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It is such a comfort to be able to talk in my own language to the people at the Weavers’ Centre. Even though all my terminology comes from the Internet and is therefore in English, unlike my previous hobbies of knitting and crochet, there is a much stronger tradition of weaving in this part of the country, and therefore I don’t feel like I’m talking in tongues to an uncomprehending audience.
The trainer asked me what I wanted to learn and I was struck dumb, but finally told him I wanted to practice working on floor looms. So tomorrow, hopefully, I will start working on a sampler.
My Flickr stream has many photos, but I shall give you a teaser:
This is likely the loom I shall work on. And perhaps have built.
I visited the government’s Weavers’ Service Centre yesterday and hope to go for a two week or longer course, which they hold for a very affordable fee. This photo shows a stall the Centre had at the National Handloom Expo I went to in January. An ikat warp was being wound on the loom.
I have my eye on a loom made in the Netherlands, which will cost more than a small car after accounting for shipping. Half my mind finds it worth the expense, egged on by the forums on Ravelry. Illogical lust, you know. The sort of thing that years later, you cringe to remember and wonder how your mind deceived you so much.
The other half of my mind cautions against extravagant (in many senses) impulse, and argues that I should not apply first world criteria to my second world hobbies, and what if I don’t want to weave any more a few years from now? I’d be left with a white elephant.
The Weavers’ Service Centre has a carpenter who’s offered to build me the loom I want. It will be a fraction of the cost. And there will always be spare parts easily available. It might not have the polish or finesse of the foreign loom, though, and would that make it difficult for me to work on, as a novice?
There’s a new little devil in my head whispering, “Get both”.
Today I gave my daughter a small synthesiser that my father brought me back from a trip to the US in the 1980s. She has her own toy piano, but I haven’t brought it with me to Hyderabad. We got her batteries, and she enjoyed playing with it. Picking out tunes and notes.
Since the advent of Ravelry, I’ve been using it for notes on all my projects, so there is something for me to refer to when I get around to finishing a project, as well as notes for someone else who might make something similar or use similar materials. Sometimes I feel almost like a pioneer, since not everyone who’s gone ahead of me has left notes.
Sometimes it’s nice to be able to hand down notes.
Some time ago I wove with some gifted yarn (yarn gifted to me, not that it was exceptionally talented :p) I was trying a new technique on my table loom (Ashford, 8H, 24″) and found that the yarn was turning my loom pink. But I got a feel of the technique (overshot), and I turned that into a cushion cover (it barely fit).
Then a friend saw it and asked me to make her a few covers. With complete freedom to choose colours. I decided to use black for background, with five different colours, and the undulating twill draft.
I haven’t been able to find a source of cotton yarn that will sell me quantities suited for my limited use. So I chose Anchor knitting cotton, which isn’t a very economical choice, but the only feasible one, since most of the colours don’t run.
I underestimated the shrinkage from weaving and from washing, so I had to add commercial fabric to make the sizes my friend wanted. It was nevertheless an interesting experience and I loved how the fabric looked on the loom.
My friend seems to be happy with them. What struck me as strange later was that I didn’t choose any colours in the blue spectrum. Perhaps because the inspiration was in the red-ochre range? There was the green, though.
The sewing machine and I aren’t really friends, although we are on speaking terms. I’m happy if I can sew a straight seam most of the time. But I do prefer machine sewing to a needle and thread any day.
I have sewn some things for my daughter, and a few cushion covers etc. but it was a huge leap from those to quilting. The occasion of a friend having twin daughters seemed a good time to start, especially when someone pointed me to a shop in Chennai that sold jelly rolls, which I’ve been drooling over for ages but found too expensive to buy from abroad… In fact, I was so impatient to begin that while waiting for my order to be delivered, I went ahead and chopped up and sewed some fabric I had on hand.
In my last post but one I was talking about slippery slopes, wasn’t I? And left you without explaining what I meant.
I was referring to this stole I made. I had some balls of rayon that Jaishree gifted me, which were sources of amazement to me primarily because of the fact that they stayed rolled. I find the yarn so slippery I cannot manage to roll it from a hank, yet she actually Read the rest of this entry »
… who found his one and only garment (or perhaps he had a spare one) was getting chewed up by rats. So he got himself a cat to take care of the rodents. Then he found he needed to feed the cat something other than its prey, so he bought a cow for milk. Then he found the cow needed husbanding, so…. he got himself a wife.
There ended his hermitism. (In my nonexistent Sanskrit, that would be kaupina samrakshinanaam ayam patatopaha – I’m guessing that phrase says what I mean, forgive me if I’ve got it wrong).
So I had a small hobby. Then I bought yarn for it. Then I bought tools for it. Then I joined a forum. Then I got even more tools for it and patterns, inspired by the forum. Then I made a whole load of unusable things. Then I got more yarn.
At this point, a sane person would have quietly disposed of their yarn and tool stash and taken up Yoga or something. Read the rest of this entry »
Wishing my readers the very best of the season and a happy and safe 2013.
I hope I will blog more next year than I did this. Oh, and I will be warped 😉
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
swakrta.com 