week…but more about that later!

I have this star motif memorized now! You would think so after having woven seventeen of them and then another seventeen of the mirrored version.

I am really enjoying weaving this wide piece.

I love using the big swords and hearing the clacking sound they make as I insert one to hold the picked-up warps while withdrawing the other. I like the feel of the chunky polished wood and I like the look of all those string heddles neatly lined up across the warp.

The wideness of the warp which is very close to my body width makes me feel even more that I am part of the loom itself and I like that the opening of the sheds feels more natural now and less of a workout.

I guess that I am just over halfway now…at least with the weaving part. I am thinking of finishing it with weft twining and trying to work a similar star pattern into the twining. And then I wouldn’t mind adding a tubular woven band to the edges.

So, this may not be truly finished for some time.

In any case, I am already charting my design for the next piece in this wide red, black and white set and am taking inspiration from the chamantos which are ponchos worn by the huasos of central Chile.

An online friend who lives in Chile has allowed me to use the picture she took of a chamantera at work at her loom.

I am excited about this next project as I have not woven designs like these before and can’t wait to see how they turn out. Of course there will be a good deal of sampling beforehand.

And I can’t help but think ahead to the next pieces after that!

We will be starting a new weave-along in the Ravelry group in January. One of the themes that I have suggested so far is ikat so I will try to incorporate some of that in one of the pieces in this set.

Again, much sampling will be done before I try ikat in one of these large pieces. I have only done three or four ikat experiments so far so, naturally, there is still A LOT to be learned .

I guess I have been a fan of this bold color scheme for some time. Here’s another pebble piece I made some time ago with these colors.

It certainly keeps appearing in my life…the Montagnard weavers use a lot of black which beautifully sets off the red and white twined designs that adorn the edges of their pieces.

Many of the Bedouin pieces I have seen online and in books make a lot of use of these three colors. My online friend Tracy, who lives in Doha Qatar, is constantly sharing  pictures of Bedouin textiles she sees with us on Ravelry . The ones below, which Tracy photographed, are from Oman, (on the left) and Syria.


I remember back in 1993 or 1994 when I first went to live in Chile, before I could learn Navajo weaving or make my first trip to Peru, I knocked together a wooden frame, hammered in some nails and made some small tapestries using a cardboard rigid heddle, (it wasn’t very rigid!) cotton warp and acrylic weft yarn.

I had no resources at the time and all I knew was that I wanted to weave something “ethnic” and so the cover of the Split Enz CD with its Maori designs was my inspiration!

I made a small tapestry pillow cover using the motifs. I so wish I still had those early weavings. Many things got left behind when I moved up to Bolivia.

Only last month I was in the library of the Textile Museum in DC and found a book with charts of a lot of twined Maori pieces including ones with very similar designs to those on that old CD cover. I expect I will be making something with those one of these days.

There are a lot of curves in those Maori motifs and that is one thing I learned from twining letters…it is not too difficult to make figures with curves.

That’s another reason to love the warp substitution technique whether it be the single layer or the double-weave version…with enough threads to work with, you can produce all kinds of shapes.

I have been sampling for a future double-weave project and trying to get the scale sorted out for the #10 crochet cotton that I want to use. For example, I have been trying to figure the ratio of warps to weft shots to make a square, sampling to see how the thickness of a two-warp vertical line compares to that of a single weft-shot horizontal line among other considerations.

Again…I am just loving the backstrap loom and the way it enables me to make small samples.

At left you can see the Abba Yohanni motif that I wove some time ago. The original card-woven motif on the curtain in the cave church in Ethiopia is pretty much square whereas you can see that mine is elongated.

Can you tell that I didn’t sample before I wove this motif into the wall hanging?

The solution was pretty easy after all. All that was needed was to weave only one row for the horizontal lines instead of two and that was enough to change it into a more square-ish figure.

Below is the improved Abba Yohanni motif now looking more like it should. The diamonds in the four corners are my own invention.

Figures that comprise pure horizontals and verticals are fairly easy to chart and I have been finding other interesting knot-like designs with these features online.

It’s the curves that are troublesome!…trying to get the horizontals and verticals to behave in such a way that they give the illusion of a curve. Even getting the right angle for diagonals can be challenging. It seems that the vast majority of Celtic knot designs in my books include these pesky curves.

Fortunately I really like messing around with these kinds of things.

I went through all this when I did tapestry weaving in Chile and was trying to figure out how to make just the right angles for diagonals so that I could weave the design on a Mexican piece that I had seen in Joanne Hall’s book.

The resulting piece is at left. I would have used red for the background, to have my favored red, black and white combo,  except that my Wild and Woolly yarn order to Chile somehow got messed up and that pinky color arrived instead of the Ganado Red that I had wanted.

So, I have been sampling…only one sample done so far and still a long way to go to get the desired result but I expect I have learned enough from this to get it pretty close to right next time.

Yes, I love double weave…those clean crisp designs on the solid color backgrounds on both faces. It is, after all, just two layers of plain warp-faced weaving with substituted warps. It is easy to chart and I find it one of the easiest patterning techniques to “read” as I weave.

I have had a lot of fun using it for African and South American inspired motifs….

…as well as designs from Mexico (again from Joanne Hall’s book).

Supplementary weft inlay motifs like the ones from Bhutan on the bag I made above right can be easily woven in double weave. They conveniently use exactly the same charting system (although the reverse is not always true, that is, not all double weave designs will translate well into inlay as the floats in the inlay technique need to be kept short).

I have been able to take elements of motifs woven in other techniques like the simple warp float patterns I wove on the placemats above and weave them into matching mug rugs in double weave.

Cell phone pouches are nice double weave projects. The designs on the one on the right, which are based on Guarani motifs, are quite curvy.

Here are a couple of projects made by my online weaving friends Traudi and Sharon.

Traudi charted and wove the designs on her green and yellow mug rugs. Sharon created a series of butterfly motifs for double weave projects. This is just one of four that she showed me.

And how did Traudi reach this point? She started off with the warp substitution technique. Below you can see a band that she made using the Bedouin shajarah motifs charted here as well as the Bolivian flowers charted on the double weave page. She also created designs of her own.

I think that the word “double” in double weave for some people may immediately bring forth ideas of something complex and difficult. In warp-faced weaving, it isn’t!

You are basically doing plain weave with two sheds as you would normally, except that you are using doubled threads, one in each of two colors.

To create patterns, you simply drop one of the two threads…the color that you don’t want to have appear in your pattern. The solid color borders will also be warped with doubled threads as shown above.

You only need to drop warps to create the shed for the upper layer. After doing a special maneuver, the pattern shed for the lower layer forms automatically. Only one weft is needed to weave first the upper layer and then the lower.

This technique’s “little brother” is the simple warp substitution technique which Traudi used to weave her band. The same kind of warp is used except that the solid color borders are not warped with doubled threads.

As in double weave, the pattern shed is created by simply dropping the warps that are not needed to form the design. The warps that are dropped simply hang below.

While I recommend the simple warp substitution technique as a good warm-up before moving on to double weave, it is those discarded warps that form long floats on the back of the textile that most people don’t like.

I guess that’s the price you pay to have a smooth “float-less” front face on the band.

You can see at left how long and awkward the floats can be.

If you read my post last week, you will remember that Tracy showed us a beautiful textile from Oman which has been woven with the simple warp substitution technique. I showed it earlier in this post but it is worth seeing again don’t you think?…

Both the bands of patterning on this piece have been woven with the warp substitution technique. The Bedouin call the style of patterning in the center band shajarah and the checked pattern al’ouerjan. You can see some close-up examples that I wove below. The al’ouerjan pattern is a partial warp substitution design in that only the red and white sections are warped as doubled threads. The blacks are all single warps.

My samples would have unsightly floats on the back if Tracy had not shown us the back of the Omani textile which showed how the weavers use a second fine weft to secure the floats. This is the first time that Tracy has seen this in use and she suspects that designers in the cooperative store that sells these weavings are encouraging the weavers to use this second weft to make the textiles more attractive. The technique is not used in traditional Bedouin pieces.

So here is how it is done…very simple!!

I decided to put this on my Ashford inklette, just for something different. Here is the draft…(the split squares show where two threads are wound together as one. The borders are not included).

(I am sure that inkle weavers are familiar with this style of draft. Winding a circular warp on the inkle loom or for a backstrap loom with this pattern is very straightforward. I will create a new page on this blog for next week showing how to wind this for a non-circular, or single-plane warp, for the backstrap loom using both two and four stakes.)

…and I used non traditional colors.

Above you can see the cross. Note that the yellow and blue threads have been warped together as one thread.

Above left you can see one of the sheds opened. From each pair of yellow and blue warps, one warp must be dropped and one kept to form the pattern shed. Then the weft is passed as shown above right.

Then I reopened the original shed and passed a second fine weft (I used some tatting thread which is about sewing thread weight). You can see on the back how this fine thread secures the warp floats. Compare it to the following samples where the floats have not been secured…

And what about the shajarah style of patterning where all the warps are substituted? This is how it would look front and back as the Bedouin traditionally weave it…

And here it is using the system on the Omani co-op textile where the floats have been secured.

While the extra weft serves to secure the floats, it doesn’t really create a pretty second face. However, I think that it makes enough difference to enable you to use this patterning technique and create a very much more practical piece even though you would probably still prefer to have the back hidden from view.  So, although you may not want to use it for a guitar strap, you may find it works well for a bag or cell phone pouch. You won’t have to worry about things getting caught on the floats. Bear in mind that the resulting band is fairly thick as you are, after all, using doubled threads.

I hope that I have inspired you to try this technique. (See the tutorials for simple warp substitution and double weave). Give the simple warp substitution a try and maybe you will be tempted to go on to double weave so you can have two pretty float-less faces.

I am in the process of charting more beautiful designs from my friend Pam’s gorgeous rug from Uzbekistan to add to the warp substitution and double weave pages. They will go up soon.

Backstrap Weaving – Bringing Out the Big Sticks

This Montagnard inspired piece was on my loom this time last year

Wow, it’s already December! I have a couple of milestones to note as the year winds down….last week’s post was my 100th and my blog will celebrate its second birthday in a few days.

So, I looked back to this time last year and then again to this time two years ago and noted something in common…I was having the urge to weave something wide. Well, wide for me anyway…maybe not that wide in the world of backstrap weaving.

Funny that I have arrived back from this latest trip with this same urge and a color idea not all that different from the Montagnard inspired piece that I wove last year.

Around this time last year I was arriving home after having learned the weft twining technique practiced by the Jarai and Rhade people of the Vietnamese highlands. I warped for a wide-ish piece to practice their simple warp float technique as well as the weft twining that they use to finish the ends of their textiles.

This time two years ago I was very excited about having received 12″ rigid heddles in a swap and was busy weaving simple balanced plain weave runners and placemats. I was so happy about how easy and fun it was.

Now I have the idea of pushing my weaving width just that little bit further and have warped up for something which is just about half as wide again as that Montagnard piece. Maybe it’s because I have been on the road weaving lots of narrow  bands with friends in the US that I have this urge to get my hands into something wide.

So I have had to dig through my bins of tools and pull out the big sticks and I have to say that I am very grateful to Lorraine in California who sent me a loom that she had bought in Guatemala when she traveled there in the 70’s.

I could easily make long loom bars with a trip to the hardware store. In fact, the painters have just left a very long wooden pole upstairs on the terrace. I am patiently waiting to see if they come back to claim it before snapping it up. In the meantime I have Lorraine’s long Guatemalan bars. What I value most of all from the things she sent me are the swords…five beautiful long ones in varying widths as well as the shed rod…a good, thick, yet surprisingly lightweight piece of wood.

 See how that large, polished heavy one looks next to my favorite little band sword from Peru!

Without these swords I would not be able to weave as wide I would like. I do have some battens left over from my Navajo weaving days but they would not do the trick as beaters anywhere near as well as these Guatemalan beauties. I would have to have some specially made.

Above you can see the tools on top of the wide warp…an old favorite color scheme. I have decided that I would like to make a series of weavings in these three colors. I have no plan for the finished pieces. They could be sewn onto the storage bags that I have been wanting to make, used as one face of a pillow cover or simply hung on the wall (if I can find space!). For now I am just enjoying the process of winding and preparing all those warps ends and am discovering that opening the two sets of heddles for the pebble weave is quite a work out!

I am weaving a pebble weave pattern using the two-heddle technique that I learned in Peru which I teach in my book Andean Pebble Weave. The design is from a band I saw on  the website of tablet weaver Kurt Laitenberger.

Here are some other wide-ish pieces that I have woven this year:

Setting up for a wide piece is the same in many ways as setting up for a narrow band. However, all those warp ends can be scarey! Let me tell you that I am in no way an expert on this and these so-called “wide” pieces I am talking about are nothing compared to some of the widths indigenous backstrap weavers around the world are weaving. Nevertheless I may be able to help you with a tip or two should you be contemplating weaving something beyond a narrow inkle-type band. My main advice would be to:

1.know your yarn, know your width and know your technique.

What I am saying is, don’t go wide with a yarn you have never used or sampled many times.

I know that some people don’t bother with this but I also like to know the width I am aiming for rather than just warp up and see what turns out. So, there is a lot of measuring and calculating that goes on before I start warping. I warped for 14 1/2″ for the pebble weave piece above and calculated how many warp revolutions I would need for the 6 1/2″ pattern area and then drew my chart. Then I calculated how many ends I would need for the solid color parts to make the 14 1/2″ desired width.

I based my calculations on other finished pebble weave projects and my notes.

And, finally, I wouldn’t attempt a wide piece using a pick-up technique that I had just learned or was trying to learn. Leave that for the narrow bands.

My next suggestion…

2. Warp undisturbed and don’t disturb your warp.

Have everything you need for warping close at hand including the loom bars and cross sticks….scissors, rubber bands or tape, lashing string, string for tying off groups of warps for counting etc.. I also had my piece of piano wire on hand as I wanted to create a third selvedge (see the picture at left which shows wire inserted in the warp ends to make a third selvedge) Fortunately I still have one piece of wire that I haven’t cut down to smaller lengths.

Try to warp in one uninterrupted session…turn off the kettle, put the cat out, ignore the phone, forget that cup of coffee!

Now, how to keep all those warp ends in some kind of order?

I warped in three sections. The first solid color section has 184 revolutions (368 ends) of #10 cotton and I warped that as one section, put short cross sticks in and took it off the warping board placing it immediately on the loom bar and piece of wire on the floor next to me. I like to use cross sticks in the warp rather than cord as the sticks help keep the warps spread.

Another way to help keep the warps spread is to wrap yarn around groups of warps as shown in the picture above left. This also helps to keep count. I don’t do this myself as it means stopping frequently in the middle of winding and I like to keep the rhythm going.

Now, once you have wound that beautifully-tensioned warp, do your very best not to disturb it!

When I slide the warp off the warping board I try to keep my hand under the ends so that they are all lying flat and not bunching up. This saves a lot of tugging and rearranging later when the warp is on the loom. Too much tugging will mess up your tension.  In the picture above right I show how I would hold a small group of warps when taking it off the warping board. Remember to put safety strings in your warp ends if you are separating colors using the four-stake warping method.


Once the three sections of warp were on the loom bar and piano wire, I replaced the short cross sticks with two long ones and then lashed the piano wire to the second loom bar. I lashed it in four or five places. Once I had the loom set up with the warps under tension, I untied and replaced the lashing strings.

The third tip:

3. Slow and steady…take the time to set up and start well.  Check your knots, untwist the warps one by one and settle them on the loom bar or rod, measure. With the right amount of prep, once I have thrown the first few wefts and measured once again, I know that all will be smooth sailing from there on…just pure fun!

Once I was in my backstrap and facing my warp, I measured out regular lashing points…one for the exact half way point (counting the warps to find the center), one to separate the solid color from the pebble section, another to mark the center of the solid color section  etc…while measuring, measuring and measuring again. This helps ensure that the warps are not too bunched together in one section or too spread in another.

You know what comes next….Please don’t hate me when I say that I like making continuous string heddles! And there are two sets to be made for the pebble weave method that I learned (well worth it I say for the picking up it saves you).  But, wait! Did I tell you that my Guarani weaving teacher uses three sets of heddles when she does pebble weave?

I used two of the long swords to separate the pebble sheds and then sat down for a loooong heddle making session! Not a single mistake…that is VERY unusual.

And, finally, the weaving!!

May I remind you with the following photos that this piece I am weaving is NOT wide in the world of backstrap weaving.

Of course, pieces of all lengths and widths are woven on these simple looms. Above left, a lady in Santa Catarina Palopo in Guatemala is inserting the long sword into the heddle shed of her tremendously wide warp.

In contrast, above right, you can see the tiny sample band my Guarani weaving teacher, Angela, wisely made when she learned a three-color pick-up technique from a visiting Aymara backstrap weaver from Chile. Although Angela weaves on a vertical loom, she wove this piece on a body tensioned set-up with the warp end attached to her waist with cord.

In San Roque, Ecuador, the widest pieces are woven by the men in the household.

Celinda from the northern Chilean highlands is weaving a narrow band while a weaver from Pitumarca in Peru has a stunningly wide discontinuous-warp piece on her loom.

Narrow, wide and somewhere in between…I can only keep trying to push my width comfort zone little by little. I hope that the series of wide pieces I am planning will help me reach another level.

So, if you are contemplating going a little wider than your own comfort zone, don’t forget that there are lots of cool things that can be done with plain weave. You don’t need to do any complicated pick up patterning. I showed many examples of colorful stripes, resist dyed pieces and programmed warp patterning when our Ravelry group participated in a plain weave weave-along.

Do you remember Jennifer’s beautiful pieces?

 Never mind if you want to make something wide but still feel nervous about all those warps… you can always join two or more bands together and create something amazing. Do you remember Amber’s tote bag?

I have done a little behind-the-scenes house cleaning and have put the two tutorials on the Guatemalan patterning techniques, used to create the weft patterns at left, on their own separate page so that they now show up in the tutorial list on the side bar.

As these tutorials were originally part of blog posts, there is a bit more chat in them rather than straight out instructions which I hope is not too distracting. You can see the tutorial page here.

And here is a little teaser for next week for those of you who may have tried the warp substitution technique in this tutorial.

Tracy, who lives in Doha, Qatar showed all of us in the Ravelry group a picture of a Bedouin textile a friend of hers had bought in a weaving cooperative in Oman. We all ooohed over the beautful black-and-white shajarah patterns and the familiar al’ouerjan design.

Those of you who have tried these techniques will know that warp substitution is really quite simple. Unfortunately the back of the pieces have really long floats which can be very ugly and impractical. One way to get around that is to weave the designs in double weave.

However, the weavers of the Omani textile had gone another route and have found a way to at least tie down the floats so that the back of the fabric is a lot tidier. This means that you could use the woven pieces for purses or bags without having to worry about lining them or having things get entangled in the floats. Tracy suspects that the cooperative has designers who are encouraging the weavers to employ this technique to make the textiles more attractive to buyers.

Tracy photographed the front and back of the al’ouerjan pattern strip on the large Omani textile. It was first thing in the morning when I saw it and had to sit down and warp up a sample straight away so I could figure out how they had tied down the floats. That’s my sample pictured above…right side on the left and reverse on the right.  You can see that it makes quite a difference! The sample starts out with the typical long floats until I figured out what I needed to do to tie them down. So simple really!

So, enough teasing… I will go into that more next week with a more complete tutorial. 🙂

Backstrap Weaving – “You look, you know”

“You look, you know”…..These are the four little words that my teacher Ngach, with her limited English, would say to me over and over as we sat twirling the weft threads on their bobbins and twining the border of her woven blanket panel.

And she was right…there was no need for explanation. Mind you, I had already been making my own experiments in twining based on the Maori method and even charted and twined some Montagnard designs before this class so it wasn’t too hard then to pick up Nagch’s bobbin-twirling method.

And so I looked and listened to the clacking sound of the bobbins smacking together as they carried the wefts, twining their way across the multitude of fine warp ends. Ngach would stop and count the number of warp ends now and then when she lost her place in the pattern and slowly I learned what to do…how to hold the warp ends under the right amount of tension, how to twirl the bobbins well so they didn’t become hopelessly entangled on the back side of the cloth and how to snap the warp ends and nudge the twined wefts up snugly against the cloth.

I am currently on one of my safaris, which involves weaving with lots of my online friends, and it is always interesting to me to experience the different ways that people react to backstrap weaving.

Backstrap weaving with the group in Santa Cruz California.
Bands from the Santa Cruz weaving days

As an English teacher I have always been aware of different learning styles but, unfortunately, in the structured environment of the institute in which I taught, I was always racing against the clock trying to cover a seemingly impossible amount of material before the next exam. More often than not I had to limit myself to catering to the learning style shared by the majority.

Joan following a pattern chart.

Now I have more freedom to do my own thing, and develop my  way of showing people about backstrap weaving in a way that hopefully addresses a variety of learning styles.

Some people like to be shown a series of steps uncluttered by explanation and discover the logic in what they are doing for themselves as they weave, others find it impossible to absorb steps without straight away knowing the “why” behind each one.

Some people need to use charts while others find them a hindrance…a confusing mass of squares or ovals that in no way relate to what they see on the cloth and they do very well just “winging it”.

There are those who like their instructions to be backed up in writing while others have more success just listening to them. And there are yet others who like to watch in silence and do it…”you look, you know”.

But, hopefully, the end result is the same…some woven  bands to show at the end of a day but, more importantly, a satisfying experience with new skills learned, mistakes made leading to self-taught lessons, the development of the ability to analyse and trouble-shoot and the creation of the desire to explore further.

Kristi used a pillow case as an improvised backstrap to weave her own backstrap using the warp float technique. Jayne continued with some pebble weave bands after our get together. She wove a series of what we were calling “eyes” on the band on the right and then invented a wove a pair of eyeglasses just for fun.

After weaving with friends in Massachusetts, I headed off to Pennsylvania..my second visit there with Ron and Carol. I was excited as snow had been forecast for Saturday, the first day of my visit. While I am no stranger to snow, I hadn’t really seen lots of the stuff since 1992 and we got enough of it to make me very happy!

I know that for most of you in the north eastern US states this was an ugly, wet, slushy, heavy and unwelcome weather event and I apologize for my enthusiasm here!

I was even still smiling, and so were the other weavers, when the power went off fifteen minutes before the end of our day together. I am a little weird like that…I know that the power cuts were very inconvenient for the hundreds of thousands of people who experienced them but I welcome these little ”adventures” which spice up my travels and it was all good fun to me.

Really we weren’t too badly off with lots of wood to make a fire in Ron and Carol’s living room, kersoene lamps placed about for warm light and dinners cooked in a motorhome with its own generator.

Sunday was gorgeously sunny….still no power but light streamed in through the windows of the room in which we wove. The sun also allowed me to take some pretty pictures in the morning and evening light.

Bundled up but happy (I was wearing five layers!), we were able to weave all day Sunday and yes, Judith was there both days in short sleeves and with bare feet taking my term “barefoot weaving” (which I coined to mean weaving with little or no tools) a little too literally. That’s Elene next to her. Roxanne and Joan came well dressed for the power outage the second day when we wove bands with patterns in simple warp floats.

Weaving, warping, shopping, weaving, browsing.

I spent the evenings ploughing through piles of Handwoven magazines warm and cosy in the motor home. Ron and Carol did their best to make things as comfortable as possible and I was really enjoying the unusual situation. As I said it was all a big adventure for me. That couldn’t believe that I was actually enjoying this!

While flicking through the pages of the weaving magazines I realized that there were quite a few years there where it was all about rep rep rep. I have never paid much attention to this structure but there it was again and again in the magazine pages and ideas started to come to mind. There was one rug the colors of which I really liked. It turned out that it had been woven by Tom Knisely and was right there in The Mannings….And how about the piece on the cover of the Jan/Feb 2011 issue…oh yes, that’s Tom’s too.

So, I am adding rep weave to the list of things to tackle when I get home.

The power came back on late on Monday night and I was off headed west the next morning. I was shocked to hear that many places were still without power. Pam in Massachusetts didn’t get hers on until Thursday while many others had to do without for even longer while I settled among the sea and sandscapes with my friend Annie in Santa Cruz California. We visited the frolicking seals at the wharf , hoardes of Monarch butterflies wintering over in groves of eucalyptus trees and humpback whales stopping off in the bay as they migrate along the coast.

 I visited with Annie, the “Queen of Sashes” aka ASpinnerWeaver on my trip to Santa Cruz last spring and she wove with me again. This time I got to stay with her for days…what a treat… tour Santa Cruz and its wild places and wildlife pictured above, chat with a group of local artisans with whom she meets monthly and talk and talk and talk about something that is near to both our hearts…band weaving.

Annie’s living room/studio has at least seven inkle looms parked in it.

She can grab one and sit and weave on it at any moment. Baskets of yarn and woven samples are here and there along with a fabulous collection of books on weaving around the world.

Sashes adorn her walls…her own pieces and those collected from around the world….many Guatemalan hair sashes and belts and she has now added a Bolivian double weave belt from Potosi that I brought to the collection.

Annie decided to wear something handwoven everyday during my visit. Here she is wearing a huipil from Guatemala while weaving her latest guitar strap.

Later that day she packaged up to mail one of the straps that had just sold on her Etsy site. Annie has such a wonderful sense of color and design and it is little wonder that her guitar straps are snapped up not long after they appear on her site. 

We wove for three days in Martha’s studio away in the woods with a lovely fire in the stove and smoke curling from the chimney to greet us each day.

 

On the third day, at Yonat’s urging, Martha brought out an amazing rug that she had woven which is a reproduction of a piece of fabric that was found wrapped around a mummy from the Anasazi culture dating back to approximately 1134 AD. The rug is woven in a diamond twill and she explained to us her path to successfully recreating the pattern and the method she used to record and chart the design.

Here Martha is standing in front of the design which she plotted on diamond graph paper.

And here is the rug. Yonat and Annie look on as Martha points out some of the details. What I liked was seeing Martha’s progress markers. She sewed a zig zag in red thread along one edge, each “zig” representing a day’s work…most often less than an inch… while white thread would mark the distance she had managed to weave in a week.

And yet again I got to take a look at her reproductions of Anasazi sandals. Thank goodness, as last spring when I had seen these it was all a bit over my head and a case of too-much-information. This time I saw them with new eyes and understood what was going on.

On the left you can see the weft-twined upper part of the sandal sole or the part that would be against the wearer’s foot.  A relief pattern is created on the underside by placing added extra twist to the twined wefts between warps in the positions where the pattern was to appear. This is going on my list of things to try too!

As for all of us, the backstrap weavers, we did our own simple weft twining and created some fun patterns with colors rather than texture. Here are some pictures of the gang including Martha and some of the weft twining, warp substitution and double weave pieces…

Above are Ingrid (Ingrid Crickmore the loop braider), Annie, Sawyer and Dorothy weaving. Below, Yonat chooses colors alongside Annie and Barbara while Anne and Dorothy warp.

Last spring when I was weaving with this group in Martha’s studio, Martha showed me a collection of woven wristlets and a loom with one in progress which was part of the collection of the late Anne Blinks.

The loom with wristlet in progress is from the Shipibo people of tropical lowland Peru and the completed wristlets are Anne Blinks’s reproductions.

On my visit this fall I found a box in Martha’s studio with my name on it which contained some works-in-progress by the late Nora Rogers, a member of this guild who, among other things, wove with a backstrap loom and studied the structures of these kinds of little-known textiles and attempted to reproduce them.

One was a piece of sprang fabric, still on the loom, where Nora was studying the structure used to create the traditional Hopi wedding sash. Another appears to be Nora’s study of the Shipibo wristlets. I am certainly hoping that that is true. I need to look at these more carefully when I get home.

So, it was a whirlwind visit to the west coast, a chance to catch up with my springtime weaving friends and meet an online friend, Anne Dunham, who joined the group for the first time. We have already set the date for the next visit in spring next year!

Now I find myself back on the east coast in Maryland with friends.

And in the living room in Claudia’s home I see this….everywhere I go there’s twining!

This is the twined edge on a rug that one of Claudia’s sons who is in the Marine Corps had sent back to her from Afghanistan. And take a look at the rest of it…

So, I really need to do some soumak myself and see if this is the technique that has been used on this rug. The picture above left shows detail of the Afghan rug and, yes, I have taken pictures of the other side to take home and study.

The rug on the right is a silk one from Uzbekistan in my friend Pam’s collection which she tells me is soumak. The surface of this silk rug looks the same as that of the Afghan one. And I am still wondering about the technique used in the Bunong textiles that I saw when I was with the Montagnard weavers in North Carolina…

One of the Bunong ladies had this textile in her possession but had not woven it and did not know how it had been made. I aim to pin this down!…soumak, warp wrapping, weft twining or a combination of all of them?! Yet another thing to add to the list. 🙂

This is the last stop on my trip and I guess I will be back to steamy mango season in Santa Cruz Bolivia this time next week leaving the US as it moves into winter. But before I leave the DC area I will make a trip to the Textile Museum and see the current exhibit, Weaving Abstraction: Kuba Textiles and the Woven Art of Central Africa. And there is a rumor that Mapuche weavers are exhibiting at the National Museum of the American Indian and who knows what else I will find!

Backstrap Weaving – Finnweave, Funweave and Finishes

FINNWEAVE, FUNWEAVE AND FINISHES

My finnweave piece is off the loom and is just the right size to make my storage bag. It will be a basic bag construction, simply folded in half and sewn together at the sides.

Then I will let it sit for a while to see what ideas I get about dressing it up….a strap will be needed, maybe some large tassels on each bottom corner and some kind of edging.

It is going to hold all the cds with photos from my recent travels. These are currently in a pile on the floor under my computer table which is on top of another pile of charts and booklets which is on top of another pile of….well, you get the idea.

Which is why I need another system. I am currently rearranging my wall hangings so I can hang my woven storage bags out of the reach of my cat.

I am hoping to have a bunch of these in different colors and structures to add to the “textile bazaar” feel of my room.

While this will be made into a usable product, I still feel that it should be filed in the category of “sample” as there are a few things about it with which I am not all together happy.

I have made a couple of other useful items from my samples such as, the two purses pictured at left, and I have all the pieces I have made here as reminders of how to chart designs or what to do and what not to do next time.

Give me some time and will probably sew all the samples up into something!

So, what am I unhappy about? Firstly, as I mentioned last week, my warps in the center of the piece were spaced wider than those along the sides so I know next time that I need to pay more attention to that.

The other thing is the separation of the layers. I know from doing warp-faced double weave that the two layers of fabric are not joined in places where there is no pick-up pattern but you really have to pinch the fabric and try to pull it apart to feel the separation of the layers in the warp-faced fabric.

However, in this balanced double weave structure, the separation of the layers is far more apparent and not something I like too much. I think it was a mistake weaving those long columns of motifs and leaving those long plain spaces between them. While, thankfully, the fabric doesn’t “billow” in the places where the layers are not attached (I have read that this is something that can happen), it does somehow feel unstable in those places.

The above sample designs have the pick-up better spaced across the width of the fabric. The narrow brown and white band, above right,  is a reproduction of a pre columbian piece from Peru and you can see how the weaver has added small spots, crosses and squiggles in the negative spaces around the bird motifs in order, I would imagine, to bind the two layers of cloth.

The lattice design in black and white (from an issue of Prairie Wool Companion) holds the layers together beautifully.

So, my next piece in this technique will have an all-over design and I have already found the one I would like to do on a Huichol bag. Now to chart it…I am not yet at the point where I can read the design straight off a photo but am getting closer! I might be able to do it with the actual cloth in my hands.

Of course, the fact that the layers in plain double weave don’t bind can be used to your advantage if you are wanting to make a seamless pouch (see the eyeglass case I made in this blog post).

From here I move on to what I call in the title of this blog “Funweave”. All weaving is fun for me but Jennifer in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group reminded us all this week about how fun and satisfying it can be to weave using heavy yarn.

I wrote a post entitled Big Bang and Big Thread some time ago about this topic when I made four backstraps very quickly using 12wpi yarn – Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale together with doubled Tahki Cotton Classic.

These were fast and fun to make with their pick-up patterns: pebble weave and simple warp float patterns but, hey, who needs pick-up patterns to make beautiful designs?

Look at that bag…what a beauty! Here is what Jennifer calls an ”eight-hour project” using Tahki Cotton Classic. The checkerboard design is programmed into the warp so that once the warp is on the loom it is all plain weave. She even did some weft twining. I have to tell you that weft twining is SLOW but not so bad when you are using yarn of this  weight and can work your way from one edge of the warp to the other relatively quickly.

She also made a backstrap using Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale which is heavier than the Tahki Cotton Classic.

So, I decided this week to show you a little about basic weft twining and made a couple of videos.

My interest in this technique goes back a long way starting with Cheryl Samuel’s beautiful book on Chilkat dancing blankets and I have written about this in several previous posts.

What got me out of the book pages and into the technique was seeing the twining on textiles made by the Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers. They call this twining technique kteh. Some of their traditional designs can be seen above left.

On my first visit I only got to see the designs and didn’t see how they were created and so I started on some off-loom twining experiments using thick yarn as weft twined around cotton string.

I copied some of the Montagnard designs as well as woven motifs from Bedouin textiles and played with one, two and three-color twining.

I also started some one-color textured twining but got distracted when the opportunity came to actually go and learn twining with the Montagnard weavers and so I will return to the textured twining one of these days.

The Montagnard weavers twine their pieces off-loom. They twine the edges of their skirts and blankets. To make these large pieces, several panels are woven and then sewn together. Then the twining is added along the edge of the connected panels. I also understand after having spoken with Ngach that there are specialists to whom weavers take their cloth to be twined. Ju Nie often sends her skirt fabric back to her sister in Vietnam who twines the edges and returns it.

Even small pieces are twined off loom. The fabric is hung on a specially made stand or on a bar which is rests on two pieces of furniture.

Here I am learning to twine with Jarai weaver Ngach. This is a beautiful way to twine. The thread that Ngach uses is fine and she has her wefts wound on bobbins. Her movements are fluid and graceful.


There is more detail on my second visit with the Montagnard weavers in this post.

Here is a short video I made of Ngach twining. After  you watch the instructional video I have made, you will better understand what she is doing in the different movements. Watch how she twists the wefts sometimes once and sometimes twice and note how tightly she holds the warps under tension. She has her woven piece sewn around the metal bar so she can pull down on the warps. This is something I couldn’t do with my off-loom lap twining.

I have tried both on and off-loom twining and find that I much prefer twining while my woven piece is still on the loom. For me, it is easier to twine around warps that are held under tension. This also allows me to twine in the middle of a weaving as the Bedouin often do.

Something I have yet to try which I have seen in Bedouin textiles is twining a design that is completely embedded in the cloth, that is, it does not travel from edge to edge but sits in the middle completely surrounded by weaving. (see here…although I can’t be sure if this is twining or in fact wrapping, soumak or some other technique that is worked in conjunction with a ground weft which would bind the whole piece of fabric together).  What do you all think?

I have made two videos showing two-color twining as I do it on the loom (not as I was taught by Ngach.) The first video shows how to twine with two colors and determine which color shows on the surface to create your pattern.

I am twining in the middle of a narrow band woven with yarn that is very similar to Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale. I use the same yarn as the warp and weft for the twining and I twine around groups of six warps.

I am working sitting in my backstrap loom with the warp under tension.

I start by tying the two strands of weft in a square knot. The Montagnard weavers twine from left to right leaving the weft tails hanging decoratively at both edges. If you are planning on sewing your piece and hiding the weft tails, you may want to start with a slip knot which you can later easily undo and therefore not have a bulky knot interfering with your seam.

 


If you look at the large picture of Jennifer’s bag earlier in this post, you will see that the twined wefts sit on the surface of the cloth at an angle.

The next video shows how to create two rows of twining at once with the wefts lying at opposite angles creating little “v”s.

To have this show up well, this kind of twining should be separated from the rest of the two-color twining by a row or two of single color preferably in a third contrast color. You can also stack several rows of this for a very nice effect.

You can see it in red and white on this piece I made surrounded by black.

I start by hooking the two threads together. By doing this, you won’t have starting tails.

If you prefer to have tails, you can just knot the four strands together. As for the length of the wefts, I will leave that up to you to figure by trial and error. Unless you really want to avoid wasting yarn, I would go with long wefts which can be trimmed later. Having long pieces of weft to hold and work with in your hands is easier than having short ones which you can’t quite grasp.

As you can see, the weft builds up around the warps in vertical columns. This means that any motif that has been drawn on a chart that is based on columns of squares can be used…motifs designed for cross stitch or knitting, for example. I choose to hide the little “bump” at the back of the fabric. I have seen Indonesian textiles that have the bump exposed and used as part of the design almost like little beads.

In the videos I am twining up and away from the weaving line but I have also on occasion, done it the other way around. I finish my weaving and then return to the start and twine around the unwoven warp ends at the beginning of the piece. The twining grows towards me rather than away. Both ways work equally well for me.

And what’s on the other side when you twine motifs? This is how the piece in the heavy yarn looks on both sides….

And here is the finer twining I did on the Montagnard-style piece that I wove…front and back. You will notice that the twined band is slightly wavy. As I had twined around groups of four warps, the twining actually turned out wider than the woven fabric. Since then, I have twined around groups of six warps and always used the same yarn as my warp and weft for the twining wefts. That works out perfectly.

An entire piece can be made up of twining. Those off-loom pieces that I made with the chunky yarn, with a bit more practice, could be used for mug rugs or sewn into bags. You can twine around a piece of cardboard and form a tube to create a seamless bag as my friend Franco did.

I twined around single strands of cotton string for those. The close-up at left will show you the material and a first attempt at some textured twining. For the piece in this picture I have used doubled strands of #3 crochet cotton for the weft.

Twining on a woven piece adds a nice bit of decoration and can strengthen an edge. I have not seen exactly how the woven Bedouin tent dividers are hung but wonder if they are hung from the twining in the mid sections of the weaving. I imagine those tent dividers are very heavy and perhaps the stronger, more rigid twined parts can support the weight of the hung weaving (pure speculation on my part).

I used twining in a single color to edge these placemats and mug rugs just for something different.

I wanted a sturdy shoulder strap for my loom bag and so twined the whole thing with #10 cotton. I twined in the word for ”weave” in different languages. The twining was done width-wise and all the weft ends were sandwiched between the twined band and another woven one which were sewn together.

Remember the “sausage” bag I made last week? Well I finished it by sewing in the zip and am still lamenting the fact that the twining ended up on the bottom!

It really holds a lot of stuff and will make a great toiletries bag for travel. The twined motif has three colors in the center and with practice you will see that it is not any harder to twine with three colors than with two.

And speaking of decorative finishing techniques, Tracy in the Ravelry group showed us the pretty herringbone stitch that she is working along the edge of one of her Weave Along projects. Tracy lives in Doha, Qatar and has made contact with a Bedouin weaver there who uses this finish on her woven pieces.

On the left you can see a pebble weave piece she is also currently working on using her homespun yarn.


Here are other Weave Along projects from the last couple of weeks…..As you know this Weave Along is all about PLAIN WEAVE.

Peg and Cindy made their first bands. Cindy used her handspun. Ellen and Jenny made backstraps. Jenny used a semi rigid heddle on her backstrap loom.

Janet has both balanced and warp-faced projects on the go.

Marsha is doing both balanced and warp-faced double weave.

Ellen made a bookmark from her first supplementary weft band and Traudi made mug rugs charting  her own design in warp-faced double weave.

Susanna is weaving her first ever backstrap piece while Dyggvi is planning a Tibetan-style bag with bands made using the simple warp floats technique.

So, I hope you use the tutorial, twine away…and show me what you have made.