supplementary warp – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaver – Vistas

I like to think that the colors in latest piece on which I am working were inspired by early morning and late evening skies that I have been lucky to see in my travels. Maybe last year while I sat watching the snows of Mt Rainier glow gold and rose in the setting sun and its rocky outcrops cast deepening purple shadows, these colors made some kind of imprint in the creative corners of my mind.

Sunset on Mt Rainier during the Braids 2016 conference in Tacoma.

A Vermont sunset seen from Mt Philo during my visit a few years ago.

Sunrise at the Florida Tropical Weavers Conference that I attended a couple of years ago.

California sunsets around the Sierra foothills.

And, most recently, while traveling after the ANWG 2017 conference, I watched Mt Hood starting to pull on its evening shroud of rose, purple and gold.

So, I am working with purple, rose, copper, gold and blue. The linked diamond patterns have been fun to weave. I have enough room left on this warp to repeat the first pattern section and then I will figure out what to make of this piece of fabric for Marilyn. I can’t wait to wash and press it. The fact that there is a lot of supplemental weft sitting between the layers of warp has made the cloth quite stiff. It is hard at this stage to imagine it having any kind of appealing hand. However, I am sure that it will soften and relax after the wet-finishing process.

Purples, roses and golds….I had quite an extraordinary view of a sunrise on my recent flight to Australia. QANTAS airlines has a camera installed on the tail of the plane which transmits video to each passenger’s personal video screen. We took off from Los Angeles at around 11 pm and I waited many hours through the night for there to be enough daylight to enjoy the view from the tail camera just before we landed in the early hours of the morning two days later (we crossed the international date line along the way). Unfortunately, just when it gets really interesting and we start losing altitude to circle Sydney harbor and the city, we are required to put away the video screens. In any case, it was really amazing sitting there in the cabin and seeing the view from the tail as we sped along.

And, I was able to experience yet another extraordinary view before leaving the USA when our backstrap weaving party in Oregon was visited by a friendly drone which took photos and video of us from way up high.

Can you spot the ring of happy backstrap weavers down there?

Here’s a closer view…

I love this shot because you can see the shadow of the drone in the upper right-hand corner. People have asked me to what we have attached our warps. It is a basket on a pole that is used for Frisbee golf.

The days were long, gorgeous, hot and sunny and we didn’t last too long out there. We soon found ourselves back under the pop-ups where it was cooler and more comfortable.

Weaving outdoors is always my dream but not so comfortable in Santa Cruz, Bolivia where I live…too hot and too many bugs to swat.

Nine-year old Wendy, one of Maxima’s granddaughters, learns to weave figures on a band while Emily watches the herd. Photo from Dorinda Dutcher.

The day-time weather in the central highlands, where my friends Dorinda, Maxima and the ladies of the Huancarani co-op live, is often described as ”eternal spring”.

I think everyone sets up their leaning vertical looms outside in a covered area of their patio or they weave with warps hooked to their big toes while sitting outside on the grass as 9-year old Wendy is doing at left.

Dorinda recently posted to her PAZA blog and I was excited to see a picture of Beatris using the demo loom at Dorinda’s place to weave some patterns from my book.

I had left a copy of my book for the group when I visited last January. I taught Maxima to read the charts and promised to send another copy of the book just for herself which Dorinda was able to deliver recently. I was hoping that Maxima would teach some of the new patterns to other ladies that showed interest and it looks like she has been doing a great job.

Maxima and I had woven together using patterns in my book on my visit earlier this year.

I can see two patterns from my book on Beatris’s band in wonderful red, black and white. I am intrigued by her sword/beater as I have never seen one shaped like that. I can see that shape being very useful when one wants to beat with a rocking motion. I hope I get to meet Beatris on my next visit at the end of the year. It’s been a busy year for me travel-wise and I can hardly believe that almost a year will have passed when I next get to visit these ladies in the highlands.

More vistas and looms with a view…

Halyna Shepko showed us this picture of the backstrap loom she set up under the pier on her family beach holiday. That’s quite a view she has. Doesn’t that look idyllic?!

Meanwhile, my current view is one of the backyard at my brother’s home in Sydney where fourteen cheeky sulphur-crested cockatoos are perched on the roof and in the trees. They are beautiful but terribly destructive. As I sit here I hear the ”crack-crack” as they chew their way through branches and toss them to the ground below for no other reason, it seems, than to make their temporary perch more comfortable.

It’s winter here in Australia and it is hard to get used to the early darkness after the long summer days in the Pacific northwest that I just experienced. Weaving conferences, fiber festivals and reenactment events are in full swing in the USA and I wanted to show you this picture of my weaving friend Tracy at an event called West/An Tir War. You might remember that I showed pictures of my backstrap buddies Janet and Tracy during a visit last spring. They had recently taken a sprang braiding class with Carol James and were busy putting their new skills to work. Here’s Tracy putting together one of several sprang frames made from bent willow branches for events at which she teaches.

And here she is in her beautiful historical garb…

She is wearing a sprang coif on her head that was made by Carol James and a sprang pouch at her waist that she made herself. I find those pouches simply adorable! The bands on her dress are Estonian checkered bands. There is so much beautiful handwork here.

Let’s keep the superlatives rolling…

This just takes my breath away. Katrin Kozevnikov MacLean designed and wove this on an inkle loom using a supplementary warp on the kind of ground weave used in Estonian and Baltic band weaving. She worked hard to design the leaves so that her warp floats did not span more than seven shots of weft and she has done a brilliant job. I would normally choose to weave something complex and irregular like this in double weave which does not have warp floats to consider. However, having warp-floats gives the leaves so much more texture and interest. And, the colors are spectacular together! She has opened my mind to many possibilities!

Lynne, with whom I wove in Portland, sent me a picture of the pouch she finished after our gathering. We used cloth woven by my Bolivian friends to make pouches and then applied various decorative finishes. I like how Lynne has added woven tubular bands in two colors which meet in the center in a tassel. The motif she chose for her pebble weave strap closely resembles that used by the Bolivian weavers in their cloth. It is interesting how she has placed the hooks within blocks along the length of the strap.

I wove with Mary in Alabama last spring and she has been finishing the samples we started together as well as creating her own warps to try new patterns. This band makes a lovely fob.

Alison, who took my three-day workshop at ANWG, has set up to continue her backstrap weaving on her porch. Her backstrap is a red scarf. She tells me about the wildlife ”traffic” that accompanies her while she is weaving out there in that serene space…the sight and sound of a doe with twin fawns, a family of California quail, a rabbit and a trio of racoons. Imagine!

And, the north west backstrap weaving study group met again to gather around Marilyn’s ”village tree”…

Another Marilyn, this one in Alaska, has been studying my free Basic warping for Backstrap Looms video in which I show how to wind warps to create vertical or horizontal stripes. She has combined the two methods in this piece to experiment with various arrangements of stripes and bars and plans to make a few pouches with the fabric.

Susan wove with me in two sessions at the ANWG conference and has gone home to finish her samples. I am so pleased to see this. She has three lovely complementary-warp pick-up bands completed as well as a ñawi awapa tubular band.

And speaking of marvelous things that have been happening since the ANWG workshops, you may remember that I showed you in my last post the bamboo reed that Tracy made in her workshop with Bryan Whitehead. She put in the hours to get her reed finished during her stay and I am excited to tell you that it is already dancing on cottolin warp and helping her create beautiful balanced cloth using her own hand spun ~~cotton~~ wool weft.

Tracy describes the cottolin warp as having ”rustic calm”. I think this entire project exudes rustic calm. I can imagine the serene rhythm of creating plain-weave cloth with these clean and simple materials.

And now for some final vistas from a day out with my brother in the serene Australian bush and Blue Mountains…

Waist-deep in lush ferns surrounded by the dramatic rock walls that are so typical of this area.

Further on at Maiyingu Marragu, which was a meeting place for Aboriginal tribes, we saw Aboriginal hand prints on the rock walls which are noted as dating from 500 to 1600 years ago. The hand prints are said to be stamps of ownership of the six clans that used the area….

And we enjoyed the views over the Wolgan Valley…

I will leave you as I sit here looking out at the lengthening shadows in the back garden. It’s a serene view but the screeching cockatoos and squealing lorikeets certainly break the silence. Those are happy sounds. Maybe a kookaburra or two will start up in the distance as the sun sinks lower.

I start my backstrap weaving travels along the coast of New South Wales on Friday. I hope to be able to pause and report along the way.

Backstrap Weaving – Wool Weather

Finally….I am weaving with the right material to suit the season. It’s winter here in Bolivia and, although I am back in a tshirt and shorts today, we have had a couple of weeks of rather chilly weather. I wove with 20/2 wool as I finished the second of two purple panels that I plan to sew together. While doing so, I used the joined brown wool panels that I recently wove as my lap blanket. It was just the right weight for the cool-ish temperatures that we sometimes experience here in our tropical winter.

Here are the two finished panels that have been washed and pressed. The one on the left is actually showing its ”wrong” side so you can see how the narrower of the two patterns looks on the reverse. When both ”right” faces are showing, the wider strips of hook patterns on the two panels are mirror images. I created the patterns using black supplementary warp threads. I now have to decide which kind of joining stitch I will use to connect the panels and what I would like to apply to the edges.

My brown wool piece has been sitting by waiting for its edging. I have not quite made up my mind about that but I now have the brown wool that I need and just need to make some sketches and plan out the pattern. I am thinking about applying a flat band to the edges rather than a tubular one.

In the meantime, I have warped a sample using the same wool I used for my panels for my next project. The item itself is small but there will be quite a lot of time involved as I hope to weave the piece with four selvedges as well as include a tiny pocket and lots of decorative stitching and other embellishments. My short, narrow sample will simply show me how my pattern will look in my chosen colors of 20/2 wool.

I want to make a 4-inch wide pouch…the kind people often wear around their necks at conferences. All participants were given one at a conference that I attended and it turned out to be the handiest thing for storing room key cards, meal passes, the business cards of people we had met along with other bits and pieces. So, I want to weave one of my own and I want it to look like a mini ch’uspa….the woven pouch in which people here in Bolivia carry their coca leaves.

Here’s the acrylic ch’uspa I wove with my teachers in Potosi, Bolivia back in 1997. Using her drop spindle, my teacher Hilda added twist to the acrylic yarn that we had bought in the market. The piece has four selvedges and I wove it down on my knees using a horizontal ground loom.

Hilda showing me how to finish a four-selvedge piece. — Hilda showing me how to finish my first piece with four-selvedges.

I wove a few inches at both ends of the loom and then, when the space in between was too small to allow me to continue weaving the pick-up pattern, I changed to weaving just horizontal bars. Eventually, the space was too small to allow me to continue using the shed rod. It was removed and I continued using only the heddles for one shed while needle-weaving the other.. I finally had to remove the hedddles and create both sheds using a needle.

A shed is created by picking up every other warp end on a needle and then transferring the ends to a very narrow wooden sword or metal rod. Then the weft is passed.

It is a slow, slow process. Hilda had helped me finish my first piece this way but for this, my second piece, I was on my own!

While Hilda wove a band on a backstrap loom and her sister Juliana cut wool to spin, I wove the fabric for the little pouch on a ground loom.

The pouch has the little outer pocket that is typical of many of the Bolivian ch’uspas. I had asked to be shown how to weave a ch’uspa and Julia and Hilda had to consult about how exactly to wind the warp to include the pocket as neither had woven one for many years.

Setting up to weave this odd-looking warp is easy enough when using a ground loom. You simply pound stakes into the ground to hold the extra warp-length for the pocket section under tension.

It’s a bit more fiddly when using a backstrap loom. Some years ago, I tried it here at home using cotton. The warping and set-up went smoothly but I came to the conclusion that cotton was not a good material for this particular technique….at least not in my hands. So, I am looking forward to trying again with wool. It seems to me that a stretchier material would make things a lot easier.

The little pocket sits on the outside of the pouch and is accessed from the inside…

I have turned my woven ch’uspa inside out in the above photos and you can see the little pocket opening.

When I had finished weaving the pouch, after having struggled through the final rows of needle weaving, Hilda and I set about decorating it. She taught me to weave and sew a patterned tubular edging. We edged the pocket with a tripled cross-knit looping stitch and then added a finger-loop braided strap.

This is the pattern that I hope to use (it is charted in my 2nd book) and my sample will tell me if it is going to look too small in the 20/2 wool. I charted these birds from a small fragment of pre-columbian cloth that Tom Knisely once brought to show me when I was visiting the Mannings.I’ll be embellishing my little pouch in almost every way I know using patterned tubular bands, coil stitches and other decorative sewn finishes, braids and pompoms …it should be a fun project.

Backstrap Weaving – All Warps Great and Small

A couple of months ago, I created a project that had outgrown my regular loom bars and I had to buy brooms and cut them down for my beams. That project was a plain-weave piece of 2000 ends of 60/2 silk and supplemental weft for patterning. This week I find myself weaving with the same silk and my regular loom bars but, this time, my project is a mere half-inch wide.

It may seem like overkill using those big sticks for such a tiny project. Many a time I have abandoned the sticks to pass cord through the end loops of the warp and tie that to my waist with the other end of the warp hooked to my big toe. No backstrap, no sticks…just fingers, a toe and string.

However, I do prefer the stability of the sticks and I feel perfectly balanced and at home with what may look to others as a very cumbersome, clumsy and perhaps unnecessarily complex set-up. I think this backstrap weaver in Mexico feels the same way I do.

picture by Karen Elwell — Picture by Karen Elwell

I think her band may be even narrower than mine. The narrow band project is happening because I promised some lanyards for name tags for a friend. They need to be roughly 1/2 ” wide and 34” long. I have to admit that it is a nice change and break to be weaving these after having had so many large projects on my loom lately.

I wanted to fit a lot of pattern into that mere half-inch space and so I used 60/2 silk. I wove an Andean Pebble Weave pattern. Because it is a complementary-warp structure with warp-floats on both faces, the band is dense enough to make a good lanyard. I chose a pattern that I have woven so so many times before, I can just about do it with my eyes shut. I was a bit put off by the impending boredom…34″ of a pattern that I already know so well and have woven in many color combinations. I wouldn’t experience the delight of seeing new shapes and forms appear or new color combinations. It was just going to be very, very slow going with the fine silk.

So, I decided to set it up for loom-controlled patterning so I wouldn’t have to have my fingers in among the size 60/2 threads. Having it set up with a series of heddles to control all the pattern sheds would make this novel and interesting, not to mention fast!

A few years ago, I wove this guitar strap for a friend. She was giving it as a birthday present and it had to mailed to the USA from Bolivia. I was on a deadline and had to move fast. I set up only two heddles in addition to the two pebble heddles to speed things up a bit. Part of the process was still weaver-controlled in that I was picking up some of the sheds by hand.

For the new silk lanyard project I went with almost 100% loom control…

I have five sets of heddles and a shed loop. This particular pattern has a couple of horizontal bars. I picked up the first horizontal bar by hand, stored it on a saver cord and used that cord to weave the second horizontal bar. Then I had to remove the cord. That is the only time I picked up by hand. I could have installed another set of heddles for that pick but didn’t want to clutter things up too much. This silk does tend to fluff and there is a lot of extra abrasion with sheds being cleared through all those heddles. The weaving went really fast and what I thought might be tedious was, in fact, a lot of fun.

Band weavers in Peru sometimes use multiple string heddles on their simple body-tensioned warps to quickly weave small repeating patterns…

Now I am weaving a second lanyard with #10 crochet cotton. As the thread is heavier, there is less detail in the pattern…only 16 ends of pattern threads this time compared to 64 in the silk lanyard. I have installed more heddles for this one as this mercerized thread can take the abrasion better than the silk.

This project has 7 sets of heddles with one pattern shed held in a loop. The colors of the heddles help me find my way in the sequence. It’s another pattern that I have woven many times and that I did not wish to pick up for 34”. I used it quite recently on my silk yurt-shaped pouch and accessories.

It has gotten to the stage where I am not interested in weaving something unless there is some major learning to be had. This project will show me how well I can manage 7 sets of heddles and if the work of clearing sheds through multiple heddles makes this method worthwhile. It is not something that I am planning on adopting for my own weavings. I really do prefer getting my hands in there and doing the pick-up!

I doubt you will be seeing me doing this any time soon! I will weave a couple more lanyards and see just how many sets of heddles I am willing to manage for other patterns.

I have seen other pattern shed storage systems used by backstrap weaver in various places…sheds stored in multiple heddles and on sticks. Deb McClintock showed me how Laos weavers use a vertical shed storage system on their floor looms. She adapted the system to one of her own floor looms.

Inspired by that, I have sometimes placed colored strings on my string heddles to help me lift threads for small repeating supplementary-weft patterns. The colored guide threads help me locate the spot where the pattern needs to be placed and gives me the first pick rather than having to count lots of fine warp ends.

Here is a video that I took of Deb McClintock demonstrating the Laos pattern storage system.

I have not had the chance to see how other backstrap weavers in Asia set up pattern storage systems. I have seen lots of sticks piled up on backstrap warps but have never seen them in use. An online weaving friend in Turkey, Adem, sent me a link to a very interesting video showing how a backstrap weaver uses those sticks. The video does not give information about the weaver but I believe, from having looked around online, that she may be a Karen weaver of Thailand or Myanmar. She mentions having brought thread with her from Thailand. There seem to be a few groups of Burmese weavers being formed in the USA where the ladies can come together, teach and support each other, practice their art and eventually sell their cloth.

These are a couple of shots from a video made about a group of such weavers in Vermont at the Vermont Folklife Center. They show the pattern sticks in the warp between the shed rod and coil rod.

Here is the video that Adem sent me. The weaver is using a simple warp-float technique with floats formed from the threads in one of the two basic sheds on only one face of the fabric. It is a very cool set-up!

And so, I will be be playing with multiple heddles on my teeny tiny warps for a few days. If it is fun, I will make even more lanyards than I originally promised.

In the meantime, the brown wool on which I had been waiting arrived and now I can plan and weave the edging for the brown wool panels that I recently finished.

I finished the purple wool panel and have put that aside. It was tougher weaving the pattern on the purple piece than the ones I chose for the brown panel.

A few factors made weaving the brown panel more enjoyable. Firstly, I used the Andean Pebble Weave structure on the brown panels which means that every second weft shot was through a loom-controlled shed. That speeds things up. Plus, I just love working those two sets of heddles. The fact that there are six different motifs made it a lot more interesting too. I was also weaving the narrow continuous pattern alongside the larger motifs for the first time. It was my own design which added extra interest.

I used a supplementary-warp structure for the purple panel. I have never been a huge fan of this structure and, unfortunately, weaving this piece did not change the way I feel about it. I am not sure what it is…I just don’t like the way it feels.

The motif was continuous and rather confusing with those hooks going this way and that but I like those kinds of pick-up challenges! I really want to wash this piece and see how things come together after the wet finishing. However, I dare not do that until I have the second matching panel completed. In any case, I am really pleased with the way it came out. It will be nice to have these two large wool pieces showing two different structures. I will weave more in this wool set representing other structures.

I have quite a few lovely things to show from my online weaving friends but will leave them for next week.

Instead, let me leave you with this gorgeous video of a song by Mapuche singer Anahi Mariluan sung in a mix of Spanish and the language of her people of southern Chile and Argentina. I am very grateful to my many Chilean and Argentinean online weaving friends who send me links to these beautiful things. The scenery of the south in this video is stunning and the song is so peaceful and delicate yet powerful. On the Youtube page for this video you can see the lyrics…. ” No Estamos Solas” – ”We are not Alone”. You can listen to more here.

Backstrap Weaving – Colors

Gorgeous colors! Just what I need to lighten a dreary drizzly day in the tropics….warm colors of the highland countryside. This is one of the bands that I received recently from PAZA Bolivia. My weaving teacher, Maxima, heads the cooperative that weaves these bands on the traditional leaning vertical loom in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The weavers use their own handspun wool which has been colored with natural dyes.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will be used to seeing this annual event – the arrival of the Cochabamba fajas. You will have heard many times about my excitement at opening the box with its outpouring of colors and aromas of the Bolivian countryside.

I mentioned to my friend Dorinda, who works with the weavers and helps to manage their sales, that this latest batch of bands was lacking the rich chocolate browns of previous collections I had received. I was surprised when she told me that those darker colors were obtained from khesi misa, or soot.

What I wasn’t surprised to hear was that the ladies do not enjoy scraping off the build-up of soot on their kitchen walls to use in the dye pot. As you can imagine, it is mixed with grease from the hundreds of cooked meals and must be truly awful to work with. I don’t know what the cooking spaces look like in the communities where these weavers live but I can show you the kitchen of one of my teachers in another part of Bolivia to give you an idea. This is an old print from 1998.

Of course, it is so much nicer to be dyeing with leaves and flowers and cochineal bugs. Natural black can always provide the dark contrast and some of the greens that are obtained are quite dark too.

I have showed you pictures of Independencia and Huancarani where Maxima lives in other blog posts. At around 2600 meters above sea level (approx 8600 ft), it is very green and hilly. Pictures that Dorinda sends me or posts show the ladies working in pretty gardens amongst an abundance of plants and flowers.

The city of El Alto in La Paz, on the other hand, sits above 4000 meters (approx 13000 ft). It’s a different story up there on the Bolivian high plains – dry, flat and largely colorless. That’s why a recently finished project of several high apartment blocks in El Alto has attracted widespread attention. Bolivian artist Mamani Mamani, known for his use of color, (see an example of his work at left)was commissioned to design enormous murals for the walls of the buildings. I am hoping that the next time I fly to El Alto airport in La Paz, I will see these colorful images standing out against the dry and dusty plains. The following pictures of the project are from the webpage of Mistura Urbana…

More of Mamani Mamani’s work can be seen here.

In this next picture, you can really appreciate the bleak surroundings…

I became a little obsessed with the red, purple and gold that you can see in this last picture. Actually, the red-purple-gold ”thing” really started when I watched the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel for the second time last week. As it was a second viewing, my mind was freer to wander and take in more of the scenery and sets and the purple, red and gold kept calling to me…

This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Tom Wilkinson, Tony Revolori, center, and Owen Wilson, right, in "The Grand Budapest Hotel ." (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight) — This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Tom Wilkinson, Tony Revolori, center, and Owen Wilson, right, in “The Grand Budapest Hotel .” (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight)

It’s not like I haven’t used this combination before…

What looks rather blue in this picture is actually a dark purple. This is an amulet bag that I made many years ago when I was first practicing sewing and weaving tubular edgings. It was a cute little pouch with its cross-warp strap and pom poms. My friend DY has it hanging from the rear view mirror in her car.

Last week, I was about to start my next wool project and I had purple, gold and red wool…perfect. Well, not so much. The purple wasn’t deep enough, the gold was greenish and the red just wasn’t lipstick-y enough. I spent several days winding warp with these colors, adding and subtracting ends, re arranging ends, pulling things out and starting again before I gave up on trying to make the particular tones of red, purple and gold work. It was so hard for me to wipe that color combination from my mind and start anew.

So, this is what I have come up with. You can see that I really wanted to use the purple! It is one of two panels that will be connected with decorative stitching. I am creating the patterns with supplemental warp threads. There was one more thing that I wanted to change but I got to the point where I realized that this could go on forever! and so I just decided to get on with it and weave. The center stitching, which will run along the right hand edge, will be in the greenish gold and the edging around the two joined panels will be in purple. I hope that will balance it all out. And, I am very pleased that I remembered, despite all the warping chaos, to add a stripe at the inner edge to make placing the stitches easier.

In the meantime, my brown wool is on its way in the post so that I can create the outer edging for my first wool panel piece…

Something is going on with me and I am noticing color more. I am currently watching the series Parenthood for the first time on dvd. I see scenes with characters dressed in black seated on a butter-yellow couch in front of a dark green wall and all I can think of are the colors. Will we ever see a red-white-black piece from me again? Undoubtedly! I still have more hangings in that series that I want to create.

Now, it’s back to the loom for me and I will leave you with some final splashes of color…

Backstrap Weaving – Color fom the Cochabamba “campo”

The big rains have more or less stopped here in Santa Cruz. We get a shower about twice a day. Each one has has me holding my breath. The outer wall of my bedroom has been hacked out so that it can dry out and then be filled and repaired and made watertight, we hope. The huge wooden wall unit in my bedroom had one side on the point of collapse when the water soaked through. Now it is being supported by my large weaving sticks. Whine , whine, whine… a picture like this from this blog soon makes you stop. Such is the situation in the province of Beni in Bolivia. No walls at all and sticks support the roof.

I heard from my friend Dorinda up in the highlands in the province of Cochabamba, another of the effected areas, but she did not mention the rains and I am guessing that they are okay. Dorinda had written to let me know that she had mailed the box of woven bands that I had ordered from the weaving cooperative that my teacher Maxima heads. Dorinda blogs about her work with Maxima and the weavers of Huancarani at PAZA Bolivia.

Exciting! As the post office box I use is in someone else’s name, I had to be patient and wait for my treasure to be picked up.

My home is a disaster of warps, yarn and sticks right now. I really had to resist opening the packages straight away, unfolding the luscious bands, and laying them out to view on every available space. Dorinda included a list of the weavers and each band is tagged with the weaver’s name. She also sent me a document with a short story on each of the ladies. It so nice to handle one of the bands, look at the picture of the weaver and read her story.

Once I had put things in order, two days later, I opened the packages and released all those lovely aromas of wool, dyestuffs, and “campo”.

I like to feel the cloth. The yarn is the weavers’ own handspun, most often made with fleece from their own flocks. The colors are all natural and were created from cochineal and local plants.

Which weaver would be considered the best amongst her peers, I wonder. Whose cloth is the stiffest? This seems to be one of the things that the weavers themselves appreciate. I wonder which pattern they would consider the most complex. What different effects did they achieve in their use of warp and weft colors? Who matched the weft color to the edge color and who used a contrast color to create attractive little dots along the edge? Whose color combination was vastly different to everyone else’s?

Did they all get together and decide not to duplicate the patterns or was that just a happy coincidence? Were any made by the teenagers who are still in training?

Without unfolding them, I picked out two which I considered my favorites. I was happy to see that one of the two had been woven my Maxima. I wondered if I had simply recognized her style.

Fifteen different weavers had made the bands with no repetition of color arrangement and just two patterns duplicated. The width of the stripes of color ,and the narrow strips of threaded-in pattern that sometimes separate them, was in a form that was often repeated and could be characteristic of certain communities or even families.

Seventeen bands were patterned with complementary-warp designs and three used a supplementary-warp structure.

The weavers used a complementary-warp structure to create the patterns on these bands.

One of the bands with pattern created with supplementary warps is on the right. — The band on the right is one of those which was patterned with supplementary warps.

The second of the two bands that I had picked out as favorites was made by Narciza, Maxima’s older sister. I just love Narciza’s color combinations. Below you can see her adding a tubular border to one of her woven pieces. As is done in Peru, she uses a forked stick to hold the cross for this particular type of patterned tubular band. Strangely, younger sister Maxima never learned to weave this kind of tubular band with its distinctive eye pattern and only recently learned it at the Tinkuy in Cusco last year.

Dionicia Crespo is the oldest weaver in Hauncarani still weaving to sell at 82 years old!

Of course, her fading eyesight plays a role in the straightness of her edges, Dorinda tells me.

She doesn’t have glasses. Somebody told me the women are embarrassed to try out reading glasses because glasses are associated with education and the Huancarani weavers are illiterate (Dorinda)

Her edges look good to me!

You can see her at left preparing her frame for warping.

Bands that represent three stages of life….you can see 82-year old Dionicia’s band above on the left. A piece by Vilma, Maxima’s eldest daughter, is in the middle and the band created by the youngest weaver of this collection of bands, 18-year old Adviana, is on the right.

Dorinda tells me that Adviana is one of the few of the younger generation who has learned how to weave.

When she began weaving to sell through PAZA she relied on her grandmother´s assistance, but now weaves on her own. (Dorinda)

Family traits? The band on the left is Maxima’s, daughter Vilma’s is in the middle and older sister Narciza’s is on the right.

Mxima demonstrating at Tinkuy 2013 and daughter Vilma collecting flowers for the dyepot. — Maxima demonstrating at Tinkuy 2013 and daughter Vilma collecting flowers for the dyepot.

A couple more pictures to finish before I put the bands back in their box….

Enough color? Let me calm things down a bit now with some black and white.

A question was asked in one of the forums this week about what kind of weaving software people use. There are still quite a lot of good old fashioned paper-and-pencil people around amongst those who were excitedly discussing all the ins and outs of the various available programs.

Me? I am a paper-and-pencil gal. That’s the new panel for the wall hanging over which I have been dithering. I love charting this way. It makes me feel like a kid again and it is very relaxing. While a young fellow dangled from a cage outside my window and hacked away at my wall, I calmy colored in cells on my graph paper. Prior to that, I had just as calmly sat and made four sets of string heddles of 353 ends each on that black and white cotton warp.

If you are thinking that that is a weird-looking pattern, you are right! I really have no idea what this will end up looking like even after sampling! I just need to dive in and do it. I fussed over it more than usual….measuring, shifting things about, uncrossing warps, measuring again and finally got the first weft shot in. That always feels good. I am weaving this in double weave. It is embedded double weave as there is a very narrow plain-weave border on either side.

I finished the silk bookmark that was part of the Ravelry event but I am calling it a sample for now. There are several things about it with which I am not pleased and, as I have plenty of warp left, I will start it again with improvements.

The silk is lovely to work with! Using the four sets of string heddles and a pick-up stick I never have to actually touch the threads. I worked with this same silk as supplementary weft last summer and it was horrid to handle with sweaty hands.

The bookmark is light and supple…just the right thickness to slip between pages. I am pleased with all that. Now to fix that other stuff that I don’t like as much.

While on the subject of double weave, Scott has allowed me to show pictures that he posted of his double-weave sample band. He is studying the one-weft version from my tutorial here and has done a really good job.

Ravelry projects have been coming in as we approach the end of the Sochi Games…

Kim finished her piece and sewed int a small bag for which she also wove a strap. Now she is on the lookout for a button to close it.

Joyful has been converting her flowere doodles into patterns using embroidery floss as supplementary weft on her plain-weave band. Julia will use purple cloth with her finished piece along with her sewing talents to create something useful.

Another week comes to a close. I try and mix it up…a little warping, a little charting, a little weaving for myself. I hope to make some good progress on the wall hanging this coming week.

Bye for now.