travel – Page 5 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Where will it lead next?

I have just said goodbye to my latest group of beginning backstrap weavers. They had just taken their first baby steps in using their bodies as part of a loom in order to create patterned cloth. I so often get the chance to connect with people like these again and again… perhaps in another gathering, at a conference, at a guild meeting or fiber fair… and find out what they have (or haven’t done) with the basic set of skills that they take away from weaving with me. Everyone comes to weave with different goals. Some people get hooked and go on to create amazing things, some people are more than happy to have just been given this brief taste of the world of South American backstrap weaving, while others, having had their curiosity sparked, are even inspired to take a trip to South America.

Who knows where it all might lead?

My dear friend Janet, who has hosted me for many backstrap weaving gatherings over the years, is heading off to Ecuador in July with Amber, who wove with em as a beginner last fall. There they will connect with my anthropologist friend, Kathie, and spend some time on the coast studying with cotton spinners, dyers and weavers. Above, you can see their busy hands at work creating patterns with supplementary weft and tubular techniques.

Speaking of these wonderful kinds of connections amongst weavers, I got to write an article for Handwoven magazine about just this kind of thing and it has been published in their current (spring 2015) issue….

I am excited to think about where these ladies may be led if they find themselves truly drawn to this kind of weaving and I hope that they will form some close connections in their love of it, as members of past groups have.

Below, you can see a piece that continuing student, Jane Milner, who is part of the Foothills ”String Sistahs” made recently. The ”String Sistahs”, named I think by Jane, is a group of ladies who have woven once or twice with me and who now meet regularly to weave and study techniques together.

A few years ago, I adapted tablet-woven motifs that were created by Ursel Studemann to the Andean Pebble Weave structure and wove a short sample band. Jane’s beautiful rendition shows the four fish motifs repeated along the length of her piece….

Jane will be weaving in my ”Thinking Big”session soon in which participants will challenge themselves to take the techniques that they have woven with me and go wider, longer, or finer….we ”think big” in terms of width, length or number of warp ends. Everyone is busy preparing their project and I have had lots of interesting emails with questions and ideas. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with.

At my friend Diane’s home, I have been able to watch her work through the preparation process for this class….finding inspiration, deciding the final product, choosing yarn and colors, warping and weaving a sample, calculating the number of ends based on her sample and, finally, warping the main project. She decided to get a bit of a head start on the rest of the group by preparing as much as she could before the actual get together.

Diane was inspired by the pieces of Bolivian handwoven cloth that I had brought for another gathering. These pieces are made from handspun and naturally dyed yarn and the colors are spectacular.

She lined up her balls of Aunt Lydia’s #10 crochet cotton to decide on the color order of her stripes and planned a thin black-and-white Andean Pebble Weave strip bordered by red amongst the colorful stripes. Her project is a pouch for some of these beautiful long swords that she makes…

Next, she needed to decide on the structure of the stripes…plain weave or intermesh?…and then she created her wee sample….

We spent one evening, when we were both tired, crunching and re-crunching the numbers for the wider project based on the information the sample band provided.

Then, it was onward to wind the warp…

This is all happening in beautiful California.

I left the east side and The Mannings the day after a severe storm and tornado watch was in force. I watched the clouds build in the evening sky but not even a puff of wind made it our way. I was able to enjoy an evening walk while the heavy and menacing bank of clouds slid by in the distance…

My last weaving session at The Mannings before heading west brought me many familiar faces and a couple of new ones as we wove tubular bands and complementary-warp pick-up. Linda returned after having worked with Carol and me during the week to set up Carol’s Guatemalan ikat piece.

I love taking pictures in the showroom there which doubles as our weaving space….we are attached to looms surrounded by spinning wheels and other fiber toys. A few days later, Linda posted her samples….some finished and some with significant progress….makes me so happy seeing this!

The weaving get togethers are a time for sharing all kinds of tips and techniques. Dianne showed Emily how she creates her beautiful tight multi-colored crocheted bags (see above) and Cathy, having read on my blog about my recent dabblings in tatting, brought along a cute Christmas decoration that she had tatted in what looks like a nice manageable thread size for me at my beginner stage.

Cathy also brought a bag which she had created since weaving Andean Pebble Weave with me. She embroidered the body of bag with cross stitch and wove the sides and strap using motifs from my two books.

Arriving at The Mannings was a little different this time as I came in from Delaware and passed through Amish country. It was intersting seeing the local businesses and restaurants providing parking spaces for horses and buggies.

After enjoying the views from the plane of the pretty snow-capped mountains just outside of Denver, and then the great salt lake, I arrived in sunny California where every evening has given us a spectacular and slightly different sunset looking out toward the Yolla Bolly Mountains in Mendocino County…

We hiked along the Yuba River (I got to use those new shoes!).

The Foothill Fibers Guild invited Vicki Fraser of the California Rug Project to their monthly meeting and I got to attend as a guest. Here is Vicki’s description of the project….

The California Rug Project is the result of fourteen years of design, spinning, dyeing, weaving and knotting. It reflects my reverence for the land, it’s bounty and that part of our consciousness reserved for California.

The warp, weft and pile were handspun using California-grown materials and natural dyes and the hand knotting has been executed in the oriental tradition.

As Diane was hosting both Vicki and me in her home, I got a preview before the meeting as we unrolled the fifteen-foot long piece in Diane and Peter’s home…

I will show small parts of the rug here and leave you to read Vicki’s description which appears on her website.

This is the southwest corner where you can see native plants of southern California and a Los Angeles skyline in flames.

Moving northward you can appreciate the sculpted knotted pile hills and freeways of southern California before you drop into the agricultural areas and on to the central valleys.

Calafia’s face magically appears in profile from amongst the leaves and foliage of northern California and it is only then that you realize that many of the lower features on the rug are actually parts of her body. Calafia is, according to Wikipedia, a fictional warrior caliphess who ruled over a kingdom of Black women living on the mythical Island of California.

The rug is Vicki’s gift to California and we were invited to take off our shoes and walk the length of the woven state enjoying the luxurious texture of the gorgeously thick and dense knotted pile while Vicki pointed out the various features. It is wonderful that the California Rug is out there being appreciated. It is looking for a home, preferably in California, and who knows where these contacts might lead?

Vicki’s visit was completed with a visit to The Magic Carpet in Nevada City where she had a chance to examine exquisite knotted pile rugs. I was side tracked by the Kurdish salt bags and camel adornments with their interesting stitched edgings and tassels.

Sadly, I will miss the Magic Carpet’s presentation on Magic Carpets of Turkey on May 9 at 7pm. It’s a Turkish travelogue and exhibit of DOBAG Rugs: Returning to the Roots of Natural Dyes presented by Eileen Jorgensen.

As I finish this latest post, I wonder what magic this evening’s sunset will bring as the light softens between branches of Ponderosa Pine and Valley Live Oak. I am off to Sonora this weekend. I can’t believe that I will be so close to Yosemite National Park but without enough time to visit it! I must return. My nephew is competing in a triathlon this weekend in Buselton, Western Australia. I hope that the conditions will allow him to give his very best and I hope to watch it online on Saturday night. Wish him luck!

I will leave you with an online backstrap weaver that I have yet to meet in person….hopefully we will change that one day soon. Here is Chris in Texas weaving her backstrap, down on the floor and looking right at home with it…..

With her new backstrap around her hips I am looking for ward to seeing where she is headed next.

Backstrap Weaving – Sunrise, Sunset

Do you know the song ”Sunrise, Sunset” from ”Fiddler on the Roof”? I have had that in my head for a couple of weeks as the hours and days fly by, I travel from place to place and winter becomes spring before my eyes..

From Florida sunrises ro Pennsylvania sunsets and a whole lot of activity in between…

Sunrise at the Florida Tropical Weavers Conference

The ast rays of the setting sun over the creek at The Mannings Handweaving Studio in Pennsylvania. — The last rays of the setting sun over the creek at The Mannings in Pennsylvania.

Sunrise, Sunset. This is the name of one of the songs that we sang gathered around the table while David played the guitar at the Passover Seder in which I participated at my friend Claudia’s home in Maryland.

That was one of my stops on my way to my current ”home” in Pennsylvania. The journey took me to New York, Ohio and Delaware.

I attended the monthly gathering of the guild in Wilmington in what is the prettiest meeting venue I have come across so far…Greenbank Mill. As we drove by, I was just about to ask Carol if we could stop to take a picture of the mill and its wheel and then I realised that this was the meeting spot and I would have all day to enjoy and explore it. It was a short stay in Wilmington and I left with images and stories of Dupont, grain and textile mills and lively, gushing, cascading creeks and a desire to return and see more.

Inside Greenbank Mill along with all the preserved mill equipment – stones, wheels, cogs – a hefty post surrounded by plenty of open space allowed us to hitch up our backstrap warps and stretch out like wheel spokes.

A visit to the Hagley Museum the previous day brought us to an unexpected sort of ”yarn bombing” of the entry gates…

In Ohio, at Tracy’s home, I knew I had come to the right place when I saw this…

Tracy’s warp weighted loom stands like a work of art in her living room along with the Tonkinese cousin of my own cat back in Bolivia.

I got to throw a couple of shots of weft, just enough to see how to operate the the two sheds. I realised pretty quickly what hard work it is on the shoulders to be standing and reaching up to pass the weft and beat with an upward motion.

We wove together at the Canfield Fair Grounds, home of the largest county fair in the US. I have never been able to plan my visits to coincide with a county fair in the US and would love to go to one.

Tracy and Marjorie had woven with me a couple of years ago. They worked on their own projects while the rest of the ladies tackled simpler projects.

Tracy had bought some Harrisville Highland wool on that trip to The Mannings and had saved it for a backstrap. The red and green are the Harrisville Highland wool (the kind that is sold washed in skeins rather than on cones). The grey is a mystery wool which is slightly heavier than the other two. It gave Tracy’s Andean Pebble Weave design a nice three-dimensional look. This wool was really fabulous….not at all sticky…a real pleasure to work with. Tracy is using it here to weave a backstrap. It’s the perfect weight for that. She chose a pattern from my second book.

Marjorie went to the other end of the yarn weight spectrum with a very fine alpaca yarn that she bought on giant cones on one of her trips to Cusco. This is not what I would call easy yarn to work with and I have all my fingers crossed for the success of this project. She also worked on a backstrap using Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale mercerized cotton but, at the same time, was curious to see how the alpaca behaved.

Marjorie also brought in this marvelous llama bone tool that she had acquired in her travels in Peru. I have never seen a carved one like this….how beautiful!

Here’s Tracy’s backstrap off the loom, braided and finished…

In the evenings, I had tatting lessons with Tracy and I got the chance to be a student, which is always a useful experience. I would be going along with a nice rhythm convinced that I had it all down and then suddenly completely lose the plot and create an ugly string of knots instead of hitches.

My friend Vonnie in Sacramento had also taught me to tatt but Tracy showed me a different way to hold and manage the shuttle which doesn’t require the ”flip”. It is is less elegant but it is nice to have options. I was sent off with a couple of shuttles and thread. I hope to go back to Ohio some time and learn bobbin lace with Tracy. Those of you who are into lace will probably already know Tracy in her former business as The Lace Maker. She was even at Convergence in 2010 in Albuquerque as a vendor when I was there. I had been attracted to her stand because of the small warp-weighted loom she had on display but we didn’t meet.

In fact, Tracy’s home was a showcase of all the fiber activities and techniques in which she has been involved. I enjoyed the opportunity to learn a bit about the Theo Moorman technique from the runner on her dining table. You all know that I am a big fan of supplemental weft…

I’m hoping that she will feel confident enough and find the time to use the handspun and naturally dyed yarn that she got when she attended the Tinkuy in 2010 in Cusco.

Yes, we were both there in 2010 and had a brief encounter. It’s about time we spent some more time together.

She has a large supply of the handspun dyed yarn in her plastic hamper as both she and her boyfriend took the natural dye workshop at the Tinkuy and I know that she will do something spectacular with it.

Hands have been busy and continue to be so as I move along from place to place. It is always great to hear from people as I move on and find that they have been working at their warps.

Here are some shots of busy hands at the loom. This first picture was taken by Sara Norine James at the Florida Tropical Weavers Conference and shows Berna expertly working the two sets of string heddles to open a shed on her Andean Pebble Weave warp…

It was nice to meet Facebook friend, Alison, who came down from Ontario, Canada to weave with me. She wove the leaf pattern and then continued on her own to weave it as a negative image. In the picture you can see her busy hands selecting threads under which to pass her supplemental weft. Alison has been weaving using my books in her home in Canada and has made some lovely Andean Pebble Weave pieces….

And whose hands are these? Well, those are mine with the silk Andean Pebble Weave cuff on wrist.

And now….no hands…not even any arms!

We guessed that this must be a child’s huipil. I just managed to get my head through the opening but there was no way my arms would pass through those armholes. Yet the piece is so big! All that purple and green work is embroidered. Amazing.

Kristen got herself set up with a pillow case as an improvised backstrap. She said that she was challenging herself to let go of the pattern chart by guessing what came next in the pattern by reading the cloth and then confirming by looking at the chart before passing the weft. Her cat helped, as cats like to do, by lying on the chart.

Here’s Sarah, amongst the looms and spnning wheels, using hands and head to figure out the next step in the process…

I have a whole week staying here at the Mannings. You can be sure that there is no shortage of things to do and see when you are practically living in a yarn store. Linda and Carol dropped by on Tuesday to weave with me. Linda had read both my books cover to cover without touching a piece of yarn. Yet, she had somehow absorbed the technique and I needed to just to give her a little guidance before she was underway weaving lovely Andean Pebble Weave patterns. I figure that she must have amazing powers of visualization.

Here she is preparing her warp with its second set of heddles.

Carol came with something completely different in mind. She had been given an ikat warp from Guatemala. The warp had been wrapped and dyed and was ready to go on a floor loom. Carol wanted to weave it on a backstrap loom. She had put a similar warp on her floor loom and woven it as a balanced plain weave cloth creating a mobius shawl. Although the threads shifted more than she probably would have liked, I think that the finished piece is lovely. I hesitated over posting a picture of her shawl as my picture really does not do it justice.

Carol is no stranger to ikat having studied weft ikat in Thailand and bringing home her dyed thread to weave stunningly fine cloth on her floor loom. She came on Tuesday with the idea of putting the Guatemalan warp on a backstrap loom and weaving it into a warp-faced piece of fabric. We spent a great part of the day getting it sorted onto loom bars as it had somehow become almost hopelessly tangled. Here’s Linda holding one end of the warp while Linda and I try to straighten things out. The original warp was multi-colored and the several colors were bundled and wrapped together to create the motifs.

Now it’s starting to look like something but there is still a long long way to go and with each handling those threads are shifting.

Carol has just inserted the cross sticks. That horizontal line at the start will be helpful but it remains to be seen if the upper layer and lower are well aligned. There are many many string heddles to be made before weaving can begin.

On other days, I decided to work on a ”three-fer”, that is, one project with three purposes. I wanted to get my hand back in with a Bolivian embellishment technique that I call the ”coil stitch”. This project would give me practice in something that I am not doing all that often, provide an additional technique sample, as well as a little slip case for my new iPod. One of my online studnets who has become a dear friend, along with her husband, gave me this iPod. I have never owned one before and am thrilled.

You can see some of the handwoven fabric made from naturally dyed handspun yarn that I use as technique samples. I had a small leftover piece that was just the right size for the iPod. I have started by edging it with coil stitches and will dress it up with all kinds of doo-dads. I love doing that and it gives me practice in the various techniques. Next, I’ll make a pouch for the charger and cable using the fabric with the cochineal tones that you can see above.

I am using Cascade 220 superwash yarn for the sewing and the colors match so well. It’s a fun little project which mostly keeps me out of the yarn store where there are too many lovely things to buy.

I have one more fun thing to show you.

I was persuaded to buy new sneakers and got a kick out of the laces on the ones I chose which have a classic little inkle weaving pattern which matches the strap on my own woven handbag.

Now I will be able to hike some light trails when I am invited. Hiking was such a huge part of my past and I miss it.

I will leave you with a shot of the sun casting its golden glow at The Mannings. Another day ends and I enjoy my time in this lovely peaceful place before I start bouncing again across the country

Backstrap Weaving – Where are you?

I’ve been getting emails and messages these last few days with a common question….WHERE ARE YOU???? Yes, I have missed a few blog posts, as I often do when I am away from home, and so here I am attepting to squeeze in a quick update.

I must warn you that there is not a whole lot of weaving related content in this post. I am, after all, simply attempting to answer the ”’Where are you?” question and I will save all the stories about new friends and fun people I have met along the way and the inevitable fibery tales for another post, if you don’t mind.

Right now, I am in the vicinity of this….

This is the view from my window on my way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After having spent six days in Florida, which had been downright refreshing after the brutal heat and humidity of the Santa Cruz summer, I had almost forgotten that yes, the USA was exiting a hard winter and snow was to be expected.

I had been looking at the small, odd and widely scattered patches of white from the plane window as we left Newark thinking that they might be salt lakes (!) and then remembered as we drew closer to Boston, where the white patches grew and started to merge one into the other, that Massachusetts had experienced record-breaking snowfalls this winter….duh!

I spent a weekend in New York city. Ah, ”if I can make it there”…..! :-)I was excited to be staying on the 15th floor of an apartment building in Manhattan with glimpses from my bedroom window of the Manhattan Bridge and the river. It was cold outside. I felt quite the silly tourist as I headed out to meet weavers wrapped in a scarf and clad in my friend’s long, well-padded winter coat but with my bare toes exposed to the elements in sandals.

Picture by Sally Ogren at the guild meeting…indoors… warm, toasty and welcoming.

And just a week before this I was here, in an area that my friend, Berna, nostalgically calls ”old Florida”….a place where old oak trees dripping with Spanish moss line beautiful Lake Yale…

This was the venue for the annual Florida Tropical Weavers Guild Conference.

Strolling the lake shore in the cool, soft, early hours of the morning was my favorite way to start the days that were, in typical conference style, crammed with activity. It gave me time to think and get my head together before approaching a day of weaving.

And whenever I got the feeling that I wasn’t quite alone out there, I was usually right…

And then the sun would make its glorious appearance, I would feel its heat and it would be time to head to breakfast and get charged with the energy and excitement of all my fellow weavers heading off to refine tapestry weaving skills, learn about the Quigley structure, study boundweave, dye skeins in multiple colors and play with cashmere…just to name a few of the workshop options that were on offer.

Well, okay, I will show you one textile thing before I go. I made some cuffs and have been wearing these while weaving. When attention is focused on what my hands are doing in amongst the warp threads, it is nice to have some prettiness on my wrists. I am really pleased with these. They are all fastened with snaps. You might remember that the brown one was a four-selvedge experiment and so it does not have any raw edges to deal with. The others are woven with fine thread with three selevedges and I was able to turn the one raw edge over and hem it without creating excessive bulk.

I definitely want to make more of these and have been inspired to make some very colorful ones by something that one of my weaving friends showed me. You will have to wait until the next post to see that.

So now you know where I am. As to what exactly I have been doing and what I have seen, there is too much to tell right now! It’s time to get ready for a fun day of weaving tomorrow. See you soon.

Backstrap Weaving – Blur

It’s amazing how quickly it can all become a blur. Here I am back in the tropics…bananas, palm trees and clinging humidity. It is hard to imagine how it had felt being amongst the redwoods experiencing autumnal coolness and colors just a few days ago, snuggling under the covers at night and listening to the chirping crickets.

Scene of one of the backstrap weaving gatherings at Ace and Pam's place in Humboldt County — View from the weaving room at one of the backstrap weaving gatherings at Ace and Pam’s place in Humboldt County a couple of weeks ago.

Not too cold yet to be warping outdoors under the big ol' oak tree at Janet's place. — Not too cold yet to be warping outdoors under the big ol’ oak tree at Janet’s place.

The view from my bedroom! at Cheryl's place on a break between Humboldt County and Sacramento. — The view from my bedroom! at Cheryl’s place.

Although I haven’t settled back into my full Bolivian home routine, some parts were easier than others to pick up again….weaving and writing a blog post, for example.

I have managed to get back to the loom since I got home last Thursday and here I am back at the blog. I wove off the plain fabric on the ikat warp that I had taken as a display loom on my US trip.

I decided that this fabric could be sewn into a nice bag for the wee Kindle that I recently bought.

I thought that the top of the bag looked a bit plain and so I wove a teeny pick-up band and attached that to the rim. It was fun weaving that band in fine cotton. I have always liked all things miniature. The finished fabric was just long enough to make a pouch with a drawstring top.

Now it’s time to survey the three wall hangings on which I had been working before the Fall trip and finish them off.

There are twined ends to be tidied, fringes to be cut, and a new set of red panels to be woven for the first flower panel. Yes, I will be undoing all that weft twining on that piece, removing the current red panels, which are darker and finer than the others, and replacing them with new ones. In that way, all three hangings will have identical red panels each with its own red-on-red pick-up pattern. It wasn’t something that I had had the courage to face before I traveled, but I have been away from my loom for so long and have been missing it so much that I feel I can attack this now with gusto!

And what about the blur and whir of activity in those last weeks of my trip?…

I stayed with Kathleen in California where she gathered a small group to weave supplementary-weft techniques using fine thread. We played with Guatemalan techniques with traditional patterns which some people used for creating patterns outside the box such as autumn leaves and pre-columbian motifs of South America.

I have woven with all these ladies on several occasions on past trips and it was great to see them all again.

Dorothy had spent many weeks over the summer in Peru studying tapestry techniques with the internationally recognized Peruvian tapestry weaver, Maximo Laura. She brought the piece on which she had been working to show us at my insistence.

I imagine that the teacher must be very proud of this student! We all urged Dorothy to have this piece prepared for hanging and professionally photographed.

The design is Dorothy’s own composition. You really have to see it in person to appreciate how much of it is also about texture. Various sections showcase different techniques of color blending and texture.

Dorothy’s stories of her hours spent at the loom in the loud busy-ness of Maximo Laura’s workshop are priceless…the sounds, the colors, the characters, the excitement of it all…as well as the feelings of isolation and occasional loneliness associated with being far from home for such a long time and unable to communicate fluently. I hope that she is able to present her work and tell her stories at her guild.

Kathy and Dorothy also brought along large backstrap pieces which we had started in other gatherings in which we challenged ourselves to go wider. Sometimes, when weavers leave their work untouched for some time, they need a little kick start to get back under way. We can see the value of going away to some foreign land for a six-week intensive weaving retreat where life does not get in the way of our weaving! Kathy tells me that her red and black backstrap in Plymouth Fantasy Naturale, pictured above, is now fnished.

I helped get Dorothy back on track with her piece. She is using Tahki Cotton Classic with three columns of bird motifs which are charted in my first book.

From there I headed up to Humboldt County to my friend Janet. Again, there were lots of familiar faces to greet me…people I had met on previous visits as well as those with whom I had spent time at CNCH.

There was a weaving gathering at the mill followed by another session at Ace’s and lots of time in between to hang out weave alone. Above, you can see Amber practicing the supplementary-weft technique we wove together. She chose a pattern that I based on a traditional Bedouin motif to decorate her black bookmark. Janet can be seen refreshing her ñawi awapa skills using her own beautiful handspun wool.

During the weaving get together, Janet wove a piece with her handspun (of course) and indigo-dyed yarn using the intermesh technique. She chose a Mexican motif that is charted in my second book.

Once done with that, she was ready to warp another wider intermesh project. You see, she now has quite a stash of yarn that she has spun specially for warp-faced weaving and dyed with natural substances. In the past she has used both synthetic and natural dyes but has now decided to stick with natural. Lucky me, I was given some of her gorgeous yarn to take home.

I got into the dyepot with some synthetic dye and dyed some wool that Virginia in Arizona had given me…red and black…no surprises there. This is ready for another series of wall hangings using the ticlla, or discontinuous-warp technique. It is funny that this was what I had chosen to study last summer too. Wait until the weather gets hot and sticky and then let’s bring out the wool! Janet has a nice dye kitchen set-up on the porch outside her mill. These wool projects will be competing with more ikat studies that I have in mind.

One of my discontinuous-warp studies from last summer.

Another 'ticlla' study with some pick-up patterning included. — Another ‘ticlla’ study with some pick-up patterning included.

On the second weekend, we went out to Ace and Pam’s place (the place that has that gorgeous view in the first picture in this post). It was nice attaching our warps to the wooden posts in Ace’s living room and extending them from there in a spoke-like fashion.

We used lots of Janet’s wool bands around the posts for attaching our warps. There was time spent weaving but also time spent looking st woven motifs and figuring out how to chart them.

Tracy was using a backstrap brought for her from Guatemala patterned with a beautiful double-faced supplementary-weft technique…

The guild meeting was wonderfully busy and entertaining. There had been two workshops the previous weekend on mushroom dyeing and eco-printing which resulted in lots of Show-and-Tell.

Onward to Diane’s place with a fun day of weaving with folks who had woven with me on previous occasions. Even Jen, who had woven with me over in Truckee and South Tahoe, was able to make it. It was wonderful to be able to see what everyone was working on. Some people were finishing off the samples that we had started in our last get together while others were well into new projects.

In previous sessions, Cheryl had warped, with Jane’s help, for a backstrap decorated with a pattern in the Andean Pebble Weave structure. She was able to almost finish weaving it in this time. Calculating to get the motif centered was tricky considering that Cheryl had not woven a sample with this yarn which we could use as a guide of her beat and take-up. We got close. The motif is charted in my second book. Cheryl uses the “thick border” structure that I describe in my first book and has created a thick and cushy backstrap. I call the backstrap that I made for myself with this structure my ”Rolls Royce”.

From top left to bottom right, you can see Jane, Shan, Wendy and Jen weaving. Diane showed me the finished band that we had warped at the end of our last time together…the red, black and white one, below, (motif from the second book)…

With Cheryl and Ken's 'wee' pup, Trace. — With Cheryl and Ken’s ‘wee’ pup, Trace.

…and I loved Jen’s idea of combining solid color yarn with variegated for the plain Andean Pebble Weave section of her backstrap. She has a solid green “background” through which multi-colored pebble spots appear in the variegated yarn.

This is a solid group that gets together frequently to weave at Diane’s place. I am so happy that I was able to be part of one gathering and offer help and advice.I often long to be able to jump through my computer here in Bolivia to be able to help people who write with questions about their projects.

While revisiting this group of friends and staying with Cheryl at her gorgeous lake house, Diane, Cheryl and I were invited by renowned fiber artist, Sara Lamb, to visit her home and yurt studio.

This had long been a wish of mine!

Being familiar with some of Sara’s work from her online presence, her magazine articles, and from having seen her in her own woven garments made from her own exquisite handspun and painted yarns, I had an inkling of what I might expect to see within that enticing yurt. Of course, what lay within was beyond my expectations and I am not even sure that I can begin to describe that space filled with the richness of colorful yarn and tools, and crammed with the signs and sources of creativity, production and inspiration. Where to focus, where to start…so much to see and touch and so many stories to hear. It was an impossible space to photograph…at least for me. I would never have been able to contain all that magic in one frame.

Then, we moved into the house where a simple glass-fronted cabinet, with just the right kind of magical muted lighting, revealed an Aladdin’s cave of woven treasures (of course, Woven Treasures, the name of one of Sara’s books…there could be no other name for her work as that is the phrase and vision that immediately springs to mind when you are approaching the display).

Flash photography of course spoils the mood of that muted lighting. Cheryl’s picture is closer to reality than mine.

It was fun to be able to spot a backstrap-woven band used as trim amongst the treasures which resulted from a class Sara had taken with Ed Franquemont.

Each piece had its story. It is an astounding body of work and we didn’t even scrape the surface. We are so grateful to Sara for having invited us over.

The beautiful mansion that houses the Sacramento Youth Hostel

Last stop was Sacramento and a chance to stay with Vonnie and her family again and see long-time online weaving buddy, Franco.

There was a nice combination of known, familiar and new faces in the group…people who had woven with me before, people I had met at CNCH and new people with whom I hope to be able to weave again.

I enjoyed the guild meeting and having people thank me for bringing back memories of their trips to Peru from years gone by. I hope that my pictures might inspire in people another visit to South America…maybe Bolivia next time…to see the weavers and the textiles with new eyes. And the guild meeting was a chance to see weaving friends again…not only from Sacramento but from other places in the area.

Vonnie took me to a great local yarn store called Babetta’sYarn. We shopped for Plymouth Fantasy Naurale so that Vonnie could make her backstrap.

Vonnie started her backstrap the next night, I set my alarm for 2am for the pick-up by Super Shuttle, and my trip was done!

So, there you have the blur of those last weeks. While all that was going on, backstrap weavers from various countries were posting their projects online and sending me pictures by email…evoking lots of smiles!

Cheryl wove with me on this trip and has already finished making her backstrap. It’s one of the things that I like to emphasise…warping and setting up to create good plain weave.

Ruth, in Chile, used the Backstrap Basics article, which I have online in Spanish as well as in English, to weave her own backstrap. She has done a beautiful job!

Ximena, also from Chile, often sends me updates on her Andean Pebble Weave work. Here is a set of bookmarks that she made…

Father Kyriakos, in Australia, wove a wool piece of fabric decorated with Andean Pebble Weave patterns using a four-shaft table loom (instructions are in my first book). He included some soumak and weft twining and used a band woven on an inkle loom for a strap for his finished product….a gorgeous satchel.

And, speaking of gorgeous bags and straps, Julia is constructing one using several bands and wide pieces. She has two other bands off the loom as well and I can’t wait to see how she uses them. All these motifs are charted in my second book.

Father Kyriakos also sent me an update on his bookmark project. These he made using a backstrap loom…

Gwendolyn shows how she can comfortably set up to weave both indoors and out. She is weaving a plain weave band and decorating it with a pattern using a supplementary weft. The pattern is one that I have adapted from textiles of Central Asia that were woven using completely different structures. You can find that pattern charted here.

That piece is now off the loom with lining attached and ready to be made into a bag…

Camilla, in Sweden, is using both string heddles and a rigid heddle to operate her looms for Andean Pebble Weave, with its two sets of string heddles, and basic complementary-warp pick-up which is based on two sheds.

Amanda wanted to weave a banner band for her mother’s craft business, Crafted by Rozella, and used the lettering technique that I learned from the Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers in North Carolina. It always makes me happy to see those tutorials being used.

The critters on the table are wine bottle toppers.

Finally, Valtricot showed us a way to wind a warp if you don’t have pegs or clamps…

If you have managed to get all the way to the end of this long post, I imagine that you might also be feeling like everything is blur. That is what happens when I leave off posting for a while. I just couldn’t manage to squeeze in a space for it while on the road for the last part of my trip.

And speaking of blurs…as in objects moving at great speed…my nephew, Ryan, recently took third place in his first ever professional appearance in long-distance triathlon.

You may remember that he brought home the gold in the World Amateur Champonships in China in September. Once again he thanks all the supporters from the weaving world who visited and liked his Facebook page.

Backstrap Weaving – Bouncing in the Woods

In and out of the woods…leaves, trees and fall colors!…beauty all around despite the obvious effects of the California drought. I have been on a long run of bouncing here and there…travel, weave, and bounce over to the next place t see friends. Now, I am still for a few days and able to catch up with my blog.
Follow the sign to the cottage in the woods…a schoolhouse for pre-schoolers…which we used for a backstrap weaving gathering.

Although we warped on low tables seated on teeny tiny chairs, we did get to weave using grown-up tables and chairs. It was fun eating lunch in the back garden seated on the tiny swings and weave surrounded by artworks created by tiny fingers.

My weaving friend, Abby, has a store in Bodega, CA….the Organic Cotton Fabric Shop. Hitchcock fans will know the grand wooden building, pictured below, from the movie “The Birds” which is across the street and up the hill from Abby’s store.

What is surprising when entering Abby’s store of cool, crisp, fabrics in natural organic cotton colors, is the added splash of vibrant natural dye colors in wool and alpaca of highland Peru. Abby also sells handwoven pieces that are made by the CTTC (Centro de Textiles Tradicionales de Cusco) and her story of how all this came to be is extraordinary. You’ll have to go visit her and get her to tell you.

I always welcome the chance to handle these textiles as I am not often in that particular part of Peru. Abby wanted to experience creating cloth with body-tensioned looms and gathered together a lovely group of ladies from near and far.

A short drive took us to Bodega Bay in the evening to watch the sunset and whirling pelicans.

It was fun staying in Abby and Steve’s home on Bodega Pastures and being welcomed home every day by goats and donkeys as well as being awoken each morning by crows and brays.

From the woods of Bodega to the Holly”woods”…I had a whirlwind tour of L.A with my weaving friend, Anna. She lives in Burbank with Warner Brothers studios just a few blocks away. We visited the Walk of Fame, saw the handprints in cement, drove Sunset Boulevarde and the Strip as well as going to an amazing exhibit of Timorese textiles at the Fowler in UCLA.

I have ordered the book that accompanies the exhibit and can’t wait to look through it and see all those pieces again. I have seen textiles from Timor, having met Australians who have traveled there recently and brought back examples, but I was not prepared for the cloth that Anna and I saw at the Fowler. And it was so much fun to be seeing it all with someone equally enthsiastic. I am not a “bouncer” but I found myself doing just that as we walked from one piece to the next. If you live in the area, do go and catch that exhibit!

So, there I was in those Holly-woods and hills. You never know what you will see if you peer through the trees…

Above…outside Disney Studios.

I visited the local guild. In that meeting, guild members presented the results of a themed weaving challenge…The Beatles…and the results were astounding. Many pieces had been based on the bright colors of the Yellow Submarine and Sargeant Pepper’s album covers while others were more subdued…a white-on-white piece mounted on a vinyl record was inspired by the White Album and a black scarf with white horizontal stripes at one end and edged with black feathers was entitled Blackbird on Abbey Road.

I will show you Anna Zinsmeister’s contribution (which includes the “5th Beatle”)…and this will blow you away. I stood up to help Anna hold and display these to the audience and got to see all the jaws drop!

The visit to L.A also brought an encounter with textiles and tools of backstrap weavers in The Philippines. One of the people who wove with me collects such things and brought some pieces to show.

The piece on the left is a skirt made from the fiber of a plant in the pineapple family (EDIT: correction…not pineapple family but rather, a species of banana…thank you kijro). The other piece is cotton with warp-float patterns on one face. It is a long piece with its ends folded in to form two pockets, like a very narrow saddlebag. And the woods!…you can see the shaped and decorated wooden backstrap loom pieces….the envy! I would love to be seated with a warp stretched out on those!

And then there was a Guatemalan backstrap that Anna owns made with a ply-split braiding technique. The instructions were included in one of Interweave’s “White Papers”. I have them and want to make one.

And what visit to L.A would be complete without seeing a piece of television or film in the making? My flight out from Burbank was delayed which gave me time to hang out and watch an episode of “Hairport” being filmed with an apparently well-known Hollywood stylist, Ken Paves, as host.

And here is Anna herself, knitting away in a scene from Gilmore Girls (to the right of Lorelai in blue coat and knitted hat). I loved that show!

Having said earlier on that I am not a “bouncer”, that is, one who gets openly excited with physical displays of enthusiasm, I have actually found myself bouncing away on several occasions during this trip. One such case was at the Fowler and another was on entering the place chosen for a weaving gathering in San Diego….

We were in an enormous rug repair workshop with exquisite rugs and yarn draped and hanging everywhere we turned.

Another bounce-inducing moment, also in San Diego… Deanna picked me up from the airport and took me over to her friend Gay’s home. Gay’s husband had been an avid textile, artefact and folk art collector. Since her husband’s passing, Gay has been in the process of finding new homes for the pieces and Deanna thought that I might be interested in seeing some of the collection. Are you kidding? Yes, please!

A forest of figurines...part of Gay's husband's collection of folk art. — A forest of figurines…part of Gay’s husband’s collection.

You might remember that some time ago, I was looking at images of Huichol belts online that were woven and decorated with motifs using a balanced double-weave pick-up technique. I wove a piece in blue and white using motifs that I had chosen from a variety of bags and belts that I had seen online…

I have never had the chance to handle a Huichol belt that has been made with this technique. There amongst the pieces in Gay’s home lay this…

Not only was it my first chance to hold one of these textiles, which was in itself awesome, but the motifs on this belt were so very close to the ones that I had chosen to weave in my own piece. Even the wavy lines at the bottom of my piece are included at the very start and end of this belt. I bought it. I had to. And I bounced. It was especially nice to be able to examine the back of the band where all structural secrets are revealed.

Was there any more bounce left in me? Yep!

When I was staying in northern California with Diane, I discovered a letter between the pages of a book I had been given. It was a letter written in 1977 by weaver and author, Adele Cahlander. Any of you who have an interest in South American backstrap weaving will know that name. The letter had been written to the book’s owner, Verda Elliot (weavers may also recognize this name). It is type-written on small note paper that has a black ink image of a backstrap weaver. The type beautifully follows the contour of the little backstrap weaving figure and the letter is signed in ink by Adele Cahlander. It is a little piece of “history” for me and something that I will treasure.

Many wonderful things happen to me as I bounce along from place to place. Not all of them get my feet off the ground, but they most certainly make me happy and have me smiling A LOT.

Jane brought a big smile to my face. She has woven with me many times and joined me at one in Truckee on this trip, a gathering that was closely followed by one in Grass Valley. Most of the time, I never really know what my weaving friends do with their half-woven samples after our get-togethers. Some people send me photos of their completed pieces but I rarely get to see the work in person and certainly not within a mere week of having been part of a group.

Jane showed up with this…

These are her finished pieces….

Jane’s pieces are posed on the clever set-up for backstrap weaving that Diane created that fits snugly within their pool table. Her home, with this cool set-up, has become the gathering place for an enthusiastic group of weavers and they have regular study groups. I so enjoyed the gathering we had where we played with Andean Pebble Weave.

More “woods” to enjoy….Diane made these swords and gave them to me. The two kinds of wood have wonderfully exotic-sounding names…Bocote above, and Paduak.

We made time for sme cat-petting therapy at the Humane Society in Truckee where Suzanne volunteers. She gave me this cool tshirt. — We made time for some cat-petting therapy at the Humane Society in Truckee where Suzanne volunteers. Suzanne gave me this cool tshirt.

It was wonderful to be in Truckee with Suzanne with another group of familiar faces which included those of the tenacious sisters, Jen and Elizabeth, Nancy, Kathy, Jane , Suzanne, as well as some new ones….another Kathy and Karen.

Karen friended me on Facebook and now I get to enjoy pictures of her trip to Japan to braid with Makiko Tada and hear her stories of braiding at Fort Bragg with Roderick Owen in years past.

I smiled big when I saw what Suzanne had done with the strip of handwoven fabric that I had given her on my last trip through. It is a piece that was woven by women in a weaving co-operative in Independencia, Bolivia and is made from handspun yarn which has been dyed with natural substances. If you follow my blog you will have read about Dorinda and Maxima and their roles in this co-op.

Suzanne made hers into a backstrap. I am always so envious of people who can sew!

She used ultra suede as a backing and made a sleeve which enclosed braids that she had made with thick cotton yarn….a beautiful backstrap!

Nancy brought a piece that she had started after our get-together last spring. Having put it aside for a while, she asked for a hand to get back into it. She had been weaving a motif from one of my books and had unknowingly veered off track. I thought that it would be fun to go with the flow rather than unweave and fix the mistake in the pattern. Now the design is entirely her own and she is reversing it. I think it will look great woven in succession along the entire length of the band. She is aiming at making a guitar strap eventually.

The wooded valleys of Truckee…heavenly.

Yeah, I got a little pine cone crazy. They are just so darn pretty and we don’t have them in the Bolivian jungle.

Suzanne is a trekker as is Karen and they had me out on the trails walking at a cracking pace. There was altitude to contend with. I visited Karen’s kumihimo workshop and store in her home with Suzanne. It was full of treasures. If you have ever encountered the website What a Knit, that’s Karen and her mom. She creates all sorts of wonderful pieces using her kumihimo braids and beads but I fell in love with this tapestry square that she bought in Mexico and transformed into a gorgeous bag by adding knitted pieces in matching colors and braided strap…

And, speaking of knitting, here are some more pieces from Gay’s collection…sturdy, tightly knitted bags from Guatemala (one had the word Guatemala knitted into it and it is simply my assumption that all the bags are from there)…

This fine couple in Gay’s husband’s collection reminds us that Halloween and Day of the Dead are drawing near…

The days grow shorter, the trees are barer and I find that the leaf pattern in fall colors is a popular choice when I weave with people and show them my supplementary-weft work. Rocio struggled with it and then enjoyed a moment of triumph. I am sure that had she not been attached to her warp, she would have been bouncing…

I have lots of great projects to show from friends in the U.S and online weaving friends from various parts of the world…Australia, the USA and Chile, for example, but I think I will save these up for my next blog post from Humboldt County.

By the way, my nephew will be entering his first triathlon as a professional in Australia on November 9th. Because of the time difference, I should be able to follow along on the night of the 8th. And, in other sports news, it has been fun being in northern California for the World Series!

Time is flying by……