spinning – Page 6 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Colors from Camelids and Cotton

This week’s blog post is brought to you by these fine fellows…

and their beautiful fiber but also by…

my friend Janet in northern California who gave me a ton of alpaca fiber last year, Celinda, an Aymara weaver who swapped some of her handspun alpaca yarn with me for one of my woven keyfobs and the weavers of Peru who got me started in spinning on drop spindles back on my first visit to Peru in 1996. I also have to thank Gladys Miller in Colorado who encouraged me to spin while she taught me about Navajo weaving in 1995.

Now I am thoroughly spoiled with this gorgeous alpaca fiber that Janet gave me. A lot of it was already beautifully prepared by Janet herself in her mill. For the stuff that hadn’t been prepared, all I had to do was tease the tips open using my hand carders.

Until now, all I had spun was wool that was readily available from the farms where I lived in Patagonia and llama fiber that I bought from little villages outside of Uyuni, Bolivia many years ago…bags and bags of it which I have cleaned and carded, spun and even dyed to weave with as the years have gone by. I thought it was pretty good but now that I have had the experience with the alpaca fiber I look at the poor old llama stuff with a very critical eye…dry, coarse and filthy!

Nevertheless I did manage to weave some nice things with it…

And I also like to weave llamas although these guys were woven in cotton…

I still have tons of llama fiber left so I don’t want to get too spoiled!

So, I have spent some time lately spinning the alpaca mostly because we have been having a Spin-Along in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry with a lot of discussion about just how much over twist one needs to put into the yarn to make it suitable for warp-faced weaving on the backstrap loom. And this is where Celinda, the Aymara weaver from northern Chile came in. The yarn that she gave me was quite hairy and not heavily overspun. I wove with it and it was soft and luscious. That is how I wanted my yarn to be, not like the hard severely twisted llama thread I had been making.

And then it was down to the all-important sampling. Would it be too hairy to work with? Would it be a lot of really hard work clearing the sheds? Would it shred and would I have broken warps because the yarn couldn’t stand up to the abrasion of warp-faced weaving?

Thankfully, I didn’t get a “yes” response to any of the above questions. Of course, the sheds were more difficult to clear than those in a mercerized cotton warp but they were manageable. You can see the warp at rest above and the yarn is not curling up on itself. One thing I regret is my decision to use white weft as it did show through the brown a bit. I didn’t mind it showing at the edges as I knew that I was going to cover those with a tubular band. I used an alpaca weft that was balanced.

None of the warps broke but, then again, my warp was only 24″ long. The only problem I had was with some of the knots at the color changes which slipped undone as the yarn was so silky.

This is the alpaca warp for the tubular band and there it is being woven and sewn to the edge of the piece.

Now my passport gets to travel in first-class luxury even if I don’t. I made this sample piece into a passport pouch which is a vast improvement on the plastic wallet I have been using until now. It feels lovely!

Cutting the piece off the loom was the hardest part! There was still enough warp there to weave a little something. This was my precious handspun and I didn’t want to waste a bit but then I got the idea of using the leftover bits as supplementary wefts in another project and, with that in mind, I cut away.

Now with the Tour de Fleece approaching do I keep spinning the alpaca, go back to the nasty llama or take up the cotton? Decisions…

Actually, I am thinking of spinning some heavier yarn from the llama fiber to use, as it often is up in the mountains, to make slings. Well, I probably won’t make a whole sling, although I have made one before with a teacher in Yanque, Peru using llama fiber. It would be nice to have yarn suitable for making the braids rather than the whole sling. This will be challenging as I have been aiming for fine thread all along and now I am not sure if I can spin thick.

When I was in southern California, Martha shared her collection of South American textiles with me which included a number of beautiful Andean slings…

They have been made with such a variety of gorgeous braids and with the beautiful natural colors of the llama…

Ben Turner in Australia showed me two Tibetan style slings that he has constructed. While the cradles of the Andean slings that I have seen have been woven weft-faced, Ben tells me that Tibetan slings usually have twined, braided or felted cradles. The cradles of his two examples here have been twined.

I must ask him what yarn he uses for these.

And now on to cotton, the material most available to us “lowlanders” in Bolivia…

Another piece of sampling I did this week was using the bamboo reed on my backstrap loom. This was extremely clumsy especially with such a narrow piece but I will eventually come up with some kind of system for this. I am tenacious with these kinds of things and I am determined to make this work. I so rarely weave plain balanced cloth and I get ridiculously excited about it! I have a cotton shadow weave project in mind and later I would like to use some 10/2 tencel that I received in a swap to weave something.

This is all I have used the tencel for so far…a supplementary warp band, but I am hoping that there is enough contrast in the green and grey for shadow weave (I don’t have all that much of the ivory).

This experiment is with the cotton that I usually weave my warped-faced pieces with, more or less equivalent in size to the #10 crochet cotton that is available in the US. Above right you can see it wet finished and lying on top of a beautiful cotton dish towel that Betty Davenport wove. That towel is my inspiration and I can tell you right now that it won’t be going anywhere near a dish!

Betty wove this towel using cotton from Sally Fox Vreseis Ltd line of 10/2 in camel, coyote and green…all natural cotton colors! I had not heard of Sally Fox until Betty told me about her and her experiments with developing colored cottons (which reminds me that I did a spindle swap with a lady in the US who sent me natural green and caramel cotton sliver…must get down to spinning that).

Betty has a collection of small skeins of cotton in an incredible range of natural colors…all kinds of browns, greens and even a mauve from Peru. Some of the skeins come from Sally Fox’s experimental supply when she first started developing her standard colors. There are reddish-browns from Guatemala and dark browns from Peru as well as colors from some of the US southern states.

So, a four-shaft shadow weave with my nifty reed in place will be an up-and-coming project.

Well, until someone comes up with a natural terracotta-colored cotton, I have no choice but to dye some. So, this week I dyed some of my crochet cotton with the Dylon Terracotta Brown dye. The color is perfect! It is exactly what I was wanting for my Shipibo piece so that will be on the loom this weekend too.

That is the color below on the string heddles…yummy!

The Ravelry gang continues to weave and spin…

Naomi has tacked three plain warp-faced pieces together for cutting and sewing into a zippered bag. She is also weaving a pebble weave strap for another bag project.

Amber finished her pencil pouch. She wove the fabric for this using the simple warp float technique. Jennifer is piecing together a bag patterned with pebble weave motifs.

Tracy wove a sample band for the traditional Bedouin al’ouerjan technique which is simple and stunning. I have added some information about this to the warp substitution tutorial page which will be more meaningful to those of you who have already followed the initial instructions on that page. Helena in Brazil kindly provided a link to a pdf by Joy Totah Hilden, author of the book on Bedouin weaving pictured in Tracy’s picture, in which the draft for the al’ouerjan structure is provided on the last page.

After Jennifer and Tracy’s beautiful weavings I have no more fear of putting red and blue together! They have given me the courage to get that red and blue Central Asian piece I have been planning underway soon.

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And finally, I have a wee favor to ask of you all…I just started a page on Facebook for my Andean Pebble Weave book and would love it if you would take a moment to go there and hit the “like” button. Things like this could really help me in my future publishing endeavors.

I have a few exciting things on the drawing board. 😉

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Backstrap Weaving – Sampling: Short, Sweet and Simple

I don’t mind sampling before I take on a new project. I usually end up making something with the sample…count the zippered purses I have around here! They are just a fraction of all the sample projects I have made. Those little zippered purses make great gifts and swap items.

I know how important it is to sample width when trying a new pick-up technique on my warp-faced weavings.

With a backstrap loom it is so easy to wind a twelve-inch long warp or even shorter and test this out before warping up the major projects.

Sometimes I just need to see if I have gotten the scale right when I am charting a new design which is what I was doing on the sample pictured above.

That sample was enough to show me that I was on the right track and from there I finished the chart and wove my cell phone pouch.

Right now I am agonizing over colors, trying to find the right combination of red and blue to weave a Central Asian design that I have had my eye on. It doesn’t matter how long I sit here and stare at my color options, nothing helps. In the morning I favor one combination and in the evening it is another. I even pleaded with the online backstrap weaving group to make the decision for me only to be reminded of my own words…”make a wee sample” (thanks Jennifer). I will never really know how this will turn out until I make a warp and start weaving.

So it has come time to sample again.

First those shades of red and blue and then my handspun alpaca. I have to say it is a lot harder to sample and risk wasting that precious handspun especially when I am not someone who gets terribly excited about the process.

As I said last week I just want to get it done and go weave with it. So far I have a ball of white, dark brown and black ready to go. There will be a slight delay with the medium brown as I had to turn the house upside down looking for one of the balls of spun single that my cat had made off with. I am lucky to have something to which I can aspire. Some Aymara backstrap weavers from northern Chile brought some of their handspun alpaca with them when they came to attend a weavers’ gathering here in Santa Cruz last March. I was able to weave with and keep some of it. I wove the grey and brown band above with their yarn – a short and simple sample.

Once again I am grateful to the backstrap loom which will enable me to weave the tiniest sample with my own handspun before warping the main project. I have selected my pattern. I even have a product in mind and can’t wait to get started although I still have a couple more colors to spin.

As I said last week, spinning seems to be calling me. Thanks to Jennifer and Naomi the Backstrap Group on Ravelry now has a TDF 2011 team. If you don’t know what TDF is, don’t worry. I didn’t either until last week. I started noticing that avatars on Ravelry were being changed to show special TDF buttons with team names. TDF stands for Tour de Fleece and is a spinning frenzy that runs in conjunction with the Tour de France. The idea, from what I gather, is to set spinning goals for yourself, step outside your comfort zone, share, learn and have fun.

I haven’t set any goals yet but I am thinking that I should do something with cotton. There is a lot of expertise in my group and, as I have the above tools to play with and some nice cotton that I have been given in swaps and which I brought back from Ecuador, I should take advantage of this opportunity to learn.

I learned to spin cotton in coastal Ecuador in 2007 where spinning is done on the larger of the two spindles seen above and using the rueca, or distaff, fashioned from a three-pronged branch.

Getting back into this alone would be a good enough challenge for the TDF as I haven’t done this in ages.

The smaller spindle in the first picture was sent to me as part of the swap package and I am told that it is a homemade tahkli which is a lightweight support spindle. I have never used it nor have I used the Indian charkha which was given to me in the US (although I take it out very often just to admire!) While this one calls to my Indian roots, I think that I should get a good grounding with the other spindles first.

Cotton spinners I have met in my travels…Above left is Montagnard weaver Ju Nie and on the right is a lady spinning natural brown cotton with a support spindle in Guatemala. My Guarani weaving teacher also spins cotton with a support spindle.

But first things first…I will get that alpaca done, a sample made and the project warped!

Here is last week’s project off the loom…

This is a Central Asian design woven in a simple warp float technique where both colors in the warp are floated to create the motif and fill in the negative space. It is not a double faced technique as gaps are left on the reverse of the fabric by the floating warps which expose the weft. Nevertheless the back of the weaving can look quite attractive…

Anything made in black in my home attracts every stray cat hair! I made this into a sleeve for my notebook computer and so you can see the band I wove for the sides positioned and pinned ready for sewing. I rounded the top and added a zipper. You can see the zipper pull below….that is where the zip starts.

This was made from the demo backstrap warp that I took with me to the US on which I showed different techniques for opening the sheds. This case will protect my computer from dust and scratches but what will protect it from the cat hair?!

I am all about simple warp floats at the moment being influenced by two things I saw while I was away…

On the left…a Native American sash that Pam in Massachusetts showed me from her collection where the weaver has allowed the horizontal bars to shape the motif rather than the floats. Quite often we think of those horizontal bars as an annoying distraction from the motif which has been formed from floats and wish that we could somehow cover them up and make them go away. Here the weaver has used them as the design. Below you can see the more typical warp float designs that I have made where the floated motif sits on a background of horizontal bars.

The other piece that I found intriguing is the old Mexican (we assumed) belt that Susan showed me in Eureka. Here both colors in the warp have been floated just like in the Central Asian piece I made. However, we could just make out the remnants of a purple supplementary weft that had been used to fill in all the places where the warps had not been floated and, therefore, horizontal bars had been exposed.

The supplementary weft had almost completely deteriorated in this belt but you can probably better make out some of its remains in the above picture. That made me curious about the possibilities of combining supplementary weft patterning with simple warp floats, maybe not in exactly the same way as the Mexican weaver had, but it could be a way to add an interesting third color accent to a structure that is normally restricted to two warp colors. The best part about supplementary wefts is that you can change the color at will meaning that you could have a base warp of say red and gold and then add a turquoise accent, later a purple…any color you want, when you want. And, if you don’t like the third color accent you can just cut it out without affecting the structure.

So, I warped up this red and yellow band and played…no charting or planning, just messing around. I used a brown supplementary weft to add in some small accents. I had originally filled in the bottom diamond completely, decided that that was over the top and just cut it out. This was fun!

I tried the design on the red and black Native American belt but I think it might look better with stronger contrasting colors and/or heavier thread. Floating single threads instead of pairs, as I did in the example on the left, was an interesting exercise too. In this 35wpi cotton, it almost gives the appearance of a solid color background.

Sampling done! I want to plan a larger project now and see what else I can do with this.

It is amazing how many places this simple warp float technique turns up…

When I was in Santa Cruz California, Yonat showed me an Indonesian ikat textile in her collection which had a border of simple warp floats. On the right is one of the textiles made by the Burmese backstrap weavers in Massachusetts.

I learned this technique from the cotton saddlebag weavers of coastal Ecuador and have used designs from the coastal region in my own work above left. The Montagnard backstrap weavers with whom I studied in North Carolina float warps to create patterns. They use a slight variation in their warping set up and weaving. In the above piece I used a motif woven with a suplementary weft alongside the warp float patterns. The end has a design in twined wefts.

Here are two pieces woven by people who follow my blog. Eladio in Mexico wove the bird pattern from coastal Ecuador and a hook pattern which are charted here. Jeannine in Belgium designed her own warp float pattern.

Recently, Lydia in Texas sent me a picture of the piece on the left that a friend had bought in Madagascar. Apparently a Danish group has taught the local weavers this technique. The bag on the right is Betty Davenport’s and was collected in the hilltribe area of Thailand.

Amber in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group showed us her finished piece above right on which she has used the motifs of coastal Ecuador. Now she is weaving a band which will be the sides of her pencil pouch.

Tracy finished her band in the warp substitution technique after studying with a local weaver in Doha, Qatar where she lives. Check out her blog to read about her visits to Souq Waqif in Doha.

And Traudi, after having already completed a few backstrap weavings, decided it was time to have her own woven backstrap. She wove this following the instructions in my Backstrap Basics article.

A couple of other things I have been pondering…

Here are my gorgeous bamboo reeds. I finally cut them down off the wall where they have been on display. They are a size 20 and I really want to use one to make some kind of balanced type weave…maybe a colonial overshot pattern after the inspiration I got from my recent visit to the National Museum of the American Coverlet in Pennsylvania and there’s always shadow weave.

Another thing that is percolating…I just finished charting a Shipibo design from a piece that is woven using two-color simple warp floats (the same technique as the Central Asian piece I just finished). I want to use the colors that are in the two pieces of Shipibo fabric above so it will be either a beige and brown combination or I might try that Dylon dye that I got in the US to see if it makes anything resembling the terracotta in the other Shipibo fabric piece.

There is plenty to keep me busy, you see!

Backstrap Weaving – California here I come

The pre-trip panic is setting in! Actually, I find myself remarkably well-organized for this departure a whole two days before I leave but, even after all these years of traveling about, I still can’t escape that wee bit of unease every time I am about to step out of the comfort zone and launch myself into the great unknown. So, California and all my west coast online weaving buddies, the new places and the new people…here I come!

Spring seems to be fiber festival time in the US and I am looking forward to finding something to which I can tie up my loom, hanging out and weaving and chatting to people. I wound a couple of warps, one with a narrow tried-and-true pick up design on a field of plain weave. I have found that it is better to keep the pick-up narrow and simple as this gives people who have never seen this before more of a chance of following what I am doing and me more of a chance of chatting to them while I am doing it!

You probably recognize this design from the mass of key fobs that I made in pebble weave last year. Yes, I know it is a bad idea to use colored heddles on a black warp. Yes, I know I will be ages picking bits of red and yellow fluff out of my black cloth but it is prettier this way for showing off to people, isn’t it? So, I have just gotten this weaving underway and now it is rolled up in my backpack. I made one other wide warp with fine thread so I can show people how I open the sheds with warps of this nature.

I really wanted to make a contribution to the Spin-Along in the backstrap group on Ravelry before I left too.

We are spinning yarn for warp-faced weaving as well as respinning commercial yarn so it will be smooth and strong enough to use on the backstrap loom.

I already cheated earlier by posting my discontinuous warp project in respun commercial wool which I had made prior to the Spin-Along (SAL). This was wool that my friend Claudia had given me when I was visiting with her last November and was not spun during the SAL. I did let everyone know that!

And I am afraid I cheated again by starting a band just the other day with some llama fiber that I had spun some years ago for dye experiments. I have small balls of various colors in a bag in the closet and was able to make a tiny warp for a double weave band.

My plan was to weave a design based on a Tarahumara belt pattern that I had reproduced a long time ago in a pebbly float weave (at left).

It was easy to chart for double weave but, once warped up, I thought that the fine lines would probably get lost in the hairiness of the llama fiber and so I chose a simple solid pattern instead.

I guess I didn’t really put much thought into this little project. All I wanted to do was make a contribution before I disappeared on the road.

I have to say though that it was a lot of fun weaving with handspun, especially my very own, after all this time.

Pictures of handspun wool have been appearing in the SAL thread in the backstrap group and it is very exciting. I suspect we shall be seeing these yarns on the loom soon.

Jennifer has been hard at it on both wheel and spindle.

This is what Tracy has prepared….

Popsicletote prepared this nice collage of photos of her finished band entitled “Little Prayer”made with her handspun with pebble weave patterns on her backstrap loom…

And here below is my wee “cheat” contribution…

And you can see that I did try the Tarahumara motif in the end and the lines of single warp are not getting swallowed by the llama fiber. The colors are natural brown and black on the edges and cochineal and spearmint leaves for the pattern. I should be able to get two key fobs with each of the two designs from this warp.

This all reminds me of how easy it was get to get nice wool at the store when I lived in Chile…not to mention all the fleece there was on hand down in Patagonia.

There was a beautiful yarn made by Reginella that was a fine combination of wool and alpaca. I used to ply it with high twist and it came in the most gorgeous range of colors which had a soft natural look. Even the reds and oranges were sort of “dirty” looking, if you know what I mean.

I must get back to Chile one of these days to look for that.

I made the triple color pebble weave band at left with what I had left over of this yarn when I came to live in Bolivia as well as the piece below which was made into a pencil case in my early English teaching days here.

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You may remember last week I introduced you to Dorinda Dutcher and the work she is doing with weavers through her PAZA organization in Cochabamba. Dorinda works out in the field with a very erratic internet connection but she was in the city recently and responded to my request to provide some photos and information in her own words about what she and the weavers of the township of Independencia have been doing…….

PAZA – “Weaving the Past and Present to Brighten Futures”

PAZA has evolved out of a Peace Corps project begun in 2007 to support the weavers of the community of Huancarani and lead the local movement to rescue, preserve, and market their traditional weavings. PAZA has helped the weavers to revive natural dye techniques and provided technical support to improve the quality of the finished woven items for an external market. The weavers are currently moving forward to become a legal weaving association and have taken the name “Centro de Artesanìa, Huancarani”.

Youth have been involved to address the preservation objective. PAZA began the Club de Chicas in December 2010 during school vacation to help bridge the rupture in the passing of weaving tradition from mother to daughter when families migrate from their farms to town.

Many families migrate to provide education for their children beyond 5th grade. The Club de Chicas activities combine modern and traditional skills. The spinning and weaving classes are taught by Doña Màxima Cortez, the PAZA Coordinator. Dorinda Dutcher, former Peace Corps volunteer, teaches baking, computer, and basic business classes.

The PAZA volunteer program provides opportunities for fiber artists to enter the Quechua weaving world and take classes from Doña Màxima while offering their expertise in sewing, knitting, crocheting, or any creative activity they wish to teach.

Taller — A variety of activities typical of Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the PAZA store/workshop.

The sales of the weavings are vital to meet the growing costs as the modern world encroaches on the farmer subsistence lifestyle.

Doña Màxima will have to sell 11 ch’uspas at 150 Bolivianos (Bs.) each to pay for the school supplies and uniforms for her 3 sons for this academic year. The 150 Bs. ($22) is not a fair price for the lengthy process from shearing to final product including the weaving by a master weaver, but it is the current ceiling of the national market.

MaxMeeting — An open-air Association meeting.

For more stories from Dorinda in-the-field please visit the PAZA blog. I am sure that she will appreciate your comments and words of encouragement.

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Scratching around on Ravelry this week led me to this fun fun discovery.

You know how I love the drawings of Guaman Poma de Ayala. I have posted a few of them here before.

Well, someone on Ravelry in a thread entitled Peruvian Textiles as Cultural Crossroads provided a link to a site which contains Manuscritos de America en las Colecciones Reales which includes the volumes of images by Martinez Compañon which he made from 1782 to 1785 in the area of Trujillo, Peru.

These provide detailed graphic information about various aspects of both Spanish and indigenous life at that time including textile production.

Here is a sampling of some of the pictures…

This is just a taste…go check out the fabulous site linked above. There are wonderful pictures of costumes and more.

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You may have read a lot here on my blog about my friend Lisa in North Carolina. Lisa and her family always open their home to me when I am visiting the US. Lisa’s blog is full of her Fiber Addiction Adventures. We met online via a Central Asian yurt band and have spent time together felting, spinning and backstrap weaving and experimenting with pebble weave on her four-shaft loom. As usual, she is currently into something interesting….

The first time I saw a warp-weighted loom was in the picture above which is the cover of my copy of Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s Women’s Work The First 20,000 Years.

This picture was taken from a Greek vase dating back to about 560 BC.

I then ran across one of these looms (at left), thanks to Deb McClintock, at Convergence last year and even met the owner by chance at the Tinkuy de Tejedores in Urubamba.

I have to say that I am not drawn to building one and weaving on it myself but I certainly find it interesting as Lisa always puts a lot of time and effort into researching her projects and we get to benefit when she shares all the information and activity with us.

So here is a little of what Lisa has to say about her new weaving adventure…

I’m really excited to be learning to use a Warp Weighted Loom. One of my favorite areas of interest is how to make and use low cost fiber tools to get people interested in spining, weaving, and felting by showing them that it can be fun and inexpensive.

My family and I are involved in the Society for Creative Ananchronism with is a historical reenactment group as well as the Piedmont Fiber Guild. This gives me an outlet to find others who are interested in both historical fiber traditions and modern day applications.

Learning to use my Warp Weighted Loom has been one of those wonderful projects that brings in research with actual practice. To prepare I found several wonderful books about Norse and Medieval fabrics as well as some very helpful webpages and groups, then set up the goal to make a low cost loom based off that research. Using just a few tools like a saw, ruler, and drill we were able to construct the loom for between $30 and $35. When added to my backstrap loom and homemade Charhka/Spindle wheel I feel like I am prepared to take on many different types of complex spinning and weaving projects with tools that will serve me just as well at my current skill level as they will as I gain more experience and ability through practice with them.

The Warp Weighted Loom has several interesting differences from other looms I’ve used in the past. Instead of weaving from the bottom to the top you weave from the top down. The loom itself can also be used as a warping board which is very handy.

To begin with I used cardweaving to create a band. My weft in this band then becomes the warp for the loom itself. I found myself really enjoying this novel part of the warping process.

When the band was done I then sewed it onto the upper beam and used weights to tension the warp. I found that the higher the tension the greater tendency to be a weft faced piece but I need to experiment more to find out it that bears out with other yarns.

Right now I am working on a small rug inspired by the Sami tradition of warp weighted loom woven rugs called “Grener”. I’m using Lopi style yarns both from stash and spun at home from local wools. My actual goal for this loom is to weave Viking Era style cloth which I hope will conform with extant finds discussed in “Woven Into the Earth”. I’ve sourced local Romney wool from a sheppardess in the Piedmont Fiber Guild, have scoured it, combed it, and am in the process of spinning high twist worsted singles. When I have enough singles yarn for warp and weft I’ll be ready to start my next project on the loom which I plan to be a simple twill shawl made of my handspun.

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Here is an update from some of the friends I have introduced to you here on the blog over the last year or so…

”Bicycle Anna” and boyfriend Alistair are back home after their almost-three-year trip by bicycle from Alaska to Ushuaia. Anna took weaving classes along the way in Guatemala and Peru and then came to Santa Cruz to weave with me. Since then, she has been unstoppable and even told me that she was finding excuses for rest days on the road just so she could weave.

I have shown several pictures of her bicycling and weaving her way down south since she came to visit me last August.

Here is picture of her and Alistair at the end-of-the-road. I am disappointed she didn’t tie her backstrap loom to the sign post! And there is another picture of a surprise happy ending. I leave it up to you to guess what happened!

My friend and anthropologist Kathleen Klumpp, whom I accompanied on a research trip to coastal Ecuador in 2007, sent me this next picture of little Melina, whom we have seen learning to spin in Kathleen’s videos, holding one of the family’s latest weaving products.

As the market for the traditional patterned cotton saddle bags is now virtually dead, they are weaving beautiful satchels with zip pockets using traditional motifs as well as adaptations of other regional designs.

Kathleen is presently in Ecuador and I hope to receive more news of this on-going project and the progress they have been making in the next few weeks.

Betsy Renfrew, who is working with the Montagnard weavers in North Carolina sent me a picture of Rhade weaver Ju Nie’s latest project. Ju specializes in weaving the fine cotton panels that go together to make the traditional Rhade skirt. These skirts have strips of pick up patterning in various techniques and are quite often finished with a band of intricate weft twining.

It will be fun to see pictures of this as Ju progresses and get a sense of how long it takes a weaver to complete such a piece. You can read a lot more about Ju and the Montagnard weavers in these other posts here, here and here and about Betsy’s project on her blog.

Finally, a couple of finished projects from some Backstrap Group weavers…

Look at all the gorgeous warp faced bands that popsicletote has turned out recently. While her handspun wool band earlier in this post was woven on her backstrap loom, I believe all these were done on her inkle loom using one of my tutorials for one and my pebble weave book for a couple of the others.

She enjoys using a variety of yarns and says that it is a shame that the photo doesn’t quite capture the different textures of the hemp, silk, linen, wool and cotton she used. In her words… – each has a different feeling and surface texture and I find I don’t prefer any one over the other. Maybe the wool was a little more fussy to weave but not much.

And that’s Marsha’s band on the right. She says that a warping mistake had her reversing the horizontal bar colors halfway through the warping process but she turned the mistake around to make nice stick figures that complement each other in simple warp float technique.

Well, I will be in California next week, all going well. Hopefully my flights will get me all the way through in one go on Saturday. My blog posts may be erratic as a result from now on. I am sure it won’t be from a lack of stories to tell but rather from the want of time in which to tell them. Maybe you feel like some folks I met last year at Convergence who asked me to stop posting for a while so they could catch up! But, there is plenty of stuff back there in the archives worth re-reading. I can barely remember some of it myself!

Ca-li-fornia here I come…..

Backstrap Weaving – Big Bang and Big Thread

BIG BANG AND BIG THREAD

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Syne Mitchell teaching her rigid heddle class at CNCH 2010

Time is running away and in the not-too-distant future I will be on the road again for another US spring visit (US spring, my fall).

Last year, at my friend Janet’s suggestion, I signed up for CNCH, the Conference for Northern California Handweavers, and had a great time taking classes with Robin Spady and Syne Mitchell as well as demonstrating backstrap weaving at the education booth along with Annie MacHale and Yonat Michaelov on their inkle looms.

I met so many fun people, online friends from Weavolution and Ravelry as well as made new friends with people like Kathe Todd-Hooker and Pat Spark who shared all they knew with me about the weaving of the Russian Old Believers.

I will be going back to hang out with Annie, Yonat and other southern Californians and then heading up to see the northerners in Janet Finch’s

territory amongst the majestic Redwoods and on further north to spend some time with some weave-along buddies as well as Betty Davenport and Linda Hendrickson.

Then I will zip over to the east side which I also visited last year with a memorable two days at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

Unfortunately, the festival is not in my plans this year but I will be seeing my good friends in Maryland and doing lots of backstrap weaving along the way.

Last year had me weaving pebble weave on an inkle loom at the beach, demonstrating backstrap weaving at an Earth Day event, backstrapping on the porch of Lisa’s beach house as well as escaping the heat to weave in the yurt at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I wonder where my loom will find itself this time around.

During the spring visit last year, my e-book Andean Pebble Weave went up for sale on WeaveZine. It was a very exciting event in the middle of this wonderful trip. Almost a year later, the time for change has come as Syne Mitchell has had to scale back her online activities to make way for a new day job. Andean Pebble Weave had to hit the road and with the help of Syne has now set up camp on Julia Grunau’s Patternfish site along with Syne’s bookmark patterns.

I couldn’t have hoped for a smoother and easier transition and I want to thank Julia and especially Syne for making this happen. This has kept me very busy behind the scenes updating all my links!! Facebook, Flickr, Ravelry, Weavolution, Yahoo, Weaving Today….you name it!!

You may have noticed that I try to sneak in a link or two to the book in every blog post.. Well, all those links need to be changed. Thankfully Syne once again came to my rescue and put together a redirect page and link on WeaveZine with the whole story which will smooth things over until I can go through every blog post and update.

So here I present (click on the following text) Andean Pebble Weave’s new home.

You will find the logo and more links on the sidebar and at various places on my blog.

Well, the extra online time kept me away from the loom a bit this week but I still managed to get four things off the loom and have started a fifth. How did I manage that? By using BIG thread, that weaves up super fast.

Cathyz on Ravelry wove her backstrap using Tahki Cotton Classic and said she loved this thread. So, when I was in the US in November and WEBS announced a sale of grab bags, my friend Claudia and I ordered a twenty-piece bag. I must say I was a bit nervous about how we would divide up the colors. I was imagining a frantic grabbing session in keeping with the item’s name but, as it turned out, our taste in color is vastly different and we chose our colors in a very orderly fashion!

So, with the new trip looming I decided to weave up some stuff that I had promised to friends on my last trips to the US, that is, some backstraps. They should weave their own…isn’t that what you are thinking? Well they are mostly into very narrow bands and so I offered to make them backstraps. The Tahki cotton is actually roughly half the weight of the cotton that I normally use for backstraps and so I doubled it.

First I did a couple of pebble weave bands. I can get loads of black and white thick mercerized cotton here in Santa Cruz and so I combined that with the Tahki colors. The Tahki skeins are small and once you double the thread there is not a whole lot to work with.

Then I made one with alternating colors of simple warp floats. This is the yurt band border design that I included in a tutorial here. The blue thread is from Plymouth Yarn Natural which is exactly the same as the thread I get here. I got this one skein to sample from the Mannings last summer.

Next came another complimentary warp pattern with a twill-like rather than pebbled background.

Here they are all together. I haven’t braided any of the ends yet. I am leaving that for Friday which is my official goof-off day!

They will end up looking like these…

I was running low on the blue at this point as well as colors to combine and so the fifth backstrap is narrower. I also didn’t have enough light green for weft and am using white. The little white spots on the edges look okay. There is a little trick to hiding that white dot that appears on the right hand side of the pattern area but, as I only warped three ends for the blue border next to the pattern rather than four, I can’t use that little trick (poor planning there). This technique is the one used in the Tarabuco area and is the one that was taught to me when I stayed in Candelaria. A short story about that visit is here.

The weavers in Tarabuco use a very fine thread for their background color and a heavier one for the pattern. I prefer to use the same weight for both threads.

Here is a larger version of the same motif in a 24wpi thread. Here I got to hide the spots on the sides.

This motif has been with me for years! Way back when I was living in southern Chile and knew little to nothing about weaving, I built myself a wooden frame, hammered in some nails and made a cardboard rigid heddle to mess around with. The first woven piece looked like an hour glass and through trial and error I managed to improve on that.

I was making little tapestry pieces just adding in colors here and there with the ends left hanging out the back. I made it up as I went along as there was no one to ask, no books to consult and no internet. As I got better I yearned to be able to do some kind of ethnic motifs. And then I found a picture of a Mapuche belt in an Argentinean knitting magazine and I adapted and wove the motif in tapestry technique. I so wish I still had those little experiments from all those years ago. They got left behind when I moved up here.

I still have the little scrap which I cut from the magazine, now quite battered. My motif is a much smaller version of this. Imagine how excited I was when I got to learn the technique used to weave it.

The only problem with these complimentary warp weaves is deciding which side you like best when you are done. Weaving alternating blocks as I did on the red bag helps with that problem!

There is no need to choose a side for a backstrap. The blue simple warp float band is not double faced as the weft shows on the back.

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From big thread to big bang…the Backstrap Group’s Weave-Along came to its end last Sunday. We called the final day the “big bang” wanting to end with a bang rather than a whimper, you see. Here are some products…

jen and ptote — Jennifer, after having made several pebble weave and a double weave project during the course of the weave along, chose to use a colorful plain weave band to make a zippered pouch. She got to learn and practice several finishing techniques this way, such as, the single cross knit looping/Van Dyke stitch to cover the place where her two panels joined, braiding for her zip pull and a plain weave tubular band for the edges. Among many other things Popsicletote contributed this fun picture of her loom bar lodged behind her feet.

bobbie big bang — Bobbie learned and practiced pebble weave, simple warp floats and supplementary weft patterning during the weave-along. She made a bag from one piece of colorful plain and pebble weave and added a braided strap. She also used a tubular plain weave band to edge it.

barry big bang — Barry focused on pebble weave for this weave along after having made himself a backstrap. He is sampling a new-to-him yarn called Patons Smoothie which I believe is acrylic and hopes to make a belt. I like the way he has sewn the end on the diagonal to finish it.

We agreed that the bird motif, which I charted in my book from a band I bought on Taquile Island, Peru, looks like a rocket- powered Warner Bros. roadrunner on roller skates.

Marsha is weaving on her Gilmore Mini-Wave loom and completed this beautiful band with some motifs from here as well as many of her own. She even adapted a double weave motif that I used on one of my mug rugs to simple warp floats.

Popsicletote put together this lovely set of photos showing what she learned on this weave-along. She did the watercolor painting in the center many years ago as it has been her dream to learn backstrap weaving. She says that even though the person in the painting has dark hair and hers is now white, she is happy to be able to finally call herself a backstrap weaver. I love the shuttle pouch she has made.

Tracy didn’t finish her big bang project but she made a very special contribution with a couple of videos of herself at the loom instead.

Outside the weave-along, Helena in Brazil sent me pictures of her latest work. She took one of the designs from the weft twining that the Montagnard weavers use to finish their pieces and adapted it to the warp float technique that they use. This technique can create some long-ish warp floats on the back. The technique is shown in this lettering tutorial. I am so happy that someone has used the instructions in this tutorial. Helena is the first one that I know of to have done so and she has been very creative with it.

I asked Helena about the thread that she uses. As the thread I use here is from Brazil, of course I wasn’t surprised to find that she uses the same. The brand is Circulo and I use the Clea variety, which is about 35wpi and Anne which is about 24wpi. The heavier thread that I use for backstraps and tutorials in the same brand is called Naturale. I found out recently that this brand is available in the UK as well as in Canada and the US through a site located in Vancouver. I guess I am really lucky as I didn’t have to go around here trying all sorts of thread to conclude that I liked the Circulo thread the best. The Circulo is pretty much all we get here and it just happens to be really good stuff.

We were all a little saddened by the end of the weave-along and then Tracy came along and got us all swept up in the idea of spinning for warp-faced backstrap projects and it turns out that most of the people in the group have a whole lot to say about spinning.

This has led to a SAL…Spin-along for warp faced weaving and popsicletote is leading the way already with this contribution today…this gorgeous photo at left.

Some people are spinning cotton and Lisa is joining in spinning yak.

I, on the other hand, do not have a whole lot to say about handspun for my backstrap weaving. I have stuff to show but lack the jargon to explain to people online what I do so I am looking forward to following this spin along and acquiring the relevant vocabulary. I know how my handspun yarn should look and feel if it is to behave well on my backstrap loom and that’s pretty much all I can tell you!

So let me show you some things I have made with my handspun llama fiber…

I used natural dyes in these next ones…coca leaves, spearmint leaves and cochineal.

Not a whole lot considering all the years I have been backstrap weaving. My first pieces made with my own handspun are actually in little frames on my living room wall! – so proud was I of this first attempt. Now with Tracy’s spin-along proposal maybe I will get more done. I should make Friday goof-off day a spinning day.

As we are on a spinning theme, I thought I would show you some of the spindles that I have gathered over the years in my travels here.

This is a spindle and rueca that I brought back after my stay in coastal Ecuador with cotton spinners. The rueca is a miniature one which we made while I was there. The spinners use a much larger and heavier version of this. I put a big weight in the little basket underneath to hold it down while I spin.

From left to right, a Guatemalan spindle with some of the highly prized natural brown cotton called cuyuscate, the spindle from one of the walking wheels in Otavalo Ecuador and a Mapuche spindle.

From left to right, a spindle used by the Guarani people here in lowland Bolivia for spinning cotton, two Bolivian spindles from the highlands, a spindle made from the sigsig (pampas grass) stem from Salasaca in Ecuador and one from Cusco. The Cusco one is my favorite for wool and llama fiber. The Bolivian ones have sharp tips and, as I tend to rest the tip against my belly as I wind on, they can be kind of “ouchy”.

These are various whorls that I have bought in markets, from my weaving teachers or been given.

To end… I posted a tutorial last week on plain weave tubular bands like the one being woven by this little girl at the Tinkuy de Tejedores last November.

Some of you may not have seen it as there was a glitch with the video shortly after posting and I had to try to re upload that and then I took that opportunity to redo the photos as I hated the colors I had used.

It is up and running now and you can see it here.

The tutorial is on “plain weave” bands and we know that plain weave doesn’t necessarily have to be plain. I want to edge more things with striped and more interesting multi colored plain weave bands to provide more examples but have yet to find anything to edge. Maybe I will come up with something next week.

Backstrap Weaving – Weft twining with the Montagnard backstrap weavers.

But first a look at gorgeous rural Maryland where I am currently staying with friends on the first day when it has felt really cold out. There has been talk of snow on Friday…I hope so as we are putting up the Christmas decorations here that day! while Santa Cruz Bolivia in the meantime experiences a “cool” change with temperatures dipping below 30C (86F). Most of the leaves have fallen here and it’s interesting to see the turkey vultures perched in the gaunt leafless tree across the street every morning.

Last week I was down in North Carolina where the weather was mild and the neighborhoods were still awash with red, gold, yellow and brown.

I was down there revisiting the Montagnard (Vietnamese hill tribe) weavers whom I had met on a visit last August about which I wrote in this previous post. I had discovered Betsy Renfrew’s videos and photos on her blog about the group of Montagnard people in her community and her project to help them integrate and find sources of income by teaching them English and making it possible for them to gather the materials and resources necessary to build looms, buy thread and practice their traditional weaving skills. Betsy was more than willing to extend an invitation to visit. She has also allowed me to use some of her photos in this blog post.

last visit — Betsy and weaver Ngach together on the left during my first visit. On the right a scene from my first visit with Lisa and Maurice in Betsy’s home with weavers Ngach, Ju Nie and her husband Thomas. It was a chaotic afternoon with lots of chatter, sharing and interaction which cleared away all language barriers. Backstrap looms and textiles covered the floor of Betsy’s front room and, as this was my very first encounter with these kinds of textiles, it was impossible to wade through and take it all in during our short visit and I left with many unanswered questions knowing that I would simply have to return one day.

JU and me last visit — We got to see Ju warping and setting up her loom and Lisa and I both got to try out her warping technique where she adds string heddles as she winds the warp as well as weave on her backstrap loom. I tried to photograph as many woven pieces as I could – skirts, blankets, baby carriers bags and belts so that I could figure out the woven structures when I got home. Ngach put on skirts for us and Ju modeled the baby carriers. Many of the structures I immediately recognized and it was fun to show Ju and Ngach pieces woven with the same techniques in South America. In fact that was the most fun part of the visit…comparing and sharing our different experiences with the textiles, patterns, tools and looms and seeing for what purpose the textiles were intended. I was able to study and figure out some of the other less recognizable techniques when I got home.

Some of the different patterning techniques which include simple warp floats, cross knit looping, supplementary warp and weft can be seen below…

I like the supplementary weft patterned piece on the right as it reminds me very much of some flower motifs that I recently wove using Guatemalan supplementary weft and warp wrapping techniques. The similarities in the designs across cultures are astounding.

If you have been following my blog, you will know that the technique which really grabbed my attention was the following one which both Ju and Ngach, who are from different tribes, call kteh.

Above you can see two pieces with the kteh weft twining technique that Ngach has worked around the warps on the edge of her woven blankets. The upper left picture is a loin cloth which Susan Stem showed me when I made inquiries about this technique on the Tribal Textiles forum. I think that Ngach’s pieces are every bit as fine as the example photographed by Susan.

So this was the technique that I really wanted to learn more about and I got to see even more amazing examples on this most recent visit.

When I got home I was keen to try weft twining and made examples in different colors using Montagnard designs that I had photographed and seen online. (at left)

I learned a twining technique from books on Maori Taaniko..You can read more about this here and here.

I was surprised on my visit last week to see the use of yellow in the main design in one of the pieces as, by coincidence, I had chosen it to use in my own experiments at home.

All the pieces I had seen on the previous visit as well as in books and online had been patterned in only red and white with only the stripes done in green and yellow.

In weft twining, strands of “weft” are twisted around warps. When weft strands of two colors are used, patterns can be formed by controling which of the two colors appears on the upper surface of the piece after each twist.

Here are some more examples of Ngach and Ju’s work in kteh technique.

The above piece of kteh adorns the edge of an extremely fine skirt which Ju wove and which H Ni Buonya modeled for me.

Instead of being wrapped and tucked as traditional skirts are, this skirt had hooks sewn into its waist band which held the folds in place.

The twining was flawless and the selvedges impeccable. I think this was the finest of all the pieces I saw.

Eventhough I was able to reproduce the designs in my bulky cotton thread, I couldn’t feel convinced that I was on the right track until I could compare the reverse of the kteh pieces to my own twined work.

Besty sent me a picture of the back of a piece and I was finally able to see for myself on my visit.

What I really wanted to do was learn how to do the twining alongside Ju and Ngach and Betsy was able to organize classes for me with both ladies. Ju and Ngach, as I said before, are from two different tribes, the Rhade and the Jarai and both Betsy and I thought that it would be interesting to see differences in the way the two ladies did their twining.

classes with Ngach and Ju — LEFT: Twining class with Nagch at Betsy’s house. At right, Ju shows me how she gathers the warps in groups and sizes them before twining.

I first met up with Ju at Betsy’s house where a collector was coming to see and possibly purchase one of Ju’s woven pieces. Ju, who I gather never likes to have idle hands, had brought along a finished piece of weaving that was to be sewn into a bag. She was busy twisting the fringe dragging the warps through a wad of sticky cooked rice that she carried in tissue and then rolling them on her leg to set the twist. She would select four warp ends, divide them into two pairs and then, with one quick movement, roll the two pairs away from her on her leg and then swiftly roll the two twisted strands back toward her to unite them.

She used this same kind of sizing to twist and group the warps ends together for twining which, as a beginner, I found very helpful . Ngach on the other hand does not size the warp ends.

The first class was with Ngach. After having seen pictures of Ngach warping outdoors on Betsy’s blog it was nice to see the enormous tree where she does it in her front yard right on the edge of a very busy street.

Here you can see the different set ups that both ladies use. Both fold and tack the woven cloth so that it can be suspended on a rod or bar with the weft ends, or fringe hanging down. Ju, at left, has a lovely stand built by her husband especially for twining. Ngach suspends her work on a metal rod which she has supported on two chairs. Ngach is twining the end of a child’s skirt while Ju is twining the ends of two small bags, something which she is only doing in order to be able to teach me on a small piece.

Here are pictures of Ngach twining on warmer and brighter days courtesy of Betsy. The pictures we took this time around tended to be somewhat darker unfortunately.

The wefts are stored and carried on bobbins. Ngach says that they are made of clay in Vietnam while Ju used to use wooden ones. Both ladies have had to improvise their bobbins in their new homes.

Ngach has lovely bobbins fashioned from cement.

Ju’s were heavier and made from wood. Her husband bought a pestle from a Laos store from which he carved them. I bought a pair from her. Both use Cebelia size 20 thread.

Below you can see Ngach at work holding the warps under tension with her left hand while she twists the wefts on their bobbins with her right…one twist to change color in the pattern and two twists to continue with the same color.

Her movements are so fluid, graceful and rhythmical and she uses her one long thumb nail to separate each group of warps around which to twist the wefts. This was the part that really slowed me down…separating the warps into correct groups of three. What was nice was that Ngach and I could sit side by side and work together. I would struggle along trying to match her rhythm. We could both work simultaneously on different rows of pattern.

Here is a rather dark piece of video which will at least give you an idea of the movements. Ngach is making a pattern in red and white. Her movements are very graceful and I love the soft “clack clack” of the bobbins as she works. You will see her doing double twists when she wants to continue with the same color and a single when she wants to change colors. I have brighter but longer videos which need to be edited when I get home so I can upload in another post.

Above, Ju is twisting warps on a piece so that I can take it home and practice. I really think both my teachers enjoyed showing me this. Ju, even with her very limited English, was very talkative and eager to show me the entire process while Ngach was very keen to make sure that I learned it just right, constantly correcting and adjusting the way I was holding the warps and not letting me get away with anything. At one point when I had made a mistake and untwined to fix it, I asked her if she always undid her errors. She looked at me over the top of her glasses and said “no mistakes!”. I am not sure if that means that she doesn’t tolerate them or that she doesn’t make them but there was definitely a twinkle in her eye. I liked Ngach!

Results:

We finished a tiny design on Ju’s small piece but didn’t get as far on Ngach’s larger one. However, I enjoyed working more on Ngach’s piece for some reason. I think sitting and working alongside Ngach made all difference as I was able to watch closely and try to follow her movements and rhythm.

Each twined row always starts on the left and moves to the right. When the right edge is reached, the weft ends are knotted and cut leaving a small “fringe”. This was something I had been very curious about as the instructions in my Taaniko book indicated that one needed to ambidextrous and twine in both directions back and forth across the piece.

Ju’s enthusiasm for showing me all about the weaving arts from her home in the hills of Vietnam didn’t stop at twining. After I had become tired from twining and the concentration it required, she brought out a wonderful spinning wheel that she had had sent over from Vietnam.

What a sweet little spinning wheel this is. It is made from simple bamboo wood and wicker and all held together with hand carved wooden pins.

Ju set to spinning cotton, which had also been sent over from Vietnam, with her foot thrown over the beam of the spinning wheel to anchor it down. She really seemed to be enjoying showing this to us.

Once she had finished with her small quantity of prepared cotton, she brought out a funny little tool that looked much like an archer’s bow to prepare more. Below you can see this tool and Ju skeining on a niddy noddy.

The following video will show you how it works. I would love to show this to the cotton spinners that I stayed with in coastal Ecuador.

On another day, I got to see a bit more of Betsy’s work with the Montagnard ladies. A few weavers gathered with their looms in a local church. Its congregation has kindly allowed its space to be used for possible weaving demonstrations. The idea was to see what would be required to enable the weavers to set up their looms in those facilities . Not only would they need a strong and stable place to tie up their looms but also a way to set up the foot braces against which the weavers push to tension their warps as they weave.

Ju and H Ni attended and finally managed to get their looms set up and foot braces in place. While I find a foot brace nice to work with, I am glad that I am not dependent on one and, therefore, have more freedom to set up my loom easily in different places.

H Ni is weaving two bands at once on her loom which will be straps for shoulder bags. Weaving two straps at once helps balances out the very wide loom.

ha nies awkward set up — H Ni’s set up was a bit awkward. We had to improvise adding books and bits to her bamboo poles in order to have her foot brace within reach.

I am thinking that one of those wonderful ergonomic benches designed by Synergo Arts with its built in foot rest/brace would be a solution to this problem. I wonder if they break down in pieces for transport.

A close up of H Ni’s two straps.

Ju was weaving a narrow pick up patterned piece which will be a scarf – not one of her typical woven pieces but it has occured to her that scarves may be popular small items that visitors to her demonstrations may like to buy as opposed to skirts and blankets.

The other purpose of the meeting was to give the weavers booklets which Betsy had put together with pictures and weaving vocabulary in English.

Khin attended the meeting to act as translator and it turns out that she too is a weaver. The problem is that many of the ladies in the community who have these weaving skills simply do not have the means to have looms made and buy thread to get started.

Betsy also made tapes for each weaver to go along with the booklets with the pronunciation of the English words for them to listen to and practice at home.

The idea is to have the weavers eventually feeling confident enough to be able to give presentations and demonstrations of their weaving to small groups in the future. I would love to return for the day when that happens and see these ladies enjoying sharing their skills with even more people with same good humor, generosity and enthusiasm that they showed me.

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Back to what I like to call the World Wide Cyber Weaving Guild….

It seems that the cold weather has brought on a flurry of weaving activity and so I am able to show you some finished projects from online friends who have visited my blog.

Anna (who is cycling from Alaska to Ushuaia and who is currently in Santiago Chile) sent me this picture of her latest pebble weave bands and Kim, whom I met at Convergence wove the pebble weave keyfob on the right. Both used the instructions from my Andean Pebble Weave book.

These are more of Kim’s bands on the left, again in pebble weave with one in simple warp floats in the middle, and Lavitaaj made this amazing supplementary weft sampler on the right using the pattern charts from my blog. There is also a section with a yurt band design in simple warp floats.

And finally, here is Marsha Knox’s band made with simple warp floats using two color combinations in the same piece while Helena in Brazil has taken the Bedouin patterning one step further with a large strip of diamond pattern bordered by the classic triangle motif. I will definitely add a tutorial on this technique to the blog soon.

UPDATE: Marsha uploaded a picture of her finished band. She reversed the scrolls and did them in brown. It looks super!

Last Sunday I got to quickly pass through the Central Asian ikat exhibit, which was stunning, at the Textile Museum in DC before attending Ann Rowe’s talk on ikat rebozos and ponchos in Latin America.

I hope to return next Saturday to take the guided tour of the exhibit, use the library where I want to look at David Fraser’s book on weft twining, and maybe pick up a few more Textile Museum journals in the gift shop.

There is hardly a journal there that doesn’t have something of interest to me. I think that eventually I will own them all.

This week Claudia and I had skills exchange. I taught her to make the tubular woven bands that I learned at the tinkuy and she introduced me to the wonderful Weavette. Yep, this was the first time I had ever seen one of these little marvels and Claudia even has an old Jiffy Loom in its original box and a plastic Weave-It. My eye was immediately caught by the cool long weaving needles that come in the kit. Aha…just the thing for weaving in the wefts for my four-selvedge warp faced pieces and so I ordered some online.

These would be just the thing for making little amulet bags…love them!

And speaking of learning new skills, here is DY, still in Peru, picking up some new techniques – drop spindling and backstrap weaving. I think she has been taking Spanish classes too.

Finally, a very happy Thanksgiving to all. I spent it Claudia and family and friends…only the third Thanksgiving I have ever had. We watched the Macy’s parade this morning and I declare the sweet potato casserole with butter, brown sugar and pecan topping my favorite dish of the day.