Swahaste tvahastam (from my hands to yours)
Weaving training during the day. Work in the evenings and late night. Meeting and setting up meetings with old friends. Watching Mighty Raju: Rio Calling directed by one of those old friends. Concert by Malladi Brothers.
Calluses on feet from treadling floor loom. Catching up on reading.
I finally got to weave at the centre, but I spent the best part of several days just sitting and watching while the oldest employee fiddled with the cords on the treadles and lamms that were being set into the frame of what had been a jacquard loom. I am very bad at sitting doing absolutely nothing watching a very slow and repetitive task being carried out by someone else.
I am almost convinced now that if I acquire a floor loom, it must be something that caters to the gadget queen in me… As a hobby weaver, I’m not sure I want to spend days in just setting up to weave. So that means that expensive to buy and expensive to ship foreign loom. Then also, sometimes it is like a brief glimmer of light in dense fog, and I wonder if I need another loom at all. After all, I don’t live in a land of hobby weavers who’d gladly take a white elephant off my hands if I find out it’s not for me. There isn’t a market for highly polished highly priced looms…
But then I come back home and read the forums and the fog closes in again.
Unfortunately the warp I’ve been given to work samples on is painted for ikat. Not good for showing textural patterns.
The other thing I noticed is that the figures in a government office are like toys that only move when you’re watching. You leave at the end of the day and come back the next morning, and things are exactly where you left them, and the people are picking up where you last saw them. I think there’s a term for such reality, but it doesn’t feel like real time.
This evening I met some of my oldest friends, at very short notice. The weather during the day here is hot, but in the evenings it turns cool and cloudy. We even had pre-monsoon showers a couple of days ago.
I met my girl classmates at the weekend over a lunch so protracted it almost turned into tea. Only about half of those in our Whatsapp group actually turned up. Something similar tonight, when I met boys from kindergarten. I studied in the same school from nursery to 12th, and unbelievably, still have good friends from then. But I always feel we make friends much more easily the younger we are.
I still haven’t woven, but I’m getting up a list of things I want to try, and things I want to have made for me. Weaving accessories. No half measures when you’re having a midlife spree of madness, right?
And I’m making those connections, for future use. For yarn or for yarning.
Whenever I come home to Hyderabad I try and meet as many of my friends as are here. Having several ways of contacting people nowadays can make this easier, or harder. Not everyone is on all social networks, and it can get confusing to remember what information you’ve passed on where.
However, we did manage to meet today, 7 of us from school, with some of our children over a very protracted lunch. Much laughter and many memories.
And a cake to celebrate 25 years of… Something 🙂
Actually I haven’t done any weaving yet at the centre. Today I studied a book in Telugu that teaches theory. It’s a very different feeling to be doing a craft that actually has terminology in my mother tongue. I copied down a glossary. Proof that weaving goes back a longer time than knitting or crochet in this part of the country, at least.
I got to see pictures of the latest loom that the carpenter built for someone. He was also able to give me an estimate for the size of loom I want. He will build it with teak.
I did throw a shuttle, but an empty one, just to see how far my arms would reach. I don’t think I can cope with a throw shuttle for any wider than about 35″, but the loom that will be built will have a fly shuttle mechanism. The only problem then is that that will add a few more feet to the footprint of the loom.
This will anyway be longer than the David, because that’s how these looms are, and it will be countermarche. The plan is for me to learn all about tie-ups, since those are the weighty part of the theory. Back to school on Monday.
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.
Any traveller on Indian Railways will know there is crochet on the train. Bottle holders in the AC coaches are made by hooks. As I travelled to Hyderabad last night, I noticed this:
I think that phone camera photo is too dark, but that holder can no longer hold a bottle. It is, in effect, bottomless. And thus, paradoxically, filled with nothing.
Before leaving, I managed to pick up that final (as in currently available to me) hank and managed a few more squares. When I stopped, I had this:
Likely if I had started a little earlier, I’d have finished this too. This square and half of another, I reckon.
Question to my readers. I’m writing these posts on my iPad. And uploading smallish images. What is the quality of these pictures that you see on your screens?
We moved a month ago. In Bombay we haven’t got a house yet, so most of our luggage is cling film wrapped, corrugated cardboard protected and in a garage.
I fully intended to carry my ASIL with me, but in an evil moment, gave it to be packed. I only have some 4-ply acrylic and a crochet hook. And have been making relentless grannies. So much so that ennui has hit. And I decided not to do anything about finishing off the last hank. Nevertheless I shall not be carrying the project with me to Hyderabad, where I am going tomorrow.
The project began with this.
It does not feel very harmonious yet. I wonder how it will turn out.
It will be mostly a join-as-you-go project, but for portability I decided I’d make all the squares from four of the hanks. Which I’ve almost done. Except I ran out of steam on the last hank, and made only three or four.
I bought some weaving videos from interweave, and watching is making my hands itch and my heart burn to get weaving. No idea when that will be.
swakrta.com 