awayuq

wari widths

Sometimes in the course of my work I am lucky enough to see amazing things. This afternoon I was asked to help explain a Wari tunic. (also spelled Huari). The Wari were a pre-Inkan culture; their most notable textiles are four-cornered piled hats and tapestry tunics with bands of figures. The patterned bands are vertical when worn, but the tunics were woven side to side. You can view a piece of a Wari tunic here. Often the tapestry yarns are finer than fine-- 100 wefts per inch or more. Imagine the spinning that led to plied yarns that could be packed so close. For that matter, imagine the alpacas that had fleece that fine. What fascinates me about Wari tapestries is the play with scale: often you'll have one band of "normal" width and others both wider and narrower, in which the figures are completely replicated but either squished or stretched to fill the space. To my eyes it is very abstract, I wonder how they saw it? A way of expressing perspective? It is incredible to think that they must have been able to interpret these tunics as easily as we can interpret a flag, a billboard, a sign.

flinging plans

Alison at the blue blog has suggested a spring fling knit along and I can't wait! I think I will start with Tipsy from Rowan's summer book. I haven't bought a Rowan magazine in ten years, literally, but I am in love with half a dozen sweaters from the Funny Girl collection. All that lace-- and one of them is even yellow! To make things more enticing, I found some mercerized cotton yarn in bright colors at Elann, not very expensive. I have to force myself to finish my pink sweater before I start swatching for Tipsy. Tipsy is going to be orange, and coral, and golden yellow... next week, next week...

asymmetry

and a note to myself about summer skirts: spotted this morning in a shop window, a lavender linen a-line skirt, mid-calf, with one flange slanting down from the hip to the left side seam, another from that point to the right side seam. I love sewing summer clothes...

warping near disaster

It is ironic that just last week I was flipping through a catalog and glanced at the pages with warping boards. Hmm, I thought. I could use a new warping board. Mine was homemade by a friend years ago and though it's served me well, I'd love to have one where the pegs were sturdier and smoother.

Well... Saturday afternoon I settled down to warp a scarf. Mercerized cotton, mixed cones, mostly 20/2 in natural colors-- this is to be a scarf to practice using my handspun cotton with my new Bosworth lacewood spindle. More on that later. I figured out the number of ends, 720, and started off. Everything was going well, chaining groups of 48 ends to keep count, there should be fifteen of these... around the time when I had 12 groups done, I heard a small cracking sound and my leftmost peg seemed to shift a little. I kept on, pushing the warp down the peg. Each pass the peg seemed a little more unstable but I hoped it would make it just to the end-- only two more groups to go--no! It really did, the peg teetered sideways in the middle of my warping. Desperately I tried to push the yarns down far enough so that they wouldn't jump off, and just as determinedly they slid. With one elbow I tried to hold things steady while reaching for thrums to preserve the cross. Yikes!

Luckily it was only three yards long. The cross was saved. When I took the warp off the board the peg fell out too. I wound the final group at an entirely different length-- longer, I hope. Phew. Looks like a new warping board is in my future sooner than I anticipated.

Overture

A bandwagon was passing. Everyone on board looked as if they were having so much fun, I decided to hop on too.