Tag: backstrap weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Seasons

Daylight Savings is over and we continue what feels like a rapid slide into cooler temperatures here in the Blue Mountains. I welcome snuggling under multiple layers on these cold nights but don’t care much for having to climb out from under them in the morning. We didn’t have Daylight Savings time in Bolivia and I was surprised by how long it took for my stomach to adapt! I kept finding myself restless at 11:30am with my stomach complaining that it hadn’t yet been filled. I still do a large cooked lunch in the way to which I’d become accustomed in South America. And that post-lunch drowsiness is hard to kick too. I can’t blame the tropical heat for it any more.

With the cooling temperatures came the rolling down of shirt sleeves and the layering of coats. I’d have to put away all my wrist cuffs for a while.

In their place out came my woven scarves and neck gaiters that I’ve been accumulating all these years. It was never cold enough in Bolivia to wear them. Sometimes I’d take them traveling to the northern hemisphere spring and fall only to drag them out of a packed bag looking like pieces of crumpled rag and too ugly to wear.

The fall temperatures here have been perfect for wearing things like this light cotton scarf that I wove about eight years ago and never ever got to wear.

I wove this with handspun cotton singles that I’d bought in Guatemala back in 2008. I used my bamboo reed to achieve the sheer open look and used the same cotton as supplementary weft to weave in patterns. It’s a style that I had been wanting to try ever since I bought a sample from the Coban area of Guatemala.

I enjoy my woven book cover in naturally dyed silk even more now that I am actually living amongst these colors. I was very spoiled by being able to visit Vermont on the Columbus Day weekend many years ago and experience the fall colors there. It’s nowhere near as stunning here but it feels special because I’m living it rather than just visiting.

This little book along with others that I made is now settled in my new home next to books about textiles from this side of the world, places that perhaps I’ll be able to visit some day.

I finally finished the project in which I used my Bolivian teachers’ handspun wool. That project traveled through an entire year of seasons with me and I named the resulting bag Four Seasons in One Bag. The wool went from the sheep of the central Bolivian highlands, washed in mountain streams, into the hands and spindles of my weaving friends and teachers.

I’m pretty sure that the wool was spun during the October spinning event in 2024 in which my teachers and other ladies in the community compete for prizes to see who can spin the most wool. I bought three balls of the doubled singles and dyed some of it with indigo while I was up in the highlands visiting with Maxima during my last Bolivian summer.

It traveled with me to Australia where I spent some of the winter and spring dyeing it with Australian plant materials. The following summer, I moved here to my new home in the Blue Mountains and started the long task of plying.

While I love spinning with a drop spindle, I can’t say the same for plying. I find it downright tedious and I just wanted the task to finish. I’d ply at my craft group gatherings, on the train, at the Arts Society gatherings, at the spinning and weaving group….it just seemed to go on and on.

When I had just about finished all that plying, an Ashford Wee Peggy spinning wheel together with a bunch of accessories became available on Marketplace at a bargain price and I was able to buy it. There it sits waiting to be spruced up a bit until I next need to ply. Perhaps I’ll use it for spinning too. Who knows. The wheel came with lots of bobbins, a niddy noddy (I’ve never owned one), hand carders (I’d had to leave mine behind in Bolivia), a flicking tool and even an apron. A friend at my spinning group has supplied me with a new spring and hooks to replace rusty ones.

I managed to squeeze in some time at the loom between hiking trips. It took two attempts to wind a warp to my liking from all those fabulous natural dye colors but I had to face the fact that I just wouldn’t be able to get them all into the one piece.
Four seasons motifs in progress. The heddle arrangement may look awkward but it works well. I had seen weavers in Bolivia use similar arrangements for their double weave pieces.

Here’s the finished cloth…

The figures as well as the colors are meant to represent the four seasons. The yarn I had dyed with cochineal just didn’t belong here. It can wait along with the greens for another project.

Once I’d decided that this cloth would be a bag, I set about weaving a strap….

I didn’t want to use the handspun wool as weft for either of these pieces and used instead some unidentified soft and very loosely spun ”stuff’ that a friend had given me. It worked well except for the fact that it was somewhat slippery and wanted every now and then to slip out of the shed at the edges rather than lie there snugly. I’d had that very same experience with luscious alpaca yarn that I’d spun once upon a time.

Then came the usual dilemma of deciding which face of the fabric I preferred. The bag would be lined and so one of the two faces would never be seen again. I knew which face I had decided would be the “good” one. The problem was that when I asked others for an opinion, they always chose the other! I stuck with my original plan, though.

The two faces.
I somehow always find myself on the floor at the planning stage. I didn’t have a choice in Bolivia but I’m in a bigger place now with table space. I still end up on the floor.

I rounded off the flap of the bag…always scary cutting into the cloth…and covered and protected the raw edge with coil stitches. The sides then had to be woven, lining attached and everything sewn together…the most challenging part for me.

Here ‘s the completed bag being displayed at the Blackheath Arts Society members’ Easter exhibition. It was so much fun seeing it out there on display!

I managed to also get it in at the last minute, thanks to a kind friend from my spinning group, to the Hawkesbury Show where it won a blue ribbon. I was never able to enter shows like these when I lived in Bolivia and I am very excited about this ribbon!

A buddy from my craft group went to the show and surprised me with this photo while she was there….

So, you will have gathered that my hand and shoulder are now allowing me to be busy at the loom. The one-year anniversary of my accident has passed and things are improving. My wrist at the carpal tunnel level is still clogged and blocked by scar tissue which I don’t believe will ever stretch. My hand is a block of wood first thing in the morning but here I am typing, weaving, spinning cotton and plying. My shoulder is thawing very slowly and my range of reach out to the side to pass shuttle and insert sword is improving.

I am, however, in easy reach of all of this beauty and I just have to ask myself every day what I have done to deserve it!

I’m in a couple of hiking groups and get to go out at least twice a week.

I wonder if some Blue Mountains scenery and colors will start creeping into my work. I have a long-ish list of things I want to weave, some of which I spent a great deal of time designing last year when I couldn’t weave at all. I remember starting out charting with my left hand and the great deal of concentration that was required to fill within the lines!

I’ve actually started sampling for that large project now that I’ve decided on the thread that I will use. I need to get an ends per inch reading and also make sure that the proportions of the woven figures match those of my charted ones.

The “real” project will be much wider than this.

I started off the year weaving various narrow items just to make sure that I didn’t overdo things, Last year I had jumped back into weaving too early and messed up my shoulder as a result.

The Canberra Guild of Spinners and Weavers asked me to weave bookmarks/award ribbons for their AGM. This seemed like a great way to start the year even though they weren’t due until March. It’s extremely rare for me to take on commissioned work but the guild folk had made it easier by choosing and providing the yarn and being very specific about the layout. I got to choose the patterns and I had a lot of fun with that. I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

I wove a name tag for myself once again in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave which produces a quirky style of lettering. The lettering on the award ribbons is less so because the letters are capitals and well spaced. I have joined so many new groups up here that it is a struggle to remember names. At least this tag will help them to identify me and then I can embarrass myself by not being able to identify them in return!

I live above the Aboriginal Health Services office and one day while chatting with the ladies, I admired their lanyards with their indigenous art print. The next thing I knew, one had been popped into my mail box. So, I replied with a woven keyfob. I love these kinds of exchanges.

I had no trouble at all finding a place to set myself up for weaving on my backstrap loom. The previous resident left one of those huge Ikea book cases with 25 cube spaces. I have it filled now with cubes holding pretty much everything I brought over with me from Bolivia. I place C clamps on the edge of the lower shelves and can place my warp beam behind them. It’s a good sturdy anchor point.

Here I sit weaving with some of my late mother’s treasured possessions. She would have had to make the tough decisions about what to take and what to leave behind, just as I had when leaving Bolivia, when she left India in 1962 to come and live in Australia. These things had been in storage waiting for me since my mum died in 2013.There’s a biscuit tin with images of places of interest in Bombay, a pressed tin trinket tray with images of Hindu deities and her sewing basket…all selected by her as being too precious to leave behind. I love that I am able to have them here near me as I weave.

And…one more thing I wove….I converted the pouch I’d made from my handspun llama yarn into a phone carrying pouch for my hikes by weaving and adding a strap…

Between weaving and hiking and other activities, I try to turn this flat, which had been left in a somewhat shabby state, into a cosy home. This town of Katoomba in which I live is Op Shop heaven and I have acquired most of my things there or via Marketplace. Op Shop is the Australian term for a thrift or charity store. There have been a few flat-pack furniture purchases too. Assembling them on my own made me feel like I was playing a game of Twister.

Would you believe I got these Indonesian ikat pieces at a local op shop for the equivalent of US$ 3.50 each?!

I couldn’t believe that after having admired the Indonesian ikat textiles for so many years, particularly the ones from Sumba, that I should run across these in an op shop?!

Next on the agenda is dyeing with lichen. A friend gave me a jar of lichen that she had collected from fallen branches on the coast. It’s been soaking in a mix of cloudy ammonia and water for almost two weeks now and the color it’s releasing is amazing. I still have some of the Bolivian wool left. I just have to wash it and then give this color a go. I hope to find lichen locally that will perhaps produce other colors although I doubt that anything could be quite as astounding as this.

This photo was taken after one week. It has developed even further since.

The sun is streaming in through my sunroom windows and I feel so guilty for being indoors on such an utterly gorgeous day. But at the same time, I have been feeling bad for having neglected my blog for so long.

I want to thank everyone for making purchases before Taproot Video closed at the end of March. I really appreciate your support and hope to have the PDFs back up for sale elsewhere soon. I thought that launching a new publication would be a good way to introduce my new point of sale but I don’t see that happening quite quickly enough. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before I have my publications available for sale once more. The flurry of purchases at the end of Taproot Video will help keep me afloat until then.

For those who don’t see my blog banner on their particular device, here’s what it says….Stay tuned.

Backstrap Weaving – My Books!

My Books, My Books, My Books…..I have been researching my options for a new home for my books between settling into my new home, finding new community, rehabbing my frozen shoulder and wrist, which is all stuck up with scar tissue again and, and, and…..!!!. So….I haven’t settled on anything yet…. but am getting close!

If you have no idea of what I am talking about, you may have somehow missed the announcement emails that the folks at Taproot Video, who sell my books, have been sending to their entire customer base these last months telling everyone that the website will be closing on March 31, 2026.

No need to panic if you’re hearing this for the first time.

If you’ve purchased one of my books in PDF form and downloaded it to your device, there’s nothing you need to do. If you haven’t yet downloaded it/them, you need to do so before the website closes. You have until March 31.

If you’ve purchased the PDFs that come with supplemental video clips, you don’t need to do anything either. You will continue to have access to the videos by clicking on the link to the folder of clps that you’ll find in the chapter titled Videos. Access to the clips will continue after the Taproot Video website closes.

There are four titles that come with clips:

  • Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms
  • Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms
  • The Eye-pattern Tubular Band and Other Decorative Finishing Techniques
  • The Eye-pattern Tubular Band of the Peruvian and Boliviain Highlands

ACTION NEEDED FOR THE FOLLOWING:

If you purchased a printed copy of one of my books that comes with supplementary video clips (‘those listed above), you will need to download the clips to your device before March 31 if you haven’t already done so.

Access to these clips is provided via a link on the Taproot Video website. Naturally, that link will no longer be available to you after the site closes. So, if you haven’t downloaded the clips yet, please go to taprootvideo.com and…..

  • Log in.
  • Click on the Purchased Items tab.
  • Click on the title of book you purchased. That will take you to a page with the link to the folder of videos.
  • Clck on the link.
  • Download the videos to your device.

These instructions are also outlined in the books themselves in the chapter titled VIDEOS.

There are only two or three titles now at Taproot Video that have remaining copies of the printed books. I won’t be selling printed books again after Taproot Video closes. My books in PDF form will soon be available elsewhere and I’ll let you know as soon as that’s up and running.

In the meantime, yes, I have been weaving! And so, I ‘ll finish this quick post by showing you what I’ve been up to using the handspun wool I purchased from my Bolivian weaving friends in the highlands in January last year. You may remember that we dyed some of it with indigo while I was there. I dyed the rest in Australia last year with local plants. I love that my new community of friends in my transition home up on the mid north coast contributed so much to that project with their contributions of mango leaves, silver dollar eucalyptus leaves, local info on where to find a peppercorn tree, onion skins and rusty nails for my iron water.

This a celebration of connections made in what I’ve left behind and where I now find myself. The images depict the four seasons considering that now that I live in a place that truly experiences all four. We had two at best in my tropical home in Bolivia! I’m going to make this into a bag so I can carry those connected memories with me.

Bye-bye Taproot Video and thank you.. Thank you to all those who have purchased my publications over the years and supported me through following my blog as well as leaving me kind comments and reviews here and on my other social media pages.The blog will continue. I have a lot saved up to post! You’ll be hearing again from me soon.

Backstrap Weaving – Dyeing to Weave

Well, hello…….. Here we are well into 2026 and yes, I’m still here. And here is a long overdue blog post. Typing at this laptop keyboard was not doing my shoulder any good while I was still unable to rotate my wrist into a full palm-down position. As a result, I am still stuck with a frozen right shoulder and a wrist that turns most of the way but which I fear will probably never recover its full range of motion.

So I’ll attempt to fill you in with just a little of what has been happening starting with way back last year when I joined a group called the Fiber Artists Network up on the mid-north coast of NSW. What a group! Such an incredible collection of talented women who use a mind-boggling array of techniques to create their textile art works. I wasn’t sure how exactly my work fit with this group but I enjoyed every opportunity to get together with them and soak up inspiration. And here I am now moved to my home in the Blue Mountains where I can only continue to see their work from afar.

Another new member to that group, Dale, immediately after joining, invited a group of us to her home for a day of natural dyeing. Everyone was there to do some botanical printing except me. I’d brought my own pot, which I’d lugged all the way over from Bolivia, and was planning to dye some of the wool I’d bought from my teachers in the Bolivian highlands on my final visit (sniff!) in 2025.

I took along the dried cochineal bugs that I’d got in the market in Santa Cruz (and before you ask, I did declare it when I arrived in Australia. I had hardly even begun explaining when the bored officials waved me through). This caused much excitement in the group and although the focus remained on botanical dyeing, I ended up with quite a mix of fabric and thread in my dyepot alongside my wool skeins.

Dale provided a nice variety of plant material from her own garden for the botanical printing.

This included leaves from what is commonly known as the Silver Dollar gum tree which produce a gorgeous burnt orange color. You’d never imagine by just looking at the silvery leaves. She gave me some to take home. I posted messages in the local Facebook groups hunting for more and a lady drove over one day with a small bucketful for me.

Trying to stir and poke more fabric into the pot.

I was happy about the rosy red color we were getting from the cochineal after all the trouble I’d had in Bolivia with the very hard tap water there when I was trying to dye silk.

Later at home, I dyed another skein and shifted it to a bright red by adding lemon juice.

Next came the Silver Dollar leaves. I added to the supply by buying a few sticks of it from the local florist. The pretty rounded silver leaves are frequent additions to flower arrangements here particularly those that contain a lot of native varieties.

On top of a stunning color, it gave such an intense aroma of eucalyptus. Beautiful!

I was thrilled with the results but did have to ask myself if I was ever going to weave with so much orange yarn. A quick glance back at some of my past work reminded me that I have included this color much more than I had imagined.

Next on my list was leaves from the peppercorn tree. It’s a native of South America but was a popular shade tree at one stage used in rural areas of NSW. We had one in our school yard when I was a kid and we certainly enjoyed the cool of its shade and the aroma of his peppercorns on sweltering summer days. I hit the local Facebook notice boards again and was told of a tree offering its weeping leafy branches to passing strollers on one of the main streets of a neighboring town. Off I went. The search became a big part of the whole adventure. While gathering leaves, a silver-haired gent whose long beard was tied in a pony-tail told me that he too had had a peppercorn tree in the schoolyard. He and his mates would use the leaves to soothe the sting after a caning! Maybe the boys at my school had done so too but kept it a secret from the cane-wielding nuns.

The smell of the peppercorn leaves in the pot evoked a lot of memories.

Known as “molle” (which is part of its botanical name) by my weaving teachers in highland Bolivia, it gives a rich gold color. I was only using alum pre-mordant. I believe that my teacher Maxima and her group also use chrome during the process and achieve a much richer gold.

I had my friends in the local craft group collecting both red and yellow onion skins for me and was surprised at how much richer the color from the yellow skins was. I had been expecting the opposite. I didn’t use the alum mordant with the onion skins having read that it wasn’t necessary. However, the color was a bit uneven…but in a good way!

After connecting with a keen natural dyer up in northern Queensland on Facebook, I then tried mango leaves. They gave a beautiful buttery yellow in very little time. A second skein left in longer was more golden. I got a nice green by adding a touch of copper sulfate and some other tones using water and a bit of white vinegar in which rusty nails had been soaking for two weeks out in the sun.

Some results. You can see the indigo that we dyed up in the highlands last year. I added a natural white skein to this photo for comparison.
At last I get to keep some notes in the book with my handwoven cover.
I love these three together.
Playing with different color combinations. I have plans for this wool in my weaving but first I have to get out a spindle and ply. I’ve dyed skeins of doubled singles and have yet to twist the two single strands together. We’ll see how my wrist feels about that.

Other non-weaving activities involved updating, adding final touches to and improving some of my woven jewelry pieces.

My two boxes of jewelry-making bits and pieces made it over to Australia. I spent ten days house-sitting for a friend at Shelly Beach and needed an activity.

All the dyeing paraphernalia had been put away and I spent my time refurbishing and creating pendants and wrist cuffs between walking around the deliciously cool nearby pocket of littoral rainforest and visiting the beach in the evening to watch the paragliders take off in the evening breezes.

While this strangling fig isn’t being very kind to this tree, it makes a very fascinating and eerie sight.

Lying crumpled up within one of the boxes of jewelry findings was a small strip of silk that I’d woven. It was the piece on which I’d been sampling the figure of a weaver at her loom to be included in a larger project. I was able to cut off the final version and turn it into a pendant. I couldn’t believe that I just happened to have the little hand charm to add to the bottom.

Other things that got refreshed and updated…my garabata pouch pendant and wrist cuff. I didn’t make the earrings. I bought those from an Ayoreo artisan.
It was never a good idea to wear jewelry in the streets of Santa Cruz. I learned that the hard way in a couple of incidents during my first months there. Anything was fair game. I’m enjoying being able to feel confident about wearing my things out and about here.

I spent a couple of very peaceful weeks there at Shelly Beach keeping Catherine’s beautiful garden watered. It gave me a chance to see just how independent I could be hand-wise and if I was indeed ready to make the bigger move away from my brother’s home to my real home in Katoomba. Spoiler alert: I’m there now….but more about that and my return to the loom in my next blog post.

And then came Christmas. A dear friend bought me a (quite expensive!) ticket to a wreath-making afternoon. I must admit that I was reluctant to go. Anyone who is a regular reader of my blog will know that I don’t do Christmas. But hey, this was my first one back in Australia. Let’s make it a memorable one in that I actually participate!

I did feel extremely handicapped. I didn’t have enough grip strength to handle the secateurs on the thicker branches and I struggled to work the florist wire and weave the stems in and out of the frame. But I gave it my best shot..I finished mine ages before anyone else in my group who spent so much more time selecting and planning. This wasn’t their first time and I should have probably slowed down and put a bit more thought into it. I was just a bit frustrated and disappointed with my hand and shoulder’s performance and wanted to get it all over with.

There was weaving involved and so I guess this does deserve a place on this blog….

I based it mostly on silver dollar leaves.

There was a Christmas party with the Fibre Artists Network group out in the beautiful lush Bellingen countryside. We played Secret Santa, or Kris Kringle, as they say here in Australia, and were charged with making a brooch for one of the other members.

Here they all are after being randomly distributed and unwrapped…..

I can see more natural dyeing coming up hopefully with my own handspun especially now that I have borrowed this book to peruse….

And here I’ll end this post. There’s so much more to tell as a whole new chapter has begun and is well under way but here’s a look at the beginning of that new chapter which marks the end of this long, long roller coaster of a journey from the other side of the world.

There lies within my life’s possessions!

The most I’ll tell you for now is that I am very happy!!

The brooch that I got in the Christmas exchange on the left…..and the result of another Christmas exchange in a different group on the right. In that exchange we were presented with materials and asked to stitch a Badge of Honor with a word that describes another person in the group. We drew names from a hat. I stitched Vivacious for Francie and Present was chosen for me.

I happily put on my badge for the group photos knowing that the time has indeed come to exhale and live in the Present and if that’s the impression I gave the person who stitched my badge, I am thrilled. Time to stop holding my breath and worrying about my future here in Australia. Time to stop feeling sad and doubtful about having left Bolivia.

Until next time….(.there will be weaving to show!)

Backstrap Weaving – Finding Joy

Here’s just a quick hello and update (as I’m typing with one finger of my left hand)…

I’m still in transition mode living on the mid-north coast with my brother and sister-in-law (and loving it!) while working on rehabilitating my hand. I did end up having a second surgery because it was all pretty messed up….tendons and a very irritated nerve were encased in scar tissue and stuck together. Another tendon had become adhered to the bone, plus the plate that was too bulky for my small frame was removed. I had been expecting a minor miracle after that but it was, in fact, a move back to square one rehabilitation-wise. Expectations were adjusted and I’m back to work exercising.

In the meantime, there have been several textile-related exhibits to visit at Port Macquarie’s fabulous Glasshouse. I was drawn to this piece by Hannah Garside called Book of Hands because of the hand theme. These well-used and worn gloves “darkened with age and use gently interlace evoking touch, intimacy and the presence of former wearers “

I managed to get one more key fob gift woven before being advised to stop weaving until I’ve recovered wrist rotation. It’s quite limited right now. I was kidding myself thinking I could manage weaving with my injured hand. I was, in fact, compensating with my shoulder and ended up injuring it.

This fob is for my hand therapist, an occupational rather than physio therapist, and has the name of her business. The name will only make sense if you understand that the last two letters are capitals and are pronounced Oh-tee.

So, weaving is on the back-burner once again and I am entertaining myself by designing a hand-themed triptych which will be a story of my Indian roots, my 32 years in South America and the new possibilities that will come to me now that I’m back in Australia.

I’ve joined an organisation here called the Fibre Artisans Network and am excited about being able to exchange ideas and share skills and perhaps exhibit some of my work alongside that of the other members one day. We’ve met up twice already and will do so again tomorrow. The first thing I’d love to learn more about is dyeing with eucalypts.

I’m going to leave you with something I’ve posted before but which brings me joy and makes me want to share it again. I hope the melody isn’t an ear-worm for you. I’ve added some bits since I last showed it to you.

MY FAVORITE THINGS (a few of)

Intricate patterns on bamboo and gourd,
A beater, a shuttle, a small weaving sword,
Plant fibers twisted and woven like string,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Bone tools and wooden ones shaped just for picking,
Others to strum across threads that are sticking,
Laid out before me the pleasure they bring,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Books that tell stories of teachers I’ve known,
Covered with fabric and carefully sewn,
They hold the memories to which I will cling,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Spindles a-whirring turn fleece into thread,
Dipped in a dye pot of cochineal red,
Patterns of summer, fall, winter and spring,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When I must wait,
Cannot cre-ate,
And I’m feeling sad.
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel
So bad.

Spring has sprung here and it’s glorious! The air is drenched with the aroma of jasmine and the sound of bees. An increasing number of surfers can be spotted bobbing about in the waves and it’s time to make friends with all the magpies I encounter on my walks lest they start swooping me at nesting time.

Until next time when maybe I can reveal some of my hand-themed patterns. I’ve made some good thrift store purchases of cotton (I love how thrift stores here in Australia are called “op shops”) which I’ll dye for this project…..or maybe I’ll use eucalypt-dyed wool. It’s exciting to think about.

Backstrap Weaving – Therapy

Long time no see. A lot has been happening but at the same time not a lot has been happening.

In the “a lot has been happening” category I’ve undergone a dramatic change of scene:

It’s certainly dramatic for someone who has been living in a landlocked country for the last twenty-seven years. The following might give you a clue as to my whereabouts….

I pass this mural on my way to the shops.

Yes, I’m back in Australia for good after having talked about making this move for years. But I’m still in transition mode as I will be staying with my brother and sister-in-law in this beachy area on the mid north coast of NSW until mid November when I will then move to my own place in the Blue Mountains.

It’s a lovely area for strolling in bushland and by the shore. I walk around the block to a large open field where kangaroos come to graze in the late afternoon. They’re far too shy to allow me to photograph them. We stop still and stare at each other for a good five minutes after which they nervously return to their grazing. However, I only have to take one very cautious and almost imperceptible step closer and they’re off.

I have these guys waiting to greet me when I step out in the late afternoon to bring in the laundry.

Kookaburras create quite a racket when I take a stroll around the neighborhood but will instantly pipe down the moment I turn on my camera to record them.

I had long planned to fly out of Bolivia on April 28. I had my accident with the four-legged black torpedo that I described in my last post one month prior and it almost messed up everything. Needless to say it was tough leaving after thirty-two years in South America and all the fuss after the accident didn’t make it any easier. I was in need of both mental and physical therapy by the time I reached my brother’s place on May 4.

I’m alone now house-sitting for my brother and his wife who are away traveling for two months. I watched the bag I wove and sewed for my sister-in-law back in 2006 head out the door for yet another world adventure…

Here they are in Alaska on this current trip where Deb’s using it to hold her binoculars….

It’s always so nice to know that a gift has turned out to be so useful.

The best mental therapy during this newest transition period has come in the form of sitting on the beach in the sunshine, inhaling the sea air while listening to and watching the waves roll in. It reminds of this weaving I did some years ago….

I always like to see the white string heddles in this picture as foaming waves rolling onto a yellow sand beach. And there’s a big ol’ sun there in the foreground.

Now it’s humpback whale migration season and on the next clear day I’ll head to the lighthouse to see if I can spot them.

Other forms of therapy…..smelling eucalyptus leaves burning as folks rake the fallen ones up to burn in the cool evening air (such nostalgia!), walking along accompanied by all the magical birdsong that I recognize from my younger days in Australia, making new friends which has turned out to be super easy in this wonderfully friendly community.

Scenes from strolling around the neighborhood.

One such friend that I met at the weekly craft group happened to mention in conversation that she had lived in Papua New Guinea. I immediately asked her if she had seen the bilum bags that artisans there make from plant fiber. The stitch they use is exactly the same as that used by the Ayoreo people in Bolivia although the plant material used is different. I remember my Ayoreo teacher being fascinated by the fact that these people on the other side of the world are making bags using the same technique.

The main difference is that the bilum bags are stitched much more loosely. The looping is very much more open, even more open than the work by the Wichi artisans in Argentina. The bilums are also worked as a continuous round and are, therefore, seamless whereas the Ayoreo artisans work a row from left to right and then flip the work and return, once again working from left to right. Jey brought a bag to show me that she had collected fifty years ago. I’m guessing the colors are from natural sources and it’s amazing how vibrant they are after all these years.

The Ayoreo work is so much tighter that, when set next to the bilum, it’s very difficult to see that the looping technique used in both is indeed the same. It was very exciting for me to be able to see this work and I can’t wait to send a photo to my teacher in Bolivia. Jey tells me that she even used to have a small hammock made in this technique for one of her babies.

What do I do when I go along to these weekly craft group meet-ups with my rehabilitating hand? Well, I’m just about able to put enough twist into my takli spindle to spin some of my brown cotton. There’s progress because when I first arrived here I couldn’t do it at all…couldn’t even grip the spindle. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world and I can’t do it forever and a day as I used to.

There are issues with my wrist and I’m not recovering the range of movement that I had hoped. It’s taken me this long to get an appointment with an orthopedist here and I’ll see him on Wednesday to find out what’s going on and if there’s any reason for concern.

My occupational therapist dresses up my hand in the most interesting ways! The tape pattern was designed by a Polynesian tatoo artist. While wearing this on my skin I’m thinking that maybe something like this will seep into my weaving one of these days…..a fun souvenir of this slow rehab.

BUT I have been able to weave! In my last post I showed how I had trained my left hand to operate the loom and do pick-up. In this way, the hatband I’d started before the accident slowly got finished and my friend did a fabulous job of attaching it to his hat after I had already left Bolivia.

Well, now I can do all that using my injured right hand. I’m able to wind a decent warp, make string heddles and weave narrow bands with pick-up using medium weight cotton thread. I’ve never before thought about what role each of my two hands plays in my weaving process. When I’m using two sets of heddles, it turns out that it’s my left hand that does the twisting and rolling action on one set while my right only needs to pull the other set straight up. It can manage that and do the pick-up!

So, I’ve been making some key fob thank-you gifts:

First one for Jey for lending me her bilum to play with.

This band got folded in half with its ends clamped between the jaws of the key fob hardware. Then I made another for one of my physiotherapists who I felt had gone above and beyond. I found out that she has two much-adored golden retrievers that have their own Instagram page and so I wove a fob with their names.

I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave which produces a quirky kind of lettering.

I think it’s fun that the lettering matches the rather unsteady and quirky writing on my hand-written thank-you note! Fortunately, my former bank in Bolivia has been the only place so far that has insisted on my producing a perfect signature.

The other side of the band just has paw prints and is shown here sitting on top of a very rustic woolen backstrap that I got in Peru.

Alison Irwin created a chart of letters in this structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave which was published in the Winter ’22 edition of Little Looms magazine. I sometimes need to make adjustments to the letters in order to create the ideal spacing in the particular words I’m weaving. The chart for the paw prints can be found in my Complementary-warp Pattern Book along with two other versions.

There’s a long list of people to thank. I’ll be busy at the loom making gifts and that’s yet another form of therapy. Luckily the guest-room bed has a wooden base and I’ve been able to anchor my loom to it in much the same way as I did in Bolivia.

It might be a while before I can get into this though….

This just a part of the big box of luscious silk that weaving friend Laura sent me from her stash in Canada. Such generosity. She shipped it quite some time ago and I could hardly believe it when I got to Australia and finally got to see it.

Some of it is insanely fine but I do enjoy weaving with fine thread and…..silk! I can’t even imagine untying those skeins and winding the thread into balls. Actually, my hand could probably manage that but right now I can’t trust it to wind a good well-tensioned warp with such fine stuff. I wouldn’t be able to maintain a steady grip on the thread. That’s something to aspire to. I think I’ll have to take on working with increasingly fine material in slow steps as I slowly recover function in my right hand.

At craft group I also got to meet up with the lady who two years ago had given me a skein of gorgeous variegated silk. I’d sent her photos of what I’d made with it but now I could take the finished piece and show it to her in person. You might remember this project…..

Now she’s teaching me how to crochet winter slippers. Remember that it’s winter down here. I’m so slow though that I’m not sure I’ll have these finished in time! There’s wrist rotation involved in working the hook and I can’t do that yet. So, I hold the hook steady and move the work around instead. It seems to be working! We’re just using scrap wool for this initial sample while I get the hang of it.

I love that things that I’ve been weaving over the years are now coming out and being used on a daily basis. I never used this bag in Bolivia and now it goes with me everywhere!

When I tell people that I weave, at least I have something I can show as an example.

I was having a bit of a down day at the radiologist having my wrist x-rayed when the receptionist admired this bag that I happened to be using that day. She was quite bewildered when I explained that I’d made it myself…..from scratch. No, I hadn’t bought the fabric. I took yarn, tied a pattern onto it, put it into two different colored dye baths with more tying in between, removed all the ties, wove it into fabric on a simple loom of sticks, then sewed the cloth into a bag, wove a strap and edged the flap. Sometimes I forget what this must sound like to a non-fiber, non-weaver person! And then the inevitable question…how long did it take? After all that, she may have regretted having complimented my bag but that simple compliment had made my day ❤️.

So, while I’m excited about the fact that my hand can tolerate my making a couple of key fobs, the thing that has made me happiest is that there is a new backstrap weaver in the making here in Lake Cathie. Courtney, who comes along to every second session of our craft group meet-ups, showed up today with this….

She had just finished crocheting a stunning mochila bag when I first met her and was, as a never-ever weaver, busily researching how to weave a strap. Well, you know that I can’t help myself and I took one of my key fob warps along to show her. She was immediately hooked and went off with links to my Backstrap Basics article and my Basic Warping for Backstrap Looms video class which are both free and available here on my blog. What a great job she’s done rounding up the bits and pieces and getting herself set up. She made my day when she brought this this morning to show me. How I miss in-person teaching!

Do I miss Bolivia and the folks that I have left behind?…of course I do! Oh my aching heart. I had a teary moment on my way back here when I visited a mega supermarket in the States. I noted the rows and rows of neatly and attractively arranged goods, the lack of raucous cumbia music, the wide open spaces, the comfortable controlled temperature and immediately missed the chaos of the Santa Cruz street markets with their dirt, heat, crowds, odours and noise! (And prices, I might add. Phew, that has been an adjustment!) But, sigh, choices have to be made.

So, that’s all for this post. My hand is saying “enough!” (and unfortunately I had quite a painful and restless night as both hand and shoulder protested against my having typed all this at my laptop). They’re much happier weaving.

I’ll leave you with something I spotted at the beach the other day. Nope, I’m definitely not in Bolivia any more.