geringsing from Tenganan

Years ago i took the epitome of a weaving trip as i went to Bali. Every activity during my stay was textile oriented and whatever else happened, well, it happened and was extra. i had done a lot of reading beforehand including re reading that gem of a book The Dyer's Art by Larsen. Published in 1976 (wow! that long ago!) it was my first educated encounter with dyeing and pattern making.

During the trip i was fortunate to visit many ateliers and take slides of the different textile processes such as weaving, dyeing, batik, plangi, which is akin to tie dye, ikat and the king- double ikat. i had an urge to see the double ikats of Tenganan as the books mentioned it was a dying -note the spelling- :) craft

We left Ubud our home base, and headed to Candidasa beach which was close to Tenganan.
It was a pleasant motorbike ride from the the hotel in Candidasa to the village of Tenganan where the Aga people live and weave. Tenganan is very picturesque and still maintains old traditions like closing the town gates and the wonderfully colored roosters. There are lots of artisans still carrying on traditional crafts and living with very few concessions to modernity.

My interest was weaving, but was pleasantly surprised with the gorgeous basketry and purchased some.
Purchases are carried the old way, slowly and over numerous cups of tea. Bargaining is expected and not doing it is an act of rudeness. i could not bring myself to haggle over the prices which were far more than reasonable, but had to show good breeding.

i visited a family atelier and they were kind enough to let me take slides of the whole process as they were dyeing and preparing a warp. i got detailed explanations of every step of the process and they answered all my questions. Even the dumb ones like where do you buy your dyes especially the indigo. That one in particular caused a lot of giggling and i was showed to the backyard where indigo plants grew almost wild! Next day the man was at my hotel with a bagful of indigo leaves that unfortunately i had to leave behind. i still have not recovered from that.

From the family i bought the double ikat which illustrates this post. It was an old shroud woven for a member of the family that for some reason had not been used so it remained uncut. It is woven in relatively thick, about size 20, Indonesian grown cotton and dyed in vegetable dyes whose original names i can't recall.

i also fell in love with the most beautiful textile object i had ever seen so far. This warp chain with a bamboo leaf heddle bar. Each warp thread is picked by a continuous thread forming heddles and the threads in turn are picked by the bamboo leaf. Even the garish acrylic tie yarn adds to the piece. Beauty in simplicity.

i went crazy buying textiles in Bali. As the Balinese are genetically incapable of bad taste even goods for the tourist trade are attractive and not blatant. The rest of the production starts quickly getting star ratings. If you see something that makes you frown chances are that there is a foreigner running the business and the Balinese being directed in their production.

My husband got hit by the textile fever too and had some shirts made from beautiful cotton silk ikat fabrics that he picked himself. The beauty is that we still wear those clothes. And i cherish my ikat fabrics.
If one summer during a trip you see a lady wearing an ikat sarong do come and say hi. :)

neki desu

city girl goes wild

This is what happens when a city girl goes to a roseraie.Wild in the park.
i spent May day at the Cervantes Park in Barcelona.
The day was glorious and i made some interesting discoveries.

There was a David Austin in the 1950 who was responsible for the English rose varieties. That in itsef did not call my attention. What i found interesting was the list of names he had called his flowers. Lots of Shakespeare characters, literary heroes and heroines, English expressions such as cottage house and country living8 i could almost see the chintz LOL!) and one that made me think that he was putting his botanical expertise to the service of patriotism ;This scepter'd Island. i am aware it is a poem, but a highly patriotic one isn't it?

i love climbers most of all, and the chinese and noisette varieties are my favorites.
The flowers are small and in clusters and remind me of the roses that embellished walled gardens in the early 1900's.
i also like single roses.

When in presence of a rose bush everybody young, old, male, female stoops to smell it. A Pavlov reaction.
Also in presence of roses everybody acts as a retired golden ager :) :)

There are roses that mask themselves in to something else. i saw a cabbage wanna be, a clematis wanna be and a peony wanna be.

i found a rose darker than Guinee which was the darkest i had ever seen and i also found a violet blue one. Almost like a jackmanii clematis.

Roses need sun. Provided it is northen Europe sun. They fry on the plant over here.
Speaking of sun, i need to go back in late afternoon as the sun was too bright and the photos didn't come out to my liking. Not even after Photoshoping them to death.

If you ever come to Barcelona and like roses plan your trip for late April or early May and save half a day for the park. You will not be disappointed.


neki desu

sometimes , not always, it pays to be bored

After all that weaving activity the inevitable crash down and bored syndrome kicked in. Being totally uninspired i took on menial tasks such as ironing and trying to organize chaos, but that was no help for boredom. On the contrary it aggravated it.
i was working on the contents of a drawer and found this gingham material that i had been shuffling around because i really hated it as it was a poly cotton blend. Being a fiber snob i had worked a bit with it mainly using it as a base for needlefelting and that's how far it had gone.

Nothing to lose here and as i've found that's really liberating. i also had a batch of pigment i had mixed with Golden Soft Gel Medium and GAC 900. Noticed the frequency of hot pink in my work lately?

i started mindlessly dabbing the pigment on the hated gingham and to speed up drying i used the heat gun. i knew the poly would react to the heat, but what i found was that where there was pigment it acted as a resist.
Was it actually the pigment?

Control experiment showed that it was not the pigment, but the gel. Hope you can see the effect in the above photo. It was printed in a twill pattern:) using a square sponge stamp and soft gel medium.

What i've found:

• contrary to common advice waggling the heat gun gives more control
  
• zapping from a grater distance than usual prevents scorching the fabric
• i've only tested a poly cotton blend other fabrics need to be tested to see
  
• if the process works
• color can be added to the gel medium thus getting a two for one effect
• speculating here- perhaps using a thicker gel might give a clearer resist .

If you take from here and experiment further please report. i'd really appreciate it.

i think this qualifies for April TIF don't you? :) Can you list all the changes?

neki desu

how to avoid carpal tunnel

i dislike twisting fringes as much as i dislike taking up hems. Especially when there are gazillion and a half very thin silk threads to twist together.
i have a manual twister and that was a lot better than nothing, but still time time consuming and stressful on my wrists.
Some time ago i located the hair braider pictured here and my life changed. Seriously.
It is one of the best gadgets i have, rival to my bread making machine.

Being battery operated the fringe twisting process, which is not a very creative one, is brushed out of the way pronto. The wear and tear on the wrist tendons is also minimised, and you notice no discomfort after a marathon session.

Operation is simple.
Take 2 bouts and secure them with the end clips, then push the button down and twist the bouts until they start curling on themselves. Then push the button up and the bouts ply on to each other. Finish by unclipping them and tyeing a knot at the end.
However, i find that for fine yarns i first twist and then secure both bouts to the same clip and ply the 2 bouts together, thus getting an untwist proof braid.
Do yourself a favor and get a braider.

Life is good :)

neki desu

finished

Shawl is already finished, with fringe twisted and all. How's that for a happy dance? Or two.
i'm very pleased with it because it was sheer joy to weave as the silk behaved, no broken threads and no problems. And i was weaving on a table loom!

Strange how actually manipulating the structure makes you more aware of what it does.

i'm also happy because the shawl came out looking like what i wanted, something simple and understated. It is very light, sheer and crisp, if you can tell from the photo. Feels as if one has wrapped oneself with a cloud.
The indigo dyed weft plays with the gold and brown from the kakishibu creating a bit of iridescence. The yarn irregularities and slubs add some sort of rustic charm.

Now i only need to go out this weekend and show off :)

neki desu

fujiro

Five dips in shikon and i only have fujiro, this light lilac gray.
i'm aiming for benikyou that beautiful, rich, dark purple. How many more dips?
How much patience?

neki desu

just another manic sunday

Have seven things/projects going at once. i'm on my last twenty centimetres of my weaving, started reeding for a loom controlled shibori, this time cotton. Dyeing two warp chains with shikon a.k.a.murasaki , two pieces of fabric already screen printed and batching, another already batched and waiting for some finishing touches and two more heat gun victims. Not to mention the dress i want to make.
As the saying goes, when it rains it pours.
In the middle of this frenzy i just happened to remember a passing comment on the rose photo that said it looked photoshoped.
Well, let's try that. By duplicating it and creating a contact sheet and then layers and filters and..and..

i got up to here

Warhol, but not quite.

i had downloaded a Warhol action, but half of the commands are in French and i haven't looked carefully at what they do in order to translate them and make them operative. Don't really know if that would work. Anyone out there reading this that has some insight?

i remember SharonB had a link to an application that warholized photos, but i got lost looking for it.

Anyhow since it's all out there i googled and got this link with a nice little application. Don't know if this is what Sharon mentioned. However, it's cool.
Uploaded the same picture and the application took care of the rest. One can even re shuffle until one likes the result.
Then one can save it to one's hard disk.

This is the result.
What do you think? Enjoy being Andy Warhol for fifteen minutes :)

Back to the loom. And have to check the dye pot too.

neki desu

Rain!

i hardly ever talk about the weather as life's too short to engage in futile talk. However this morning i woke up to a downpour.It's such a big deal because we are facing water restriction measures due to the drought. That means no dyeing folks and taking birdie like showers.
i rushed outside, camera in hand, and captured the first rose of the season haughtily flaunting raindrops on its petals. This rainfall won't drive restrictions away, but it will at least give the poor plants a break.

On to textiles. im going through this restrained beauty phase and take a look at the fabric i found.
Do not tell me it is not restrained beauty? A double weave fawn colored cotton fabric creating small pockets. The right boro touch,simple obasan charm with the pockets looking like mended fabric
i had woven this structure in a non utilitarian series and now i'm going to make a dress with this fabric. An A line over the knee number with a narrow stand up collar, something very Jackie Kennedy:)

neki desu

Enter TIF

i have been joyously weaving away and thinking-that's what i do when i weave- of changes but in the way of transformations. What it means, ways to carry out transformation, how those thoughts can be put into practice on textiles. Textiles per se are transformation moguls, from seed to cloth, from, grass to fur to yarn to cloth, from worm to yarn to cloth. Not to mention the vile synthetics, all those CHs and OHs chained together.

As weaver by trade and a purist at soul i fiercely resisted synthetics. But then a heat gun crossed my path and melted away my resistance. i don't think i'll ever weave with synthetics, but as far as transforming them into something else... Well what can i say?

Here's this week's TIF exercise, a heat shaped polyester organza island with plowed fields, rocks, hills and bays.
Quite impossible to fashion with cotton fabric, dont you agree?

neki desu

weaving on a table loom

Had not used the table loom in a long while,charmed by my dobby loom. And the thing is that it is not a hassle weaving on it. Actually, it has a very good shed, better than the dobby.Evidently it is not meant for complex weaving,or complex repeats.But for straightforward patters it is a 12 shaft beauty.

The silk yarn that has given me headaches in the past is behaving well here. Perhaps it is because of the dyeing, but on second thought this had also been dyed although not with natural dyes.
Silk here was dyed with kakishibu(persimmon) mordanted with alum and iron thus getting a coppery brown and dark chocolate brown. The blue is ai(indigo) in two values the warp a lighter blue, faded denim, than the weft.

It is a very unpretentious crepe weave, Oelsner's 867 that will give a soft texture after wet finished.
It is sheer joy to weave this wabi stole, simple, unasuming, the quality of the yarn doing all the speaking.
Restrained beauty.

neki desu