awayuq

big pink reprecussions

In contrast to my work life, where I am getting *nothing* done, due to my boss' tendency to bounce off of walls because of his imminent departure, my home life this weekend was reasonably productive. Finishing the big pink (or coral) sweater must have aligned the project completion ions in the air favorably or something. Friday night I addressed ten buttonholes. I'd forgotten how to use the buttonhole thingy on my machine because usually I hand finish my buttonholes, and then I couldn't find my manual so I started to clean the whole studio. This turned out to be very productive because not only did I find some more floor space, I found the manual and turned back to buttonholing with a will. This is the result:

Remember those pants? Now done. Threads all sewn in and everything. Ready to wear. Heartened by that success and still in a tidying mood, I found on the sewing table a skirt that's been needing waist elastic for... oh, about four years. It now has waist elastic and is also ready to wear. Come to that, I'm not at all sure any more that I will wear it, but the bias flounce is rather nice, so we'll see. The fabric is a drapey rayon twill, very comfortable. Maybe it would be a good traveling skirt because it doesn't take up much space.

Speaking of traveling, we come to the Peru Skirt. An ideal Peru trip includes visits to highland villages to learn weaving. Highlands in this case means 11,000 feet and up, steep mountain terrain. Villages in this case are typically reached only in a 4-wheel drive (or the open back of a pickup-- don't tell my mother) or by mule. Bathrooms are unheard of; outhouses are unlikely; running water is down in the valley there but don't fall in because the currents can be wicked. To deal with such situations, I find skirts far preferable to pants. Going to the bathroom is easier (your bottom is not as exposed to view or to wind). You can pile things under your skirt-- extra petticoats and long underwear at night. You can hike the skirt up at noon when it's hot. You can hide things in the folds if necessary-- safety pins, ribbons, keys. You can dry your hands on it. If full enough, it allows complete freedom of movement. Did I mention it is cold up there? Every time I go I wish my skirts (up to now of cotton calico) were made of something more substantial. Therefore, the creation of a black wool version. The waist is faced with red velvet, so I won't feel the wool against my skin. It's not quite finished-- waist facing needs to be sewn down, it needs a hem and buttons-- but it's definitely a skirt and well on the way to being wearable. Not bad for a couple Saturday hours.

big coral is done!

Sunny day at last wow we actually have shadows picture:

And a funky mirror picture so you can see that it actually fits. I was worried that it would be too small, but no, it's just snug. Form-fitting, maybe. The pattern is from Rebecca #27, the yarn is Intermezzo, a thick 100% cotton. I used #10 needles. The collar might not be to everyone's liking-- there's no neck curve, the ribbing just continues straight up to form a mock turtleneck, so it's a little unusual. The front and back are exactly the same, so it's impossible to get that sleepy running late morning look which ends in getting to work and finding you are wearing something backwards. I like the ribbing under the arms, I think it sungs in the body quite nicely. The sleeve caps, as predicted, fit into the armholes effortlessly.

This is a fairly simple pattern and I found no mistakes. It's not, for me, a super-wow sweater; for one thing, I guess I really prefer finer-gauge fabrics. But it is an entirely decent adequate easy-to-wear garment, and it is complete! I hereby declare this my spring fling contribution, three months after the fling began. Just in time for hot weather, a long-sleeved turtleneck pullover. So many things were flung at me in the past months besides spring that this is as good as it's going to get this year.

I've a feeling this may be my last sweater for a while. For some reason I'm finding sweaters more stressful than fun, perhaps because I feel obligated to hurry up and finish the things before today's must have becomes last year's nice idea. And my life is not currently arranged such that I can start a sweater and finish it in a matter of weeks. It's also true that much of my interest in knitting is stitch patterning, particularly lace, and I enjoy having a larger expanse of fabric to work with. I'm only about 1/3 done with the blue orenburg, and almost half done with the year, so I think I'll concentrate on that for a while.

jazz

In looking up a paper to copy for this afternoon's weaving student, I was reminded of some pictures I've been meaning to post for a while. In many Andean cloths, the pattern areas do not repeat exactly. Instead, there is an overall coherent framework, within which the weaver improvises designs. A good friend of mine compared this to jazz improvisation. These four pictures are all from the same pattern stripe of the same poncho (Accha Alta, Peru, 2000). They form a coherent pattern, with a clear overall diamond motif, but each one is a little different. The variations add subtlety and richness to what might otherwise be a static row of repeating diamonds.

Also notice the yellow and pink stripe in the middle-- a visual cue to help the weaver find the center of the design. The warp is going horizontally in the pictures. It's supplementary warp (red) with a plain weave ground. This poncho is of sheep's wool. All of these designs are created with pickup, they are not heddle-controlled. The number of variations within a single pattern stripe would be impossible to achieve on a floor loom without a zillion shafts, or a drawloom or jaquard attachment. An example of technological simplicity offering greater design freedom.

how does learning work?

This morning I met with a lovely young woman who does research in Peruvian villages around Cusco (Pampallacta and Chauhuatire, excuse my spelling). Her background is in anthropology and she's currently working on a PhD in education. The fieldwork she'll be starting soon is aimed at finding out how teaching styles vary between people who have had formal (western style) schooling, and those who have not. The hypothesis is that those with schooling will tend to teach verbally with explanations, while those who did not learn that way use more examples, gestures, and commands. As a part of this she will be studying how weaving is taught in these villages. Weaving is a skill that is familiar to everyone in Andean villages. Not absolutely everyone weaves these days, but weavers are present, and it is impossible to escape some knowledge of looms and cloth.

I'll be very interested to see what she finds. With luck, I may be able to visit her in one of those villages this summer and see the study in progress. It's difficult for us to keep in mind, but Andean people never developed writing as we think of it. I've noticed that when first-world weavers start to learn Andean weaving, they want to refer to a page in a book or a design printed on paper. This is a natural outcome of our dependence on text, but highly ironic, because it's in fact much easier to focus on the threads and learn the algorithm of a design, rather than try to match what the warp looks like with a two-dimensional representation. Textiles were and are the texts, doodle pads, sketches, and stories of Andean peoples. I do not mean this in a literal way -- in general, I don't believe that you can pick up a textile and "read" the designs: here's a flower, here's rain, here's the eye of God. Some motifs are clearly pictorial, but I believe the significance of the weavings goes deeper than respresentation. Weavers work in three dimensions, often in several three-dimensional layers. They know at all times how their threads are interlacing and interacting with one another. They can take a design and (without any paper or pencil) weave it on 12 threads or on 42, scaling up or down depending on what's available. They can create a motif in any permutation of how we see it-- upside down, rotated, flipped on any axis. They can weave the same motif by patterning the warp or by patterning the weft. They effortlessly knit their weaving designs, with no plotting or charting. They can knit a pattern upright or turned 90 degrees, so their understanding of pattern is independent of direction of work. They don't think of a cloth as a euclidian plane, but as having two faces and a middle, a plane with depth and texture. The middle is often very useful for hiding threads that aren't needed on the face. We immediately think of an image that's mirrored as symmetrical, but often miss rotational symmetries, while their concept of pattern arrangement goes far beyond bilateral symmetry.

All of which comes to mind because I promised to teach this woman how to weave tomorrow afternoon. She will learn more in the villages than she will from me, but I offered to give her some background so she has some information when she gets there. She has never woven before, so teaching her how in one afternoon is ambitious; but I can at least show her the general principles so she has a greater understanding, and get her hands in threads. Which reminds me that I don't have any thick perle cotton, I'll have to make a hakima warp with really chunky stuff. I need to rummage up my shed swords tonight, or some substitute (that might actually be difficult, I thought I had some here, but they were left in a grad student's office and...) It is so hard for us to think without referencing a piece of paper. What would learning be like, what would our textile practices be like, if they were less about predefinition and more about method and algorithms?

another step

sleeve caps done! Finished last night while listening to the Count of Monte Cristo save a young man from bandits after the Carnival in Rome. Now just the sleeve and side seams, and they won't be hard. The sleeve cap looks like a good fit for the armhole. Because the cap is so long and steep, much of the sewing will be matching rows to rows, making it quite simple. In fact I think I'll start at the underarm edge and work towards the shoulder, contrary to my usual practice.

unusual supplements

Here is a link to a fabric I saw last week. The technique is a bit uncommon, I don't see many cloths made this way. It's supplementary warp, the blue is the ground cloth and the white dashes are the supplementary elements. The warp runs horizontally in the picture. As far as I can tell, the warping order is 2 blue, 2 white all the way across. To make the white pattern, the white threads come to the surface; but rather than floating over the surface, they interlace with the ground cloth wefts in plain weave. It's a bit difficult to make out in the photo, but each "dash" has an almost wavy appearance, a result of the two white threads alternating which one is on top. (If you think of a 2-thread color stripe in a warp emphasis plain weave fabric, you'll see what I mean). On the underside, the white forms long floats when it is not in use.

I call this weave supplementary because if you were to remove all the white threads, the blue cloth would be whole (my understanding of the meaning of supplementary). However, it is unusual in that the supplementary elements actually become a part of the ground cloth structure, instead of floating on top of it, as is common. The blue ground is fairly loose; when the white surfaces it pushes apart the blue threads between which it lies, but there is no discernable rippling or unevenness. This may be due in part to the all-over nature of the pattern, and to the diagonal arrangement.

How would you weave this? At first I thought two sets of heddles, but on reconsideration I think, if I were an ancient Peruvian, I'd have had one set of plain weave heddles. The warp order is 2 blue, 2 white... call them blueA, blueB, whiteA, whiteB.... so the first plain weave shed, blueA and whiteA are up; the second shed, blueB and whiteB are up. I imagine the weaver just dropped the white threads she didn't want to show. Dropping tends to be easier than picking up. I haven't thought through a modern floor loom application in detail, but I think you could do it as a block weave: two shafts for the ground cloth, two for each block of supplementary warps. Any profile should work, unless you're picky about the back floats (the ancient weaver wasn't, it's clearly a one-faced cloth).

It would be interesting to play with this structure and see what happens if
--the ground and supplementary elements are very different in size. Large supp. yarns might force apart the ground cloth, creating distortion that could be used to advantage.
--the ground and supp. elements were different fibers, maybe with different shrinkage characteristics.
--the supplemental elements were not across the entire width of the cloth, but only in stripes. Could this create effective distortion? Or a contrast between gauzy ground weave and heavier supp. areas?
--one set of elements has lots of extra energy and the other has none.
Seems to me there's lots of room here for new ideas.

The perfectly balanced interlocking elements of this textile's design are fascinating to me. The zigzags in one direction are clearly discontinuous, but they carry the same visual weight as those going the other way, forming a very effective frame for the bird heads. This is a case where the textile is almost more confusing up close than from far away: the pattern of dashes is not at all distracting from a distance, and the design reads well. Another thing to think about: what kinds of designs are well suited to this kind of dashed representation?

cap it off

The curling of the stockinette makes it hard to see, but I've reached the sleeve cap decreases on the big pink sweater. Big as in big yarn, not large-sized-- those sleeves seem quite snug around my arms. Hmm. Will this turn out to be a case of the too-small hand-me-down look? Or a case of just right once the cotton is draped around the body? I think the caps will be finished quickly. "The Count of Monte Cristo" is my current listening material, and last night almost two hours went by before I knew it. Dumas is surprisingly gripping for one of those long-ago writers.

saturday flowers for sunday showers

A woman I've known since I was about 9 or 10 is having a baby and Sunday was her baby shower. Aside from all the philosophical musings on How Time Passes and What Is Becoming Of Us All and Oh The Tangled Paths Of Life, I found myself on Saturday without a gift. Yelp. Back in November I bought yarn for a baby sweater but have I started it? No. Saturday morning found me rummaging through the scrap fabric bins, ironing pieces and cutting out squares for a quilt.

She's crazy, you're saying. To start a baby quilt on the day before the gift is to be presented? When I couldn't find any batting in my stash I came to that conclusion too. Still, I got the top all sewn together and it was rather fun. It also provided me an excuse to wander through my neighborhood to the fabric store, where I found batting, buttons for the green pants, satin blanket binding, wool for Peru skirt, and some other fun fabrics.

Oh yes-- and I stopped at a toy store and bought some wooden blocks and a rattle for the infant, as well as a cute little red dress for the 6-month point. After seeing what everyone else gave, I am very happy that I stayed away from pink and from flowers. That baby is going to be in no doubt that she's a girl.

postcards

Just a little picture to remind me of where I've been.

Got my June shawl-of-the-quarter kit today. A lovely fine grey yarn. It should be soothing to work with.

layover

what will several hours in the San Juan airport get you? A spindle full of silk thread, and lots of funny looks from Carribean-tanned vacationers returning to the US. My featherweight Bosowrth spindle was in my purse with a bunch of tussah silk top (metal knitting needles checked to avoid hassle). Using the Bosworth I was struck again by what a pleasure it is to use a good tool. And I'm not even ordinarily a top-whorl girl! I love this spindle. I'm picky about where I spend my money but I'd definitely buy another Bosworth. (You can never have too many tools. Even tools that to the uninitiated look the same. You can remind me of this if I ever have a husband who collects fishing rods, or rototillers or bandsaws or whatever.)

Vacation knitting was Orenburg-- ahh, very relaxing. While knitting I listened to a Ngaio Marsh mystery and I suspect that when I wear this shawl I'll always remember the atmosphere of the story. Words and music seem to get embedded in my stitches. Years later I can pick up something I made and remember what my favorite CD was at the time I was working on it. I also started another bit of lace with a tiny silk-wool yarn, just because I wanted to feel the luscious softness through my fingers. It's also garter stitch, shetland style lace, and the pattern is written in what I suppose is a tradidional manner: make one mitered border, knit central square; make three more mitered borders and sew them all together. Right. I don't want to do that much seaming on a shawl, so I figured, knit the central square first, pick up the borders all the way around on a long circular needle, and knit them all at once outwards. Replace decreases at the miters with yo's, and read the border charts upside down. No problem.

Only after getting several rows into the central square did I remember that if I knit in the round, the borders will be stockinette. To make them garter stitch I'd have to purl every other round-- not as much fun. So I'm beginning to wonder if there's a way to knit back and forth, but link the threads together at the join so you don't have to sew up one corner seam afterwards. I think this can be done, but I haven't *quite* worked it out in my mind... has anyone else done this? Or know of a reference?

Another niggling irritation in this lace is that it's patterned on every row, and I find that I have trouble when I have to knit together a stitch with a yo. I don't usually have trouble getting my rh needle through stitches, so I wonder if I'm missing something....