Another giant improvement included replacing my broomstick backstrap loom with the real thing—a genuine backstrap loom from Guatemala. Actually I received two in the mail in a surprise package from my friend Karen Piegorsch, the founder of Synergo Arts. She had purchased them in the Chichicastenango market several years ago, knew of my beginning attempts, and sent them to me. The wood is lighter weight than the broomstick wood, the beaters (swords) work better than the ruler I was using, and I feel more in tune with the whole world of wonderful weavers who use simple sticks to create items of incredible intricacy and beauty.

Two Guatemalan backstrap looms

My next project was a slightly more complex pebble weave band. Still only 16 warps wide, it presented some new challenges in picking up the pattern. And I still haven’t mastered setting up the loom with ease. Yesterday I finished yet another more complex pebble weave band. This time it is twice as wide with a more complex pattern. But there is much yet to learn. And today I will continue the trip.

               

Intrigued by their intricate designs, I have been in pursuit of the techniques that they use. I have found sources that have led me to experiment with their patterns on a floor loom. But finally I have progressed backwards and discovered the backstrap loom.

At this point I need to give credit to Laverne Waddington, currently from Bolivia, who has finally revealed the many nuances that this simple, incredible, device has to offer. She has provided a link, electronically, to the wisdom of the people—past and present—who create beauty from what they have in hand and what they have learned from the ancestors.

All of this leads up to my first backstrap project. A broken broom handle and a few dowels (along with Laverne’s excellent tutorials and ebook) helped me put together a backstrap loom. I have just made a simple band in Peruvian pebble weave. I have learned a lot. I am using an old pillowcase as my backstrap, but my next project will be to weave a backstrap to replace this make-do backstrap on, what else? My backstrap loom, of course!

Words cannot describe how many things have gone wrong. Threading errors, sleying errors, breakage, tangles from unbalanced twist, too many warp chains because I ran short of warp, and anything else you can think of has plagued this misguided idea. I am too stubborn to give up. At last the warp is wound and I am now weaving.

My new best friend is fabric glue which I am using regularly when the slubby ply of the warp breaks behind the reed. Every few inches I stop, pull the broken ply forward through the reed and glue it firmly to the other ply. But I persevere. I will see this through!

September 20, 2011 – Dog Days

Off the loom and bathed, the dog was ready to be photographed today. It has a nice hand. We shall see what happens next.

Trying to learn a little about this weaving, I found an article by Doramay Keasbey in a Handwoven magazine from January/February 2000 that explained how to do Peruvian pebble weave on a floor loom (instead of the backstrap loom commonly used by Peruvian weavers). I put on a long warp and started weaving bookmarks.

I used the designs from the article and then branched out to try other possibilities. The bottom bookmark is from a Chinese lattice design. Lattices made from wood were used in window openings in China for many years and have been documented in a book I acquired some years ago. I also found a pre-Columbian Inca design, which is seen in the bookmark on the left.

Intrigued by this complex pick-up weave, I came across a recent publication by Laverne Waddington, a woman who lives in Bolivia with whom I had earlier corresponded about the ergonomic benches for backstrap weavers being developed by Synergo Arts. Laverne, who is from Australia, is a teacher of English and weaving who is doing an incredible job of learning, documenting, and teaching indigenous backstrap weaving. She has recently published an e-book through Weavezine on Andean Pebble Weave.

I think I see a backstrap loom in my future and further exploration of this and other pick up weaves. I just received the most recent Handwoven magazine (January/February 2011) with articles by both Doramay and Laverne on pick up weaves. Too much to do, too little time!

Living in the mountains, our electricity often disappears during the stormy winter months. It did today for the first time this year. A good alternative for illuminating important activities is the Bogo light, a solar powered flashlight with a bright LED bulb.

BOGO stands for Buy One, Give One. When you buy a flashlight, another one is sent to someone in the world who has no electricity.

Of course I use it only for important tasks like weaving, cooking, reading, and feeding the cat. Here it is suspended on a cord above my loom. I also have found that I can thread my raincoat sash through the loop at the top and hang it around my neck so I have light wherever I go. It has the additional advantage of being flat so it can be set on a surface and pointed in the right direction without rolling around. And an afternoon in the sunlight will charge it for a good six or seven hours worth of light. I love it.

Give Bogo lights as holiday presents. I did two Christmases ago. Here we all are with our Bogo lights.

My first tapestry was created for a mask exhibit for the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. The yin-yang woman measures 9×10.5 inches. One earring is a diamond, the other a dangling espresso pot.

For Carrie

Tapestry for Carrie

The second of my woven women was done in honor of a talented friend who died suddenly and prematurely from leukemia at age 53. Two bags of her beautiful thrums (for non-weavers: these are the leftover warp threads when a piece is taken off the loom) were left after a sale of items from her studio. I used them for this 11×11 inch tapestry woven in 2002. It is my first attempt at doing a tapestry from my own drawing.

Follow Your Star

Follow Your Star

A book of Chinese lattice designs gave me a starting point for the design of this tapestry, my first experiment in using my own handspun, hand-dyed yarns for tapestry. It measures 12×31 inches.

Ghost Ranch Tapestry

New Mexico tapestry

The WARP (Weave a Real Peace) annual meeting in 2000 was held at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. During one afternoon and evening at this beautiful spot I wove this 3.5×5.5 inch tapestry using the back of a small notebook as a cardboard loom.

Gringo Ganado

My mother and father spent their honeymoon in Arizona and New Mexico many years ago. They spent all of their money on two Navajo textiles and had only a crate of peaches to eat on the way home to Iowa. I have one of the textiles, a striped saddle blanket. The largest, a Ganado red, went to my brother. Although my rug is not as large and is not the same design as the one they bought, I made my first large Navajo piece, measuring 30×46 inches, in the Ganado style.

Nearly Navajo

Navajo-style rug

After following Noel Bennet’s instructions on building a loom and weaving in the Navajo style, I designed this 20×27.5 inch Navajo-style piece by looking at several catalogues of Navajo textiles.

Landscape

My mountains

This 14×17 inch imaginary landscape is somewhat evocative of my mountains with fog above the San Andreas Fault in the valley between our house and the next ridge. It was one of my first attempts at adding textured yarns and multiple strands in a tapestry.