awayuq

symmetry at first glance

This morning my copies of "Symmetry Comes of Age" arrived. How exciting! I've only had a chance to leaf through the book, but I'm very pleased. It's a heavy hardbound volume, thick paper, good photos and illustrations. The layout is nice; each contribution has a different little motif above the title on the first page, related to the pictures within that section. I'm trying to be objective. Here's the disclaimer: I have an article in this book! It is thrilling to finally have something I wrote be between hard covers. And in such illustrious company! How did I ever make it into a volume with these people?

--Ed and Chris Franquemont, Andean weaving experts ("Learning to Weave in Chinchero")
--Mary Frame, Andean textile expert
--Branko Grunbaum, mathematician who co-authored the most complete book ever on plane symmetries
--Paulus Gerdes, mathematician who studies geometry and art in Africa

In all truth, I think it will be an important volume to that small group of people who care about the cultural practice of symmetry. As a textile person, I'd certainly read it for the Franquemonts and Mary Frame; there's also a piece on turkish weaving, and a piece which I believe discusses Shipibo cloth (upper Amazon). This is a book to spark many ideas.

My article is "Creating Symmetry On the Loom", an analysis of plane symmetry patterns and how to recreate them structurally with a floor loom. Hexagonal arrangements are not discussed, but the article outlines how to achieve any of the other 12 plane symmetries by manipulating the threading, tie-up and treadling. Only four shafts are required. Since western use of symmetry emhasizes the bilateral, I think it's interesting to know how to create rotations and glides in fabric structure, not just reflections. It can lead to fabrics with a familiar feel, but surprising details.

stick your fingers in

Last week's weaving lesson. (I am not the lovely blonde). It got me to thinking about weaving much more. Over the weekend I was tempted to wind a warp, but I don't think I'd even get it threaded before I go away. So I got out this instead, from several years ago:

It's cotton gauze, 2x2 alternating crossings. Apparently I was experimenting with patterning with holes, by switching from 2x2 to 1x1 and back. One of the nice things about working with gauze is that the threads are widely spaced, so changing sheds takes no effort, in contrast to woolen warp-faced fabrics.

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?

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?

another lucky day

on which I saw far too many fascinating things to describe in the few minutes before I tear myself away from the computer and head outdoors. I'll just throw out a few teasers:

--gauze as the basis for embroidery. Imagine a ground of 1x1 leno, warp and weft spaced so as to leave approximately square holes... now imagine weaving through that ground cloth with colored threads of your choice. Even changing the texture by the direction in which you weave the colors.
--complementary weft. How do you do it?
--warp-faced stripes; leno stripes; overspun weft. Add color, play with stripe proportions--leno stripes providing transluscency, warp faced stripes adding substance. Endless possibilities.
--Allover 1x1 leno looks very different when made with plied & balanced yarns. Hmm.
--Large warp crossings (say, 4x4 or 6x6) can make a sweet and subtle pattern on a plain weave ground cloth. There are no restrictions on how many of them can go vertically or horizontally so any design would be possible (unlike, for instance, fair isle knitting which can be plotted out on squares but in which you want to avoid long floats). Go to your favorite book of charted patterns, there are hundreds of gauze experiments waiting to be woven. Tea towels anyone? Oh, but let me ask first-- will this technique lead to ripples in the cloth?

Still to come: ancient workbasket.

This weekend's textile endeavors: complementary warp weave sample. Baby blanket border. Industry will be rewarded because if I work *very* hard, I may next week get to sew something summery for my ***vacation***!

unseen efforts

Summer is almost here. I struggled with an intense writing project over the weekend and I have only one more to do and then-- bliss. In spite of gorgeous weather and other preoccupations (Archie Goodwin), there has in fact been a little bit of textile activity going on. I've been creating examples of various peruvian weave structures in coarse cotton thread. Next week I am giving a short workshop about textiles and my hope is that these examples will help people be able to see what is actually going on in the cloth-- thus why it is so amazing. So far I've done balanced plain weave (most of the audience will be non-weavers, so we'll start simple), warp and weft faced pw, supplementary weft, gauze, and doubleweave. These are small samples with thick thread so they go susprisingly quickly. I wind the "warp" over a small wooden frame, the kind that could be used to stretch canvas for painting. The weft is inserted with a needle, so it's not true weaving, but I have found it surprisingly relaxing. It is also comforting to know that I can reproduce all these structures without the help of heddles; working thread by thread, you really have to know what each one is supposed to do, you can't rely on having set the loom up correctly. The plain weaves were simple of course but I was a little unsure about recreating doubleweave this way until I tried it. I am now reassured.

It's quite likely that there are very few people who care as much about textile structure as I do. But I get asked on average once every two weeks "what's the difference between complementary weave and double weave?" or "why is it complementary and not supplementary?" I won't detail the (ahem) discussions I've had trying to convince people by asking "well, if it's supplementary, where's the ground cloth?" Oh, it must be in there somewhere, is the usual reply. Right. Anyway-- I hope these large-scale examples will help clear up some of the confusion. Doubleweave. Makes a pocket. Stick your finger between the layers. See?

service!

I ordered a new warping board from WEBS on Tuesday afternoon... I just got a delivery from them and unless I am very much mistaken, it's the warping board! Already! WEBS has always given me good service, but this is incredible. No special shipping was requested. I'm surprised it could get here so fast. Now I have no more excuses for a naked loom.

Speaking of weaving stuff, if you haven't checked out Ralph Griswold's digital archives recently, do so with all due speed. I've been out of the loop on these things for a while and when I visited the site the other day I was stunned at the amount of precious references available there. Invaluable. Many sincere thanks to Ralph for creating and maintaining this site.

we are dry

The scarf with handspun green cotton weft is fully finished. This article was last seen here wet, just out of the first washing. Since then it has survived several rainstorms and more washings. It happened to be dry this morning and I thought I'd better take a picture while it was in that state, since with spring and all, it's hard to count on keeping dampness and bedraggledness at bay. It's still not crinkling at all, but the texture is lovely. Softer than the hard-twisted two ply commercial cotton. I'd love to be able to weave with all handspun cotton singles-- imagine what a luxuriously snuggly fabric that would be! I think I may have to get texsolv heddles first. The thought of subjecting those handspun yarns to metal heddle eyes brings frightening images of threads snapping here there and everywhere. I've heard of people weaving cotton with sizing and without, and I am undecided. I'd probably try without first, just to make sure it's worth the extra trouble.

Here's another view, a little closer. The first week this was finished I wore it every day, I like it so much. There was a lot of grief in my life while it was on the loom, entirely unrelated to its construction, and it is nice to feel that the textile can survive such adversity. Perhaps for that reason I find it comforting to wrap around my neck.

Now the loom is empty and I'm hoping to do a surge of spring sewing in the studio. And then maybe fabric for a bathrobe, and some linen towels. I have some skeins of yellow and orange cotton slub which I dyed over Christmas break; they should weave up into a cuddly bright fabric for a kimono-style robe. Speaking of warping, today I ordered a warping board. A replacement for the one whose peg broke so inconveniently while I was making my last warp. Ugh. I truly hope this one is sturdier. I'm getting a McMorran balance too.

I saw a few looms at MDSW. Fireside FiberArts was there, showing a floor loom and a vertical tapestry loom. Their looms are very beautiful, but only go up to 8 shafts, or so I was told. They sell my favorite end-feed shuttles too, which I always knew as Bluster Bay shuttles-- boy am I glad I bought mine years ago! They are more than $70 now. Yikes. I will protect my two carefully. I had a chance to try a Kessenich loom. Oddly enough, I'd never heard of this company before. The looms seem very sturdy, very heavy, and they work well. Again though, maximum of 8 shafts. What I need is a serious 16 - 24 shaft loom, countermarche, very sturdy, double back beam, that does not require a computer to run. That is, has real treadles-- yes, even though 16 or 24 treadles be required. LeClerc used to make one and the last conference I went to they said no, all their looms with more than 8 are computer driven. I may end up buying a Glimakra or Toika. Bringing myself back down to earth, I realize that such a loom would not fit in my condo, even if I could get it up the stairs in bits and pieces. A larger house will have to come first. But it's not a bad thing to have long-term goals in mind.

books don't count

or What I Bought At MDSW. My friend June was admirable. She reminded me of my resolve and set a good example. While we were cruising the booths together I spent almost nothing.

After we separated, the story was a little different. From left to right you see cormo/silk roving, 90/10. The cormo was so bouncy I couldn't resist. Then 4 oz of bamboo. I love cellulose fibers; I'm very curious about this. At first twist it feels a little like linen. I'd guess it dyes wonderfully, may have to try that too. Finally some corrieadale something or other cross rats I am so bad with remembering sheep breeds-- part of a silver fleece overdyed teal. The color called to me. A pound of it made it home squished into my suitcase-- enough for a sweater probably. I hope. All in all, moderate stash enhancement.

But how can a woman resist enlarging her library? Especially when weaving books are so hard to find and so rare and go out of print so fast and then become impossible to acquire? You'll notice I did get the Deb Menz book-- I haven't had a chance to browse it yet but I'm likely to have opinions when I do. The Peggy Osterkamp warping books, which have been on the To Buy list for several years now; a book on doubleweave and one on tablet woven images (with lots of charts! hooray!) Finally a new book on two-stranded knitting. The lady in the Yarn Barn booth recommended it for structure people, so I decided to chance it. In flipping through I noticed it does at least mention S and Z twist and the differences in knitting with them, a good sign. Now all I need is a week on a remote island, to absorb all this fine literature.

Spinners, what do you do with 4 oz of fiber? I think I collect so much fiber because I'm used to thinking I need a pound or more to make anything significant. What can I do with 4 oz of cormo roving? A very fine lace scarf?