Just what I need
... another loom!
I've been away from my beautiful 4-harness Wolf-pup since December. Sometimes I've missed the weaving terribly. But a walking loom on the boat would be terribly impractical, and I really prefer that to any sort of tabletop loom, and besides the wood would swell ... I've made lots of excuses to myself, and put up with deprivation as well as may be.
Next week I head home. Or rather: in 7 days I leave Guatemala. A few days in California (during which I will be far too busy to weave, booked into a group project from 6 am to 8 pm daily). And then home. So only 6 or 7 more days to miss weaving.
This, no doubt, is why yesterday I bought a backstrap loom.
Josephina, a Guatemalan Mayan lady who lives the other side of San Antonio from Rio Dulce where I am, comes on Thursdays to sell the richly woven cloth of her village. It all looks like embroidery, with hand-laid patterns of extra weft above the tight, dense weave of the underlying cloth. Last week I bought a tablecloth, a scarf, a table runner from her ... oh, and a bottle carrier because it was so perfect I could hardly resist. While we were talking about her wares -- in my absolutely minimal Spanish and her fairly limited English, with lots of gestures -- I asked questions about how the work was made. Next thing you know she was calling over someone who might translate -- next jueves (Thursday) she would be back, and would bring a loom from her pueblo.
So yesterday she was back, her table full of goods arrayed as before. I came over to see her and she showed me what she'd brought -- a backstrap loom strung in a beautiful blue thread, with just a few inches worked warp. Already I could see the beginnings of the butterfly design. She led me to a tree by the hammock. "This is good, yes?" She tied the end bar of her loom to the tree above our heads, and then knelt on a cloth on the ground, the weaving in her lap. She tied a broad lozenge of woven rope to the other end bar and then pulled the resulting loop over her head and down her body, like putting on a teeshirt. She settled the rope seat behind the seat of her skirt and sat back on her heels. Presto, the warp was tensioned just right.
She wove for half an hour, demonstrating the rhythm, noticing each time I looked at something more closely, turning the loom to show me more clearly, or moving more slowly so I could see. And then she said something that I thought meant 'do you want to try it?' I said yes, but we didn't change places. In a few more minutes she had to go back to her table, customers coming. She stood and rolled up the loom.
I thought I had received a wonderful demonstration and wondered how I would repay her kindness -- should I now buy something else? or could I buy her lunch? And at just that moment she turned to me and indicated the loom, the part-woven cloth, the basket of spools of thread for it, and said "Good price for you?" Eventually we settled on a good price, and she made it clear that she had brought this loom to sell to me if I wanted it. Probably she made the warp for the express purpose of selling it to me, choosing a pattern that matched the runner I had already bought, so I'd have something to copy.
I feel silly, still, in a couple of ways. If I'd only realized the loom was for sale before she stopped weaving, I would have tried it there and then and let her correct my technique. If I'd only waited another week I could be home with the loom that's waiting for me, its warp already strung for my next project.
But not very far under that minor self-judgment is a lovely ecstatic enthusiasm: Yippee, I've got a loom I can use on the boat! Yippee I've got a loom that will travel! Yippee! Yippee!
And -- I've tried it out, and there are only two questions I haven't figured out answers to yet, and neither will be pressing for several hours of weaving (if they don't become obvious anyway). I love my new loom!
I've been away from my beautiful 4-harness Wolf-pup since December. Sometimes I've missed the weaving terribly. But a walking loom on the boat would be terribly impractical, and I really prefer that to any sort of tabletop loom, and besides the wood would swell ... I've made lots of excuses to myself, and put up with deprivation as well as may be.
Next week I head home. Or rather: in 7 days I leave Guatemala. A few days in California (during which I will be far too busy to weave, booked into a group project from 6 am to 8 pm daily). And then home. So only 6 or 7 more days to miss weaving.
This, no doubt, is why yesterday I bought a backstrap loom.
Josephina, a Guatemalan Mayan lady who lives the other side of San Antonio from Rio Dulce where I am, comes on Thursdays to sell the richly woven cloth of her village. It all looks like embroidery, with hand-laid patterns of extra weft above the tight, dense weave of the underlying cloth. Last week I bought a tablecloth, a scarf, a table runner from her ... oh, and a bottle carrier because it was so perfect I could hardly resist. While we were talking about her wares -- in my absolutely minimal Spanish and her fairly limited English, with lots of gestures -- I asked questions about how the work was made. Next thing you know she was calling over someone who might translate -- next jueves (Thursday) she would be back, and would bring a loom from her pueblo.
So yesterday she was back, her table full of goods arrayed as before. I came over to see her and she showed me what she'd brought -- a backstrap loom strung in a beautiful blue thread, with just a few inches worked warp. Already I could see the beginnings of the butterfly design. She led me to a tree by the hammock. "This is good, yes?" She tied the end bar of her loom to the tree above our heads, and then knelt on a cloth on the ground, the weaving in her lap. She tied a broad lozenge of woven rope to the other end bar and then pulled the resulting loop over her head and down her body, like putting on a teeshirt. She settled the rope seat behind the seat of her skirt and sat back on her heels. Presto, the warp was tensioned just right.
She wove for half an hour, demonstrating the rhythm, noticing each time I looked at something more closely, turning the loom to show me more clearly, or moving more slowly so I could see. And then she said something that I thought meant 'do you want to try it?' I said yes, but we didn't change places. In a few more minutes she had to go back to her table, customers coming. She stood and rolled up the loom.
I thought I had received a wonderful demonstration and wondered how I would repay her kindness -- should I now buy something else? or could I buy her lunch? And at just that moment she turned to me and indicated the loom, the part-woven cloth, the basket of spools of thread for it, and said "Good price for you?" Eventually we settled on a good price, and she made it clear that she had brought this loom to sell to me if I wanted it. Probably she made the warp for the express purpose of selling it to me, choosing a pattern that matched the runner I had already bought, so I'd have something to copy.
I feel silly, still, in a couple of ways. If I'd only realized the loom was for sale before she stopped weaving, I would have tried it there and then and let her correct my technique. If I'd only waited another week I could be home with the loom that's waiting for me, its warp already strung for my next project.
But not very far under that minor self-judgment is a lovely ecstatic enthusiasm: Yippee, I've got a loom I can use on the boat! Yippee I've got a loom that will travel! Yippee! Yippee!
And -- I've tried it out, and there are only two questions I haven't figured out answers to yet, and neither will be pressing for several hours of weaving (if they don't become obvious anyway). I love my new loom!