Beginning Ikat

"Not every piece is a Masterpiece. But a masterpiece will not just show up, full blown, the first, second or even third time you do something. It takes work. It takes a body of work, with incremental learning along the way. It takes a visceral and physical understanding of the materials and process in which you choose to work; it requires you to put in the time. The subtle body knowledge that comes from working on your craft has nothing to do with what’s in your head; it’s a muscle memory, and an unconscious knowing without thinking, an integral part of who you are."

- Sara Lamb, "The Cult of Perfection"

When I heard that a friend here in Doha was going to try out an indigo dye kit, I decided that was my chance to attempt ikat.  Or I should say planned-out ikat, since I had dyed an ikat warp once before in Judith MacKenzie’s workshop.  The warp in Judith’s class was tied and dyed multiple times, in a very haphazard fashion, since I was trying to fit it in between the preparation of another 230-end warp for woven shibori.  It turned out very nicely, but I can’t say there was much design behind it.

This time, I wanted to tie deliberately, with some sense of order, and since it would only be blue and white, I could hope to get a simple pattern with a simple set of ties.

 I made a warp with undyed cotton yarn I’d purchased in Syria last February, stretched it between two chairs in my kitchen where the light is good, and divided the warp threads into bundles of ten.  Using strips of plastic from grocery bags, I wrapped tightly around alternate bundles across the warp, wrapping three times and tying a knot, covering about ¾” with each tie.  Then a few inches along the warp, I’d tie the alternate groups of ten that were not tied before.  This way my resist marks would be staggered – if they were up next to each other, they’d form a check pattern.

 Sitting on the floor, wetting the warps with a spray bottle and tying was grueling due to the hunched posture required, and it took me chunks of two different days to complete the tying of my 247-end, 90-inch long warp.  In the meantime, I watched a documentary film made by Virginia Davis and Hillary Steel about the master Mexican weaver Don Evaristo of the Teluca Valley, who weaves cotton ikat (or jaspe) rebozo with 100 ends per inch, dyeing intricate resisted patterns which are alternated with plain warp. 

 His work made me feel like a pre-schooler drawing with huge, oversized crayons, but one has to start somewhere.

Our indigo vat was rather weak, but I prioritized the warp yarn and kept dipping, and dipping, slowly increasing the depth of color to a shade that looked like faded denim. I also dyed an untied skein of cotton to use for weft.  Both skeins ended up with a very irregular penetration of color, but this semi-solid effect adds a sort of texture. Just getting the color dark enough to contrast the resists well was my goal.

I’ve admired ikat weaving ever since I worked in an import store in Kansas City and got exposed to textiles from all over the world.  The Indonesian ikat weavings completely baffled me when I contemplated the amount of precision and complexity of skills required to execute such a design. 

Ever since I bought this sarong from Flores, back in 1990 or so, I’ve dreamed of backstrap weaving and ikat.  The Flores designs are my favorite because they’re delicate, small-scaled and repetitive. I also like their palette of brown, ochre, russet and a touch of black.

Now that I’m a weaver and can examine this more knowledgeably, I see that it’s made of four panels, each with selvedges on both sides – probably two panels were woven, the one with the border design and the one without, and these were each cut in half to sew into the sarong shape (the vertical seam is a French seam, hiding the edges.)  It’s a warp-faced weave, and the ikat design is in the warp only.  It’s cotton, but I’m not sure if it’s 100% cotton because there’s a shine to the surface.  My fiber-identifying skills need some work.

The other concrete inspiration I have with me is my kasuri robe, purchased by my husband in Japan in about 1998.  This pure cotton, indigo-dyed double-ikat was the fabric of the peasantry in previous centuries, which always gives me pause: really?? This is what the poor people wore??  

 It’s “double-ikat” because both warp and weft are resist-dyed to create the pattern, and both need to be properly lined up during weaving for the pattern to manifest.  Boggle your mind? It does mine.  In some areas of this robe, you can see where the warp and weft got jogged apart, and the pattern disperses. As with the sarong, the kimono is woven in long strips and then assembled into a garment.  The kasuri is balanced plainweave, though, not warp-faced, and was probably woven on a frame loom.

Double ikat also appears in India, where the craft has been developed and traditionally sustained by two communities, one in Gujarat and one in Orissa. I saw some stunning examples at an exhibit during the Textile Society Symposium (2010) in Lincoln, Nebraska. This technique, known as patola or bandha, usually appears on saris woven with silk or fine cotton.

Returning to my humble attempt, I was quite happy with the precision of the resist my ties created, but as you can see (bottom photo,) the resisted threads got staggered away from their bundle-mates in the process of setting up the warp for weaving.  I could have adjusted them and tied them into position, but instead I just started weaving, interested to see what it would look like.

 

When I begin to weave something like this, I am overwhelmed by the fact of it – I can’t quite believe that I’m making fabric in the same way people the world over have made fabric, tying up to something stable and tensioning the warp with the body. It’s similar to the feeling of spinning with a spindle, back in the beginning when I was awed by the ancientness (awkward word, but spellcheck does not dispute it) of the act. I can’t describe it, but there’s a sense of space and time expanding below and above and all around, erasing the gaps between me and anyone else who has ever done this.

So I carry on, weaving my staggered ikat marks, which spell out a strange rhythm of hieroglyphs. I embrace their unhinged pattern the way I embrace the serendipitous designs of resist-dye on fabric, which often carry the imprints of water, the sublime irregularities of nature. Giving voice to the unpredictable is one of the joys of creation, and I save any urge to “correct” the design for another time.  This is my first piece, my learning piece, and it will have its own language.

Washpool

A little bit more Australia.  Or more specifically, New South Wales. I was impressed with how many national parks we saw, and how well-maintained they all are.  I think we visited six different public lands in as many days, and this was blissful, having come from the heat of the desert summer.

We only spent an hour walking through Washpool National Park, on the way from Armidale to Byron Bay. It was a brief stop and a ramble through the most accessible part of the park, but I honestly think it was my favorite part of the trip.

I am partial to water.  Particularly running water in the midst of an old-growth forest.

The depth of peace and rightness that such a place instills in me is not easy to express.

I believe all forests are enchanted, and I wander awed and absorbed in the textures, colors and patterns. 

Gratitude, or Generosity II

We interrupt this account of mass generosity to note that the surface has barely been scratched.

I was brought up short by this realization while opening up the batt from Made by Pixies last night.  I showed the general goodies I received, but that batt in particular was looking very demure when first photographed.  Once opened, it is four ounces of wild celebration and excess, and I felt chagrined that I hadn’t fully acknowledged its enormity before.  The official swap was for the grey fibers, the glorious grey Gotland, which was already more than I could ask for.  I sent her some piddling amount of stuff, and I get not only the greys in abundance and those gorgeous shell buttons, but also this outrageous batt.

And the truth is, I could say that about any of these gifts.  Each one is enormous in its way, and if I stopped to think about it I’d just have to sit down with my jaw hanging open.  

Those three yarns?  Left to right: Laura Mayotte, Janet Scanlon, Michelle Snowdon.  On my wall, singing like a gospel choir.  Each one could provoke a rapturous ode (and the one in the middle is in fact three.)

But all of those gifts actually pre-date the packages that prompted me to write on this topic, both of which greeted me very soon after my return from Australia. The package from Janet was in fact waiting for me, having just arrived the day before, which is impressive timing.  

This contained a basket’s worth of sunshine, more cotton than I can spin in a very very long time, and spindles that increase my collection of Janet-made spindles to a number I won’t even disclose, for fear of attracting the evil eye through others’ envy. (Including the one in the first photo of the previous post, her latest manifestation of a pareh, or Qashqai-style spindle.)

The cotton is accumulating on these spindles daily.  How lovely is that carved whorl design?  And how did Janet know that I was, at that very time, enjoying the Ethiopian spindle so much, which is similar in weight and material?  The spinning community is cosmic, I tell you.

The second parcel came by way of a personal courier, a dear knitting and spinning buddy here in Doha who was backpacking across South America while I was in Oz. Having persuaded her to visit Laverne Waddington, my remote backstrap weaving teacher, in Bolivia, I sent a handwoven Bedouin bag with her as a thank-you gift to Laverne for all her continuing guidance and generously shared brilliance in the realm of backstrap weaving.  Once again, I got back way, way more than I sent, and nearly started crying as I opened her gifts one by one.

It is impossible to put them in any sort of order based on importance or the extent to which they blew me away, so I'll just dive in. Beautiful, knotted bags made from a hand-twisted plant fiber by the Ayoreo people of lowland Bolivia.  A pure piece of traditional textile art, radiating authenticity and mastery. She included an older, smaller one because of its superior quality (the little one is less than 2" square!)

And tucked inside the tiny bag, something older than I can fathom:

Yes. Pre-Colombian spindle whorl.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking How generous!  What great gifts! But these thoughts are premature, because we're nowhere near done yet. 

Laverne sent me a sample of her own weaving, which has to be seen, touched and examined to be believed.

This cellphone pouch is woven with doubleweave - looks the opposite on the reverse side, using motifs from Bhutanese textiles. She claims the sewing up was rushed, but it's superior to any finishing I've ever done, or am likely to do!  This hit me forcefully, this piece, because I knew that my teacher was good, I knew she's prolific and weaves like, all the time.  But I did not know how good until I held this little bag in my hands. I'm honored to have it, beyond words.

Okay, and inside this bag? What, you think she sent it empty? Have you learned nothing in these last two posts?? The bag contains cochineal. A packet of dried bug bits, with which I can magically make fibers turn red! I'm already mordanting my fibers in anticipation.  I've never ever had the chance to work with cochineal before.

Now, in spite of how amazing all that is, the next piece is what moved me the most: a genuine handspun, handwoven jakima from Chinchero, Peru.

It's just a wee little narrow thing, and it's not a long piece, just about ten inches' worth, but you'd have to know what this means to me. This pattern, the place it came from, the way I've been learning weaving and my motivation for doing so are all deeply intertwined, and Laverne knows this.  I won't go into the whole story here or you'd grow old reading the post. Suffice to say, here's the very first backstrap-woven thing I've tried to weave (still unfinished, to my shame,) warped for me by Abby Franquemont at Golden Gate Fiber Institute, 2010:

Mine is silk thread, which I considered very fine, smaller than anything I tend to spin - but look how close the Chinchero one is in size.  So I have something to aspire to, supplemented by the samples of handspun wool and alpaca Laverne sent on a card - extremely thin, fine, even, frighteningly skilled handspun yarn.  I keep it on my desk to give me perspective, and to urge me on. The affirmation that there are people out there to whom my textile adventures mean enough that they will shower me with gifts like this - that is what fills me with gratitude, and with the urge to keep on improving, learning and sharing as much as possible.

Muchas gracias.........Shukran leki...........Ma mangpo julley!

Generosity I

This has always been one of the most striking aspects of the online handspinning community, especially the art-inclined, spindle-happy, walk-on-the-wild-side crowd with whom I've kept company for the past several years.  Every time I engage in a "swap," I end up receiving way more than I offered, at least to my point of view, and it's  staggering to watch the way people knock themselves out to offer More and More Interesting and More Luxurious in the general swaps on Ravelry.  There's a lively atmosphere of giving which is both refreshing and nourishing, and I literally owe the existence of most of my creative handspun yarns to the generosity of my various fiber friends.
The image above is a random view of my fiber shelves, and almost everything pictured came to me as a gift.  A sampling taken from anywhere else in my fiber storage facility (aka, our apartment) would yield the same ratio of overabundant given things. Sorting through all my fibers in a mass re-organization, I sat and contemplated all those who had given me these bits of fiber, and the feeling of gratitude swelled once again.

I almost hesitate to write about this, because a characteristic of real generosity is that people don't tend to like being called out about it. However, I have been so inundated with gifts since returning from Australia (not to mention in Australia, as you will see), it had to be documented somewhere.

(gratuitous Australia photo, since I mentioned it)

So, before I left town, we already had an ongoing swap in full swing in the Novelty and Art Yarn Spinners group on Ravelry, which had brought the following into my life:

Beautiful grey fibers, a carded batt and killer buttons
from Made by Pixies.

A glorious, endless batt from Funhouse Miki, and one of popsicletote's magical handmade spindles.

A veritable lifetime supply of dyed mohair locks (photo shows only a fraction) from Kat in Perth, who mailed them to my friends in Oz, where they were awaiting my admiration.

Then, on my last day of freedom in the Blue Mountains of NSW, I went to the home and studio of Michelle Snowdon, aka wooldancer.  This was an immersion in fiber wonderland, with handspun yarn by Michelle, her brilliant daughter, and also Lexi Boeger on display around the house, in addition to textiles and handmade toys, beanies, works-in-progress everywhere I looked.  We went out the the studio, where Michelle handed me bag after bag of fiber, including one pre-composed grab bag and one collection of items she had picked out for me.

My personal take-home stash, including a sparkly batt (lower left) carded on the spot by Miss Spinstar.

The luscious grab bag contents, and an undyed skein spun by Spinstar for dyeing experiments.

All the contents of the grab bag are now on this spindle, as of yesterday:

I spun the whole lot, then plied the singles back onto itself, which I may do once more (this is Michelle's influence, she is into prolific plying lately, and it's catching.) I managed to pay for some very small amount of what I took away from Michelle's house - fiber is her business, after all, and I had come there intending to actually purchase some fiber.  But on my way out the door, she lobbed the gift of all gifts at me, and remembering this moment still makes me lose my hold on words (this sentence took a long time to type.)

Handspun yarn by Michelle Snowdon, genius.

I wore it around my neck, and photographed it against the backdrop of the Blue Mountains, whose landscape reflects the colors in the yarn, as I was to observe over the next few weeks of silence.

And you know what?  I thought this was going to be one post, including all the bounty that met me upon my return, but I'm going to stop here and save the rest for its own entry, since this post has gotten so big. How apt that the topic of generosity overflows into more than one entry.

Tour

I did the Tour de Fleece for the fist time this year.  For those who don't know, it's a spinning event concurrent with the Tour de France.  Handspinners challenge themselves to spin every day that the Tour rides, and we join various teams and set our own goals and it's just fun.

I kept thinking I'd blog about it, but as the days went by, it was all I could do to keep up with the Tour and my goals.  I spun each day while watching the live stream of the Tour on a laptop.  We're close enough to the French time zone to watch it live, which added to the excitement and motivation.

Watching the cyclists go all out certainly helped me push myself, when I got tired of the difficulties of unfamiliar spindles.  My goal was to spin up and ply some yarn for weaving on traditional Bolivian and Peruvian low-whorl spindles.  I also did some wheel spinning, finishing up a motley sock yarn, and even had a couple of art yarn bursts - wild sprints that broke up the monotony of the plain yarns.

Since I'm leaving town like, now, I've just uploaded a bunch of my Tour photos and put myself at the mercy of Blogger.  No messing with order or size or anything, just adding some text.

It's nice to have some finished yarn out of this deal.

Oh, and yesterday I plied some cotton.  From now on, my Tour spinning is going mobile, and will be mostly cotton, silk, and some fiber I've ordered in Oz.

And here are the guys when they were in Doha back in February.  There's a Tour of Qatar every year, and some of the big teams and riders show up. No crowds and flat terrain - it must be a very different experience for them.

Is that Cavendish??  I didn't even know them before this month - I've learned a lot about the Tour de France, and about spinning and my own abilities.

Now, off to Australia, and I don't know if I'll post again until September.