Category: travel

Backstrap Weaving – Encuentro de Tejedores de las Americas – Part Two – the cloth and the looms.

Read Part One of this story here.

ARE YOU GOING TO WEAVE TODAY?

I probably make a thorough nuisance of myself at weaving events like the Encuentro de Tejedores in Cusco Peru earlier this month. I have so many questions and want to be into everything and not miss a thing.

Calm and serene despite being in the very heart of the city of Cusco, the venue for the conference was beautiful both by day and night. There were plenty of pillars to which looms could be attached for weaving displays and shaded areas under the arches where weavers could show their textiles.

 Bright and early on day one, I registered along with other participants. The receptionists, looking smart in their uniforms with colored conference scarves and headbands, were efficient and clearly trained to be able to handle anything. The whole process was very slick and it was interesting to hear all the different Spanish accents and Quechua being spoken in the line-up of participants from all over Peru and South America. I recognized fondly the accent from Chile where I lived for five years as well as the song of the Argentinean-style of speaking used by my ex-boyfriend and the special way that Bolivian highlanders pronounce “rr”.

I then stepped outside to the courtyard to another world…a buzz of colorful activity… where I watched all the stands being assembled by weavers from all over Peru, Bolivia and Latin America, saw all the marvelous textiles emerging from travel sacks and being arranged and labeled, touched the fiber, tools and implements which were used to create the colorful cloth and spoke with the creators themselves. Some of them seemed somewhat overwhelmed by the high level of interest in and admiration for activities that are quite normal and commonplace, almost passing without remark, in the communities, villages and towns where they live.

Weavers and knitters from Taquile Island wearing and displaying their textiles and the creators of the wonderful ikat pañones of Tacabamba, Peru

The question that I really wanted to ask everyone right there and then is “Are you going to weave today?” Is today the day when we will get to sit by you and see how you created all these exquisite textiles? And all the while the  excitement is building as I see more and more gorgeous textiles and looms being extracted and arranged. I had already seen at least ten things that I wanted to explore further after having passed just once quickly by each of the twenty-two half-erected stands.

Weavers and spinners from the Navajo Nation, my friend from the Tinkuy, DY, and TahNibaa and Albina from San Ignacio de Loyola showing the crocheted “chullos” and the belt loom full of sticks which is typical of her community. 
The Chol Chol Foundation of Chile was present bringing with them textiles made by the Mapuche weavers that they support including a spectacular ikat- patterned “manta cacique”. Lowland areas of Peru were also well represented with a group of Matsigenka cotton spinners and weavers from Echarate, Bajo Urubamba.

The looms!……

A horizontal loom with a broad belt patterned with double weave and complementary-warp pick-up patterns of Taquile Island and a backstrap loom with a cotton warp-float piece in progress from Echarate.
The simple backstrap loom of Tacabamba, Peru on which the indigo ikat-patterned “pañones” are woven.  The process of creating a pañon is anything but simple. They are up to one-meter wide, covered with tiny motifs and have patterns knotted into their fringes.
A floor loom from Ayacucho, Peru with a tapestry in progress and the leaning vertical loom of Tarabuco, Bolivia.
The cotton weavers of Chiclayo managed to preserve their native cotton despite the fact that its cultivation was banned for many years in Peru. The backstrap loom is used to weave their natural brown and white cotton into saddle bags, belts and table ware for their own use. The Guatemalan loom from Santiago Atitlan holds brocaded cotton cloth destined for the typical woman’s blouse or “huipil”. Panels are sewn together and the neckline embroidered with birds.

Wide warps, narrow warps and everything in between… A Tinkipaya weaver’s leaning vertical loom, holding fabric covered n complementary-warp pick-up patterns, rests on the ground. A weaver from Pitumarca speedily edges her finished woven lliclla with a tubular woven band using three sets of string heddles and a shed loop.

A backstrap weaver from Ayacucho, Peru, creates a belt patterned with supplementary warps. She uses a forked stick to hold a secondary cross, the manipulation of which helps her to open the heddle shed quickly and efficiently. The wide backstrap loom parked against the pillar is from Tanta, Peru where handspun alpaca yarn is often combined with bright synthetic threads to make shawls, ponchos and blankets.

And then there was that tantalizing backstrap loom with its twenty-four heddle sticks…Señora Araceli, are you going to weave today?

First Araceli has to make the twenty-four sets of heddles on this fresh warp. The pattern has already been picked up and saved on sticks.

Just before lunchtime one day when we were indoors listening to speakers, I got the uneasy feeling that I really needed to be somewhere. I got up and tip-toed out at the start of the morning’s final presentation by Manos del Uruguay to find Araceli seated and preparing her warp for an afternoon session of weaving.

Well, you know that I am fascinated by the entire process and so I was happy to be able to sit alone with her and watch her make her heddles. I was tickled to see that she makes her heddles with the extra security hitch just as I have chosen to do. I have seen and learned so many ways to make string heddles for backstrap and other kinds of weaving and this method is by far my current favorite. I always say “current” as who knows what cool new method I will find tomorrow.

Here is a short video clip of Araceli making her heddles. She certainly has a smooth and elegant way of doing so. I know some people don’t like making heddles and dread that part of the process…I like it!

And what about the woven cloth produced by these looms and the pieces produced by talented hands using knotting, braiding and crochet?

Head gear…Crocheted “chullo” from Peru and a woven hatband from Bolivia.

There are four countries represented here….cloth from Mapuche weavers in Chile,  Salasaca, Ecuador,  Taquile Island, Peru and Tinkipaya, Bolivia.

Cloth from different corners of Peru. The variety!

Of course, each piece has its story and it was those stories that we were told in the weavers’ own words in the seminar sessions that were held in the mornings and afternoons. The stories were very inspiring and educational, often with very personal touches which brought life and meaning to the fabric that simply could not be transmitted from the market stall or loom alone. All told of hope, perseverance, strengthening of ethnic identity and a revival of pride in oneself and culture and were often very moving.

The faja sara ( the one created with the twenty-four string heddles) has its own fascinating story. It is part of an unbroken weaving tradition that dates back at least 500 years to Incan times. The belt is described in the chronicles of Mercedarian Friar Martín de Murúa in 1590 A.D. and the knowledge of how to create one has been passed on ancestrally over all these years.

Lynn Meisch has written an article about her research on these belts here. We were told by the weavers that the name “sara’ comes from the verb ”sarear”, although I have never come across this verb before, which means to choose, or in a weaving context,  to pick-up.

Interesting to me from a structural point of view is the rolled edge of the belts which is surprisingly easy to create. I am guessing that it serves the same purpose as the woven bands I have seen added to other textiles in that it strengthens the edge. When I was in Holland, Marijke van Epen and I followed Mirja Wark’s explanation of the rolled edge used by the Wayuu people of the Guajira Peninsula in Colombia and Venezuela and the way the weavers of the sara belts create theirs is equally as interesting and practical.

Here is Araceli in action with a band of spectators. When doubt was expressed by the onlookers about the quality of the cloth since Araceli does not use a ruki, the llama bone tool, to beat in her weft, Araceli immediately invited them all to feel the belt. They were all surprised and impressed by the firmness of the weave. It is a very dense piece of weaving.

The poncho shown above is from Catamarca Argentina and represents the recovery of the exquisitely fine work done with handspun vicuña fiber on floor looms which has the made the poncho Catamarqueño famous for centuries.

Two people weave the pieces side by side and have to coordinate the strength of their beat perfectly to maintain a consistent weave. With the fine vicuña thread a piece that measures 2 meters by 1.30 meters weighs only 320 grams and takes up to eight months to complete.

Fine vicuña shawls are also woven and embroidered using designs copied from old colonial textiles.

We had a chance one afternoon to handle and clean pieces of vicuna fiber and everyone was invited to try their hand at spinning it on the  25cm spindles.

More cloth…..

…. a bulsico , or cotton double-pocket saddle bag from San Ignacio de Loyola with beautiful patterns in simple warp floats worked in two colors. The weavers from Tarabuco and Potolo in Bolivia of course brought large fine examples of their textiles. I decided to show you here some very small and practical pieces that they also brought to sell. The tiny USB pouch is from Tarabuco and the cell phone pouch with its woven khuru figures is from Potolo.

The supplementary-warp patterned pieces in lovely pastel colors are from Ayacucho, Peru and the last shot is of an impromptu sling-braiding demonstration from one of the Peruvian presenters in the coffee break.

More lessons along the way…

Diana from Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala showed me how to wrap her hair and head with a woven hair sash. You can see that most of the band is plain red with just the last part, which will be seen on the outside, decorated with pattern. Albina’s husband showed me how married men wear the typical chullo of his home…with the flaps standing out sideways. A single man will wear his with the flaps pointing out front and back.

So, now you have seen a selection of the stands, looms and textiles and heard a few backgroud tidbits about some of the weavings and the people who produce them. You are probably dying now to see the weavers in action, right?

ARE YOU GOING TO WEAVE TODAY?

Sorry, but I am saving that segment for the next blog post as uploading the video will be so much easier for me when I am in the US.

In the meantime I am packed and ready to leave tomorrow and I did manage to finish the discontinuous warp piece that I started in the workshop on the last day of the Encuentro. Handling alpaca fiber is not a nice business in this heat with sweaty hands, I can tell you!

Here is my ticlla piece off the loom and all curled up…

The overspun alpaca yarn made the grey and black panels curl in and the other two panels curl under. You can see my finish line on the white panel. I ended up removing one weft as I had packed too many in. I really need to remove two as now I have two wefts in the same shed. The finish line isn’t as noticeable on the other panels. I am really pleased with this!

I wove and sewed on a tubular band to the edges….… in the same way as the Pitumarca weaver that I showed earlier in this post, using three sets of string heddles and a shed loop. See how nicely the piece lies flat now? I hemmed the sides before applying the tubular band because I didn’t like the way the warp stripe at the edge was interfering with the color of the tubular band.

Here’s a better look at the tubular band and that lovely dovetail join of colors…

Done! I am keen to try this all again!

See you next time from the US 🙂

Backstrap Weaving – Encuentro de Tejedores de Las Americas – Part One – The Workshop

Back from Cusco!

Bleary-eyed from the long road trip and slightly spinning out from the altitude, I had a little time to wander the streets of Cusco on the Sunday of my arrival before the start of the weavers’conference on October 1. The trip from my home to my hostel had involved fourteen changes of transport including an overnight bus ride, the highlight of which was watching the big ol’ yellow harvest moon rising over Lake Titicaca. Stunning! I don’t think I have ever seen such an intensely bright moon before.

Needless to say, there is plenty to tell about that journey and my first hours in town but it will all have to wait.  Of course a trip to the CTTC (Centro de Textiles Tradicionales de Cusco) was a must. The walk down to the CTTC is impressive in itself. It sits right next to this…

This is the church of Santo Domingo built by the Spanish colonists on top of the stonework foundations of the demolished Inca temple Qorikancha. The inca stonework has apparently survived earthquakes which the Spanish construction was not able to withstand.

The CTTC is one of those strange and wonderful black holes where you lose all sense of time! I sat with the weavers all afternoon and learned so much. A weaver from Chahuaytire let me sit by and watch while she wove and sewed a tubular band to the edge of a finished weaving. You can see how a thread toward the end of the cloth extends to her toe which helps the weaver hold the cloth taut as she sews.

Eventually, fatigue started to set in and I spent a little while in the evening trying not to nod off in the pleasant flower-laden main square of Cusco before admitting defeat and crawling into bed. I had no trouble sleeping in my cheapo “party hostel” in a room with seven strangers!

But back to the present for a moment….I had fully expected to slip back into the old routine when I got back home late last Sunday. I thought that I would have no problem spending a couple of days going through and editing my pictures from The Encuentro de Tejedores de las Americas and that I would get my blog post out on Thursday night as usual. You would think that I would be bouncing around with energy with all those rich red blood cells that I must have grown during my week up at high altitude. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way!  I was tired after the week of intense activity and the long road trip back and very much wilted by the Santa Cruz heat.

However, the thing that was most to blame for my failure to get back on track quickly was this…

This is one my favorite souvenirs of the trip… the piece on which I worked on the last day of the conference which was Workshop Day. The weaving technique is called ticlla, or, discontinuous warp, and it allows changes of color along the length of the warp.  As you can see above, the piece is divided into panels of color along its length. The white panel changes to black and the grey to brown. Both halves of the piece, that is, the grey and white and the black and brown, will be woven with four selvedges.

It was very exciting arriving on Friday morning and seeing these sitting on the table…..and yes, I was the first one to get there!

And there were our teachers from Pitumarca sitting in conference, possibly reviewing some teaching strategies, each wearing a stunning lliclla decorated with pick-up patterns on panels of discontinuous warps. If you think that they look very young, you are right! Our two instructors, Janet and Petra are twenty-two and eighteen years old. Janet has been weaving for fourteen years and started weaving ticlla when she was twelve.

We were split into groups and Janet and Petra showed my group the warping process. This process of warping is something that I had only ever seen in pictures some of which, like the one below, had been taken and sent to me by my friend DY when she visited Pitumarca in 2010.

The pictures were enough for me to be able to make some small experiments of my own with this technique at home but there is, of course, nothing like seeing the whole thing unfold before your eyes. How much nicer and simpler it is when there are two pairs of hands at work! I warped three panels on my own at home and had to call several toes into use to hold tension on warps of one color while my two hands worked with warps in another color.

Janet, the more talkative of our two instructors, explained that the natural alpaca colors that we were using are called yoro (white), ch’umpi (brown), o’que (grey) and yana (black) in Quechua. How deftly the two ladies passed the balls of yarn back and forth falling naturally into a rhythm which they were able to maintain even as we plied them with questions.

Black and grey warp threads are being wound simultaneously with each color following its own figure-eight path. They are passed in turn around a central rod in dovetail fashion. This allows the creation of panels of different colors. Each half of the piece will have its own shed rod and set of heddles and will be woven with four selvedges.

While we watched the creation of this warp, other ladies from Pitumarca were busy setting up the prepared warps on which each of us would weave. We stood up from the demonstration to find twelve warps stretched out and ready to go.

The pretty courtyard of the convention center was conveniently surrounded by pillars to which we could attach our looms.

And now you will find that there is a sudden lack of photographs on my part…I was far too absorbed in my weaving to stop and take pictures! Here’s one I took on a short break…nearby, weavers from Chinchero were giving a workshop on making jakimas with pick-up patterns.

Above you can see a couple of jakima students with their instructor. Beyond them you can see my “pillar partner”, Marcela with the head scarf and cloak of her Mapuche people in Chile. There is something special about sitting all day and weaving next to someone who shares your passion. The preceding four days of conference had been hectic…so much to see and do. This last day allowed us all to slow down and take some time to talk and get to know each other while working at our looms. Janet had to come and pry us out of our chairs to take a lunch break.

The discontinuous warp piece had been started with a few rows of weaving at each loom bar as well as at the center cord that held the dovetailed warps.  Therefore, the four selvedges on each half of the piece had been set. Our task, therefore, was to weave to fill in the gap between the loom bar and the center.  As the gap got smaller and smaller, naturally it became increasingly difficult to open the sheds and pass the weft. The later part of the afternoon session of the workshop was spent watching a demonstration of how to go about creating sheds and passing the weft as the space in which to work decreased.

I have to tell you that there are no secrets or magic solutions to this…it’s simply a matter of plain old determination, tenacity and patience. When the shed rod is too big for the small space in which you are working, replace it with a thinner one. When the shuttle is too thick for the shed you are creating, pass the weft on a needle. When it is impossible to open the shed by pulling on the heddle rod, remove the heddles and rod and create the shed thread by thread with the blunt end of the needle. Save the shed on a stick and then pass two wefts…one on the each side of the gap.

Plod along like this and you will slowly but surely get there!

By the way, I was not happy at first about having to use brown weft to weave the grey and white panels as the brown could be seen slightly between the white warps. However, once I got to the needle-weaving stage I was very grateful to have that contrasting color weft as it clearly showed me under which warps I needed to pass the needle. It is much harder to see the warps for needle-picking in the grey section than in the white. I am guessing that doing the other half (the black and brown one) is going to be REALLY tough as the black will be hard to see and I won’t have the benefit of contrasting color weft in the brown section…oh boy.

Here I was at home on Monday inching my way to closing the gap. The metal rod is a long Navajo weaving tool that I have that came in very handy with its flattened shovel-like nose. It held the shed open while I passed the two wefts on the needles.When that rod became too thick for the shed, I changed to an umbrella rib. It was all guess work and experiments at this stage as Janet did not get to this point in our class. We ran out of time.

The final weft went in alone on a needle…over, under, over, under. It’s funny that I had expected the finish area to be noticeable because the wefts would not be as tightly packed as they are in the rest of the piece. As it turns out, it is exactly the opposite! I packed in too many wefts in the gap and that part is more tightly woven than the rest! Do I dare undo all that hard work and remove two wefts? I don’t think so!!

Now to attack the other side. I have high hopes of finishing this before I leave for the US next Wednesday. I want to attach a patterned tubular band around the piece.

Here is a video of Janet showing her skill with the needle as she teaches us how to go picking up the warps to create a shed…

So that was the Workshop Day. What about the rest of the conference? Oh my gosh…I have SO much to show and tell but this is enough for this first installment…my loom is calling as well as prep for my US trip. I plan to write more before I leave about….

one meter-wide backstrap woven pieces, backstrap looms with 24 heddles, gorgeous ponchos made from handspun vicuña fiber, cotton ikat-patterned shawls with intricate knotted fringes, double weave on horizontal looms, Tinkipaya weavings, cotton weavers from the lowlands dyeing their yarn with strange and amazing substances, all kinds of ways to set up and operate backstrap looms and make string heddles, tapestries from Ayacucho, new books…. and lots of weavers, wonderful weavers interacting and learning from each other! I met some of my blog followers from Chile and Argentina…what fun!

A couple of pictures to finish…I can’t resist!…a weaver and spinner from Puno, Peru shows Navajo weaver and spinner DY Begay how to spin yarn “Puno style” using DY’s Navajo spindle. This created a lot of laughter and fun…hand movements and sound effects overcame all language barriers.

After another long day, a weaver from Tinkipaya, Bolivia who uses a leaning vertical loom, contemplates the backstrap loom with its twenty-four string heddles used to weave the traditional belt of San Ignacio de Loyola, Peru. More about that next time! I wonder what she was thinking.

Backstrap Weaving – Falling into Spring

Back home in Bolivia!

September is the first month of spring. Big rains extinguished all the fires that normally choke the skies with smoke at this time of the year, the green and white flag flies proudly and Santa Cruz celebrates its beginnings.

September 24 is the big day of celebrations and above you can see one of my English teaching colleagues, Lalenya, wearing the tipoy, the typical dress of Santa Cruz (only worn on such fiesta days) with some students from the instutute wearing the light white cotton outfits and sombrero de sao which complete the typical man’s costume for these days of celebration.

Lalenya’s tipoy is patterned with images of the patuju flower which is one of two Bolivian national flowers. One flower represents the lowlands where we live and another the highlands.

Next week the US will be celebrating Spinning and Weaving week (is this an international celebration?) and I will be spending the week in Cusco, Peru at a weavers’ gathering…yay!

I got to enjoy some wonderful late summer/early fall days in Europe. After what I am told was a wet and horrid summer, I was treated to day after day of sun and perfect temperatures in both Holland and the UK.

Here is part of the group that came to meet and weave with me in the Netherlands. Artist, author and tablet-weaver Marijke van Epen, is just behind me. In the chaos that typically accompanies packing up at the end of a weaving day, two people left before I remembered to get a posed group shot but here they all are  weaving…

We wove in the workshop and exhibit area in Marijke’s lovely home, a beautiful light and airy space with walls covered in Marijke’s stunning tablet-woven art.

This rainbow piece covers an entire wall and comprises tablet-woven linen spiral bands with twisted paper weft. The slightest movement nearby will set the pieces in motion,  gracefully turning. Standing by the green bands as they gently twirled reminded me of being in a forest with dappled light. I can imagine this hanging in a bedroom accompanied by the sound of a gurgling stream and breeze…how relaxing that would be!

Other walls were adorned with smaller tablet-woven pieces. Being behind glass, it wasn’t possible to photograph all of these well.

Yes, these have  been woven with tablets!

One of my favorite pieces is Marijke’s reproduction of  a tablet-woven band which belonged to  Bathilde, Queen of the Franks  (7th Century) which was found among other textile fragments in Chelles Abbey. Look at the little “pebbly” figures that run along the bottom edge of the band. They could be woven using the Andean Pebble Weave structure.

And then, upstairs  in the loom room where I slept, I had these to keep me company…

This is just a handful of the bands that reflect Marijke’s love of ethnic textiles and motifs. She has dedicated a lot of time to figuring out how to reproduce the structure of pieces, which have been created with pick-up techniques on backstrap looms, using tablets instead. In this way she has been able to create multi-colored pebble weave bands instead of just limiting herself to two and three-colored bands as are most often seen in the Andes these days. At times she found that she couldn’t find an efficient way to reproduce a certain structure with tablets and so she would weave the piece doing pick-up with a backstrap loom. She is just as skilled at doing pick-up with her backstrap loom as she is with using tablets.

And, as you can see, she also loves to cover her woven pieces with finishes and embellishments…braids, pom poms, tassels, straps, edging bands. All her pieces are impeccably finished down to the very last detail. That is an inspiration for me as I sometimes don’t take as much care with finishing the inside of my pieces as I do with the outside. Above you can see Marijke practicing her ñawi awapa tubular band. She had learned how to make this beautiful band from the writings of Adele Cahlander and I was able to show her how I was taught to make it in Peru.

It was a lovely week in the small village of Gelselaar, village of geese, in eastern Holland. Much time was spent indoors with Marijke as we  poured over weaving books, discovered the many similarities in our interests,  peered at photos and tried to figure out structures. We wove the special rolled tubular edging used by the Wayuu weavers on their si’ira belts described by weaver and author Mirja Wark. Together we also figured out how to weave a new tubular band from Chahuaytire…what fun! And then there were evening strolls around the village…breakfasts of typical Dutch treats, Hagelslag – chocolate sprinkles which you have on toast rounds – and morning coffee break with stroopwafel,  my favorite!

Two of Marijke’s friends offered to drive us north to spend the day with Mirja Wark. It was a lovely drive with lots of horizon to be seen! Mirja has her home in a remote area on a large piece of property on which she has her weaving school and studio. How tranquil and inviting is that? Students are invited to pitch their tents, if they like, in the orchard that lies on this side of the pool.

It was another glorious early fall day. We sat outside while Mirja brought us the si’ira belts which she collected and catalogued while living in Venezuela. We also saw three reproductions that she herself has made.

There is a whole lot involved with the creation of one of these belts. Firstly, there is all that pick-up to make the pattern (I know! I am in the midst of weaving a wall hanging using an adaptation of these designs), there is the special rolled hollow edging which you might be able to make out in the picture, there is a weft twined finish at both ends, loop braids and tassels….all of which are beautifully explained in Mirja’s book.

Mirja showed us how the belt is worn by men to secure their loin cloths. The pom poms sit right on the hips and jiggle about as the wearer walks. Below is one of the belts made by a Wayuu weaver. No one is weaving these any more and most of the belts that Mirja collected are quite old with many signs of wear, deterioration and multiple repairs.

Then we saw the typical embroidered cotton dress used by Wayuu women.

A belt concealed inside the dress allows the wearer to pull the dress in and around the front of her waist to give it some form. The back of the dress, however, hangs and flows freely. Mirja says that it is a lovely sight on the notoriously windy Guajira Peninsula to see the women with their dresses billowing behind as they walk.

Mirja was able to collect this young girl’s blouse and a chief’s ceremonial headdress. The patterned woven band of the headdress is almost completely obscured by the pink tassels.

And then there were the susu, or mochilas, the crocheted bags which come in many sizes. Large ones are carried by the Wayuu women while small ones, which are used for coins, hang from the mens’ waists. A crocheter I am not. Well, I do know a few stitches (are they even called “stitches”?) and this in spite of owning Carol Ventura’s wonderful books on tapestry crochet. So, for all the crocheters out there,  I have taken a close up shot of the structure so you can see what’s going on.

Mirja has one of  the very tiny crochet hooks that the women use to make these bags but in all the excitement of the showing and examining and photographing I didn’t get to see it. However, I found this very short segment on Youtube of a Wayuu woman making a mochila.

Now let’s look at more of these gorgeous bags that Mirja has in her studio…

And for the ply-splitters out there, some of the straps of the bags are made in this technique.

The bottoms of the bags, which probably are not seen very often when the bags are being carried, are also beautifully patterned (I have read online that this is one of the features that distinguish a real Wayuu bag from inferior imitations).

Here is something for the loop-braiders…one of the tiny coin susu that men dangle at the hip….

There was so much to see! Mirja has also lived in the Middle East and there were many textiles that she has collected, studied and reproduced throughout her studio. I will refrain from posting everything as I need to get some of the details sorted…so much information. However, I will show you this woman’s camel bag (the woman’s version apparently has only one pocket) from Oman as we have seen these kinds of Bedouin textiles here on my blog before.

Recognize this style of weaving?…the warp-substitution shajarah  and the checkerboard al’ouerjan patterns (both these techniques produce long warp floats on the back). I love the red on black patterns! There is plenty to look at on this piece…all those marvelous finishes and embellishments. What a treat to be able to handle a textile like this!

This next piece that Mirja bought on an island off the east coast of Oman is interesting in that the weavers have tied down the warp floats on the back of the piece.

In a previous discussion about this in the Ravelry group we had  assumed that this was done simply to make a textile more attractive for tourists and was not a traditional practice. However, Mirja assured me that this piece was not intended for tourists. The island was the only place that she saw traditional textiles woven this way. In other places the long warp floats are often hidden under fabric, as shown below, or  left exposed.

So, that was the Netherlands…and two fabulously talented and generous weavers, writers and teachers.

Back in the UK I had one more day with Sue on the farm…ah, the peace, the sunsets, the walks with the dogs, the gorgeous garden… and then I headed down with Sue to Weybridge where I stayed with a Braid Society friend, Norma.

On the way we stopped at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery. Owner Wendy Morris was away at Complex Weavers in the US so I didn’t get to meet her. I went a bit mad and bought a bunch of 60/2 silk with no project in mind. A little voice keeps telling me to “make do with what you can get in Bolivia!” and not to have longings for these other kinds of thread but I have an urge to weave some very fine things with something other than the cotton sewing thread that I get in Santa Cruz.

Sue bought some beautiful handspun and naturally dyed singles yarn form Ayacucho, Peru.

A flyer in the store told the story behind this yarn and it was funny recognizing archaeologist Barbara Wolff’s, name there. I met her at Maryland Sheep and Wool this year where she was promoting and selling weaving of Ayacucho – tapestries and pebble weave pieces. She has been organizing the spinners in the area to produce this yarn and Handweavers Studio is now one of the stores that carries it. Barbara tells me that they are in the process of preparing another shipment so I guess that it is all going very well.

Sue bought four colors with which to make ñawi awapa tubular bands. According to the swing tags and information in-store, the terracotta color comes from masacopa root, the yellow from the chilca bush, brown from nogal (walnut) and the green from tara pod.

Being a Braid Society member Norma is of course passionate about all kinds of narrow band weaving, ply splitting, tablet weaving, loop braiding, kumihimo etc…and I gave her some lessons in Andean pebble weave and tubular bands while I stayed with her in Weybridge. She showed me her collection of textiles including the gorgeous ply split camel girth above.

Norma’s family is from India as am I, and so, I had a week of authentic home-cooked delicious Indian meals…south Indian curries and sweets! We went to Southhall to an enormous Indian supermarket where Norma and her family helped me choose a few bits and pieces to take back to Bolivia. I am afraid that I cheat and use the prepared curry powders.

The following day Norma and I went to nearby Hampton Court Palace, residence of Henry VIII. My gosh, I have loads of pictures to show you from there…the Tudor and Baroque architecture, the interiors, the gardens, courtyards, squares, paintings, tapestries, furniture, chapel and kitchens. However, in an attempt to keep this post mostly textile-focused I will just show you one tapestry…two small segments of one of my favorites…

Such detail in this!  It is entitled The Triumph of Fame over Death and hangs in the Great Watching Chamber.

Well, okay, just one more picture from the palace…I can’t resist. This is from the Apartments of William III….

Every inch of ceiling, wall and all that lies between is decorated.

My last day was spent very nicely with Norma on a visit to Rodrick Owen in his home in Oxford where we were able to sit and chat at ease after all the rushing about at the Braids conference. We saw some of his large works…interlaced wall hangings and even clothing!… and  had the chance to examine some pieces in his South American study collection.

On the way back to the strain station, Rodrick led us on a short walking tour of Oxford. It was another gorgeous late afternoon with the rowers training on the Thames among the ducks and swans, youngsters playing rugby against a backdrop of the magnificent Oxford colleges with the sun casting a lovely golden glow over everything.  It was a beautiful last day.

It was just cool enough to have us wearing light sweaters…fall is on its way over there while over here in Bolivia spring has taken its hold. However, I have to say that we don’t really have a spring….just two seasons really…hot-and-humid and warm-and-humid and “hot ” is definitely starting to push “warm” out of the way. Ah well, I will be heading to the highlands this Saturday and an overnight bus trip from La Paz to Cusco will certainly cool things down.

A couple of things to show before I go…

I am happy to have received the first woven feedback from my new book!

Bobbie in the US is weaving the first panel for a bag project using the knot work patterns that are charted on pages 43 and 44.

Camilla in Sweden is doing one of the things that I hope many people will do with my book, that is, she is using the designs charted in my book as inspiration for her own unique patterns. Camilla has allowed the hook design that is woven in various parts of the Andes to inspire her work arranging and  placing them on both pebbled and twill backgrounds.

I am looking forward to seeing more projects from people who are using the book.

Finally, CraftDesignOnline has put up what they are calling an Interactive Grid Designer on their website. They say that this is the first of a new range of design tools they are planning. It allows you to create patterns by filling in and coloring squares which can then be printed. This style of grid is perfect for warp-faced pick-up pattern structures that incorporate warp floats like Simple Warp-floats,  Pebble Weave and other complementary-warp structures.  Note that Double Weave, Warp Substitution or Supplementary-weft patterns are best done on charts in which the cells are staggered rather than stacked one above the other.

In my next post I will tell you about the Cusco event, hopefully while still in Cusco. Fingers crossed that my cheapo hostel has wifi service.

Backstrap Weaving – Looking Ahead

I don’t think that I can ever quite get used to the fact that I need to be looking so far ahead…often well over a year….when planning my trips away.

Now that Braids 2012 is over and is just a wonderful memory, I think back to the time when I was first approached about attending and the first mentions of it that I heard back at Convergence 2010. It was most likely already being planned straight after the first ever international braiding conference in Japan in 2007 long before I ever discovered the existence of online weaving groups and the enthusiasm of their members for backstrap weaving. I am wondering when next I might make a trip to the UK and realize that I shall probably have to look ahead now to 2014 to plan that.

Then it seemed ridiculously early when ANWG 2013 started calling last year for teaching proposals for their conference in Bellingham Washington next June and now here it is  already looming near with the recent  announcement of their line-up of teachers, workshops, one-day classes and seminars.

Little did I know back in 1992 when I was climbing about and camping in the Cascade mountains near Bellingham that I would return 21 years later (21 years…yikes!). It almost seems that I have been reincarnated and am living another life all together!

And I wonder what new things I will have learned in the meantime. That is the really exciting part.

And so, here I find myself after having just finished weaving in Holland, as a guest of artist and weaver Marijke van Epen, looking ahead to the very near future and wondering what wonderful things I am going to learn and experience at the Encuentro de Tejedores de las Americas 2012 in Cusco which is on next month. I will arrive home after my European trip with just over a week to spare before heading off to Cusco!


I wasn’t supposed to be going as it had been proving too difficult and expensive to get there but, as I celebrated a milestone birthday last month, I decided to give myself the gift of this trip to Cusco. I will fly to La Paz and then take the bus to Cusco from there…a longish trip, but well worth it with some spectacular mountain views along the way. I did a similar trip by train back in 1997.

More good news is that I heard from Navajo weaver DY Begay that she has been invited to attend and I will get to hang out with her again. We became good buddies at the Tinkuy in Urubamba in 2010. Below you can see DY demonstrating tapestry techniques on an upright Navajo-style loom at the Tinkuy event. Weavers in the Cusco area also create tapestries on their backstrap looms so it was wonderful for weavers from both sides of the world to be able to meet and share this weaving style which they have in common.

I hope to take the workshop on discontinuous-warp technique and am looking forward to seeing and meeting weavers from all over Peru from both the highlands and lowlands as well as from other countries throughout the Americas.

The Encuentro (ETAM) organizers have started a Facebook page with pictures of some of the weaving communities that will be represented and I am happy to see in their latest post that Tinkipaya weavers from Bolivia will be there as I have recently become particularly interested in their textiles and designs. (see blog posts here and here)

 Charts for some of their patterns, seen below, are included in my new book.

It’s a five-day conference…imagine! This time I will make a list of all the questions I want to ask and things I want to explore so that I won’t come home smacking my forehead about things that I have forgotten to have clarified. That’s what happened after the three-day Tinkuy in 2010. There was so much to see, it became quite overwhelming.
After the Encuentro I will have about ten days at home to recover before traveling again.

So, that is a look at what is happening for me in the very near future. Once the travel is over, I will be back in Bolivia for a longer spell and back at my loom. I miss my loom!  And then it will be time to make plans for the more distant future.

But let’s back pedal a little now and take a look at what happened over here in Europe this last week. I have enough material for two full blogs posts based on my trip to the Netherlands and I am going to save it all for another time and just give you a brief outline here.

I was hosted by artist and weaver Marijke van Epen in the  home that she shares with her artist  husband in a small village on the eastern edge of the country….a beautiful rural setting and a lovely old house that used to be the village bakery.

There I wove with beginner backstrap weavers (you can see the supplementary- weft-patterned bands some of the weavers created at left) and got to spend a whole week with Marijke in her home and studio and see all the products of her curious mind as she studies ancient tablet weaving structures and ethnic textiles from around the world.

It was amazing to see how closely each of the paths of our textile interests have traveled from South America to Central America and on to Central Asia and the Middle East.

We exchanged techniques, tips, projects and ideas, pondered patterns and structures in her large collection of textile books and finally sat together to figure out how to create a patterned tubular band that we found in one of them.

During my stay, an online backstrap weaving buddy from way back in the early days of Weavolution and its backstrap weaving group came to visit.

Jeannine, who lives in Belgium, dropped by on her way home from a vacation in Germany and we finally got to meet face to face.

Jeannine was one of the people who took the time to test the instructions in my first book Andean Pebble Weave and she was always an active member of the group.

I got to see the beautiful band she made with her own design in simple warp floats that I have always admired in the pictures she posted online. Those of you who follow this blog may remember my having showed it here several times in the past.

There’s Jeannine above with her band. In the background you can catch a glimpse of some of Marijke’s work. There will be much more about all that in my next post.

Marijke and I went together to visit Mirja Wark, author of  a beautiful book about the si’ira belts woven  by the Wayuu people of northern Colombia and Venezuela. I have written a few  blog posts about this wonderful book and what it has inspired in my own weaving if you would like to catch up on that. (see here and here.)

Mirja’s home lies in a remote village in the northern part of the country where she has a studio full of looms and pieces that she has collected from the years she lived in Venezuela, Libya and Syria and traveled to neighboring Oman and other Middle Eastern countries…Bedouin camel bags, the crocheted mochilas of  the Wayuu people, wedding shawls of Libya and camel adornments of Oman.

As you can imagine, I was in heaven. Above you can see Mirja next to a small sampling of the si’ira belts that she collected from the Wayuu people. Mirja described it all with never-ending enthusiasm. And then we were invited upstairs to enjoy her extensive book collection. I have plenty to show and tell you about this visit in my next post.

And for the present, I am back in the UK with Sue and husband Robert on their farm.. What  glorious end-of-summer days we have been having both here and in The Netherlands…cool and sunny with soft marvelous sunsets throwing golden light over the fields. I tried to soak it all in and imprint it in my memory as we walked the three lively dogs this evening. Tomorrow I shall be heading off to quite a change of scene, I imagine, in the city where I will stay with Norma who was at the Braids conference. Norma contacted me when I was in Bolivia with the kind invitation to come and stay with her when in London. I am sure we will spend some fun times weaving and braiding together and I hope to see a couple of the main sights and museums in London too.

It’s hard to imagine Bolivia on the other side of the world rolling over into spring and summer with the heat and humidity of Santa Cruz as the first nip of the fall is felt over here. Yet I am very much ready to head home and reorganize  as I know that hectic times are ahead in Cusco with much preparation to be squeezed in between! Here is a nice video I found on Facebook to get me back into “Bolivia mode”…it nice to see beautiful images of the lowlands and Santa Cruz included. Maybe I will be have some of the lovely people I have met on this trip as my guests in Bolivia one day in the future.

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Backstrap Weaving – Things I am Learning Along the Way

Manchester, England and Braids 2012…was that really only ten days ago?

I have been scooting about the countryside around Cambridge staying with several members of the Peruvian Textiles Study Group, a group within the Cambridge Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers.

So many wonderful outings and gatherings had been arranged for my visit by the ladies in the Cambridge Guild that I had to remind myself that the real reason I was here was to talk about “Weaving on Simple Looms in South America” last Saturday which was followed on Sunday by a one-day backstrap weave-along.

In the meantime, this city girl got to stay on the farm of Sue and Robert in Perry Green, Much Hadham at the tail end of the wheat crop harvest and take part in, or at least watch, some of the day-to-day activities that surround the raising of sheep.

What things did I learn along the way?….number one: it is much nicer to wake up to a “MOO” rather than an alarm clock…Here is the view from my bedroom window.

I asked if I could go along and watch the sorting of the lambs and was relieved for my own sake to learn that lambs are way past that cute and adorable stage by the time they are ready to be shipped off to market. It was fun watching Wallace the border collie sheep dog at work.

I also learned that “classic” lamb-dotted English countryside can have some unexpected back drops…

Sue and Robert’s lambs get to hang out in a field along with a reclining figure created by English sculptor and artist Henry Moore.

A few days later I was off to Norwich and then the seaside to be the guest of Frankie and Nick. Frankie is the main contact of the Peruvian Study Group. She guided me around Norwich and Strangers’ Hall which dates back to 1320 to learn about the history of the city’s textile industry, the “Strangers” who were textile workers from the Spanish Netherlands  invited in the mid 1500s to settle in Norwich and share their textile skills, the madder markets which were responsible for the particular shade of color used in many of the woven pieces known as “Norwich red”  and the amazingly large and exquisite Norwich shawls.

So, there was much to be learned there. And what else did I learn?….pretty beaches don’t necessarily have to have golden sand…

This beach just down the road from Frankie’s home is covered with lovely round pebbles of flint, a material that has been used in the construction of local homes for centuries. The gentle evening scene pictured here turned into one of fury the very following evening after a storm blew through. Tremendous crashing waves and a howling wind made it impossible for me to photograph the scene. I simply could not hold my camera still against the strength of the wind.

Below you cam see how flint pebbles have been used in different ways to build local homes.

A sign of wealth was the ability to have one’s home built with “knapped flint”, that is, flint pebbles that have been cut and smoothed and shaped into squares.

Another thing I learned….bird watching, as I had suspected when I hung out with some bird enthusiasts on one of my trips to Antarctica in the 1990s, is fun!

I had thought at the time that I could probably get into this activity one day in the future and I got the opportunity to find out if it really is something I would enjoy when Frankie took me to Cley-on-the-sea which is a premier bird- watching site in the UK.

People either love or loathe this Norfolk scenery, Frankie told me.

It was a fairly bleak and chilly day but ever so interesting strolling about looking for birds and watching them through high powered binoculars discovering a whole other secret world of activity going on within the reeds.

We visited the lovely town of Holt for some shopping and then spent the evening in Norwich where we saw Diane Ashley-Smith’s exhibit of work for her Master of Fine Arts degree. Diane is yet another member of  the Peruvian Textile Study Group and she and husband Jonathon hosted me in Cambridge before and during my activities with the guild over the weekend.

But, even before the weekend activities could start, I got a guided tour of Cambridge University with  Frankie who has studied there.

I have to admit that although I knew that I was going to be taken around by Frankie, I did not do any reading about the university prior to this trip  at all. I simply did not have time. Nevertheless, you can’t help but be completely blown away by the sheer majesty of the place. How much more it must all mean to someone who has taken the time to read about and absorb a bit about the  background of the buildings and their history beforehand. Frankie was a wonderful guide and I tried hard to take it all in…overwhelming, astounding and mind-blowing! Above is a view along the stretch which takes you along “The Backs” of several colleges with the grassy areas that cover both banks of the river Cam with the punts and grazing longhorn cattle.

The river, the bridges, the arches, the courtyards, the cathedrals and chapels both inside and out, the fine architectural details. I will let the pictures speak for themselves…

I don’t have any special photo-shopping programs so, this is my very basic attempt at a panorama shot….

Of course, this is just a tiny selection of pictures…

What you might wonder when next I show you one of my backstrap woven pieces with large solid black-and-white stepped diamond motifs in perhaps double weave or warp ikat, is whether my inspiration came from a woven Mapuche poncho or from the floor of the chapel of Clare College at Cambridge….

The next treat was the guild meeting and for me it was wonderful! I was given all the time in the world to talk! As it was not one of the regularly scheduled meetings, only those who had a very specific interest in the topic of my talk attended and so I was able to add a lot of material that I don’t normally show to more general audiences. I had a lot of fun with that. I also got to meet up once again with some familiar faces from Braids 2012 and meet some Weavolution  and Online Guild members face to face.

And then came the weave-along…only one day…so, super intensive!

Frankie’s daughter Katie had learned some backstrap weaving techniques on a visit to Peru and so, although she is not a member of the Study Group, she joined the more experienced weavers in creating complementary-warp pick-up patterns on wide warps. We used a  yarn which I knew would encourage and train the participants to practice good shed-opening techniques. I really feel that they will be able to confidently take on most kinds of yarn after their experience with the warp thread we used in class.

Things did not come together straight away and, of course, no one can expect them to. I was really amazed how a good lunch break recharged the batteries and it was such a joy to see how well everyone was working with their warp after the break. Beautiful patterns started to appear and I do hope that everyone will keep the momentum going and finish this piece soon.

Above you can see Frankie and Sue at work on their wide warps. We were lucky to have bars on the doors to which we could attach the looms which also provided a place with good natural lighting for doing the pick-up.

This was a group of mixed levels and here you can see Beth who a beginner alongside Diane, a more experienced backstrap loom weaver.

This was a rare chance to work with ladies who have been studying Peruvian textile techniques for the last few years. They have  worked on gauze weaves, complementary-warp pick-up, cross knit looping and tubular bands. Four beginners weavers joined us that day too and so we had a nice group of ten of mixed abilities working pebble weave on narrow bands and other complementary-warp pick-up techniques on wider warps.

As I work with more and more beginners, I create the opportunity to one day be able to create groups of weavers who are ready for more advanced techniques using perhaps finer yarn and wider warps. It was wonderful seeing how the group of six more experienced backstrap weavers took to the wider warps and the pick-up methods that I showed them. The four beginners wove elements of Andean pebble weave patterns without the aid of the two sets of string heddles. By afternoon, their fingers were quite used to picking up and handling the threads and some were more than ready to start improvising their own designs using the basic pattern elements that we had been practicing and analyzing.

Now I am back with Sue and Robert on the farm. While I hear tractors rumble by and sheep baa-ing I am here tapping away at the computer on my last day in Hartfordshire. Tomorrow I am off to The Netherlands to weave in the studio of Marijke Van Epen.

Yesterday was a gorgeous English summer day and I learned a few more things…

I learned that Bolivians are not the only ones who like to use outdoor clay wood-burning ovens. Pat invited us over to make our own pizza in the oven she built herself and enjoy her home made icecream. I helped bake bread in the oven above left when I studied with a weaver in Candelaria in the central Bolivian highlands.

Other things I learned…

I learned that not all tomatoes are red. All these colored tomatoes come from Pat’s greenhouse. I learned yet again that people in England create the most beautiful and useful gardens. Above you can see Pat and Sue examining Pat’s flax crop for this year. Sue also grows flax and has woven a towel with the product of her own plants which she processed, spun and dyed. Pat also has an extremely lush-looking crop of Japanese indigo.

Lucky me, I will back with Sue to learn more after The Netherlands….you have to see her adorable finger puppets and other figures she has made with multi-color cross-knit looping.

One thing I hope to never learn is to tire of being completely charmed by the English houses and gardens. I suppose I will eventually stop wanting to photograph every single one of them. Here to finish are a couple of scenes of the main street of the village of Much Hadham…

On to Holland tomorrow…!