Kitties and textiles of yore

While I was editing, I came across these old pictures of the dynamic duo assisting in the textile studio.

Just to show my helpers at work.

There was a Hajii Baba Rug Club presentation today by Jacqueline Simcox, researcher, writer and dealer in early Asian textiles, of which I selected a few images, the captions not needing any help from me. She wrote the book in the first slide.  

Many of the works she showed included pearl rondels - those circle shapes around the borders of a lot of Asian woven garments and hangings, and animals. 

There were interesting versions of lions by weavers who had probably never seen them, but, undaunted, they did them anyway. Their mythical animals such as dragons, including the five clawed imperial dragon, were more assured. 

wonderful rendering of flowers here

This is a meditative mandala

yellow being the imperial color, this was a court garment

and here a diagram for people unfamiliar with embroidery, of the stitches used in the last piece

The last piece is an archery armguard, probably only symbolic, maybe for funerary rites. Actual armguards would have been leather. This one depicts the winged horse Pegasus, made a thousand years after the story originated, this one even with the snake from which Pegasus was born.

A lot of color has faded, purple fading to brown, reds sometimes vanishing, but indigo tends to persist. Where pieces have been kept away from light, the colors are vivid, madder red included.

More humbly, my home cotton spinning is in progress. The last time I tried to spin cotton from, probably over processed, roving, it was impossible. 

Two other, more experienced, spinners had given up on it before it came to me. I ended up using it to stuff comfort dolls, since it was clean and nice to handle. 

But my own minimally processed cotton is working fine. The thread has nups here and there, little lumps, but I'm not going for perfection, to put it mildly.

Happy day, everyone.  

Very cold here, snow due tonight, meanwhile I'm making soup. Stock from veggie bits, potatoes, red lentils, later I'll blend, then add chicken bones from those thighs a couple of weeks ago, take them out,retrieving any meat, then add pasta. 

And I've been reading about Christianna  Brand for a while so I'm trying an e-book.

Stay warm if applicable, stand with Minnesota 

Sez Ted and Big Ursy 

Erasure and Persian rugs, Neighborhood Happenings

The Hajii Baba presentation today was a departure from their usual multi slide rug program. It was a scholarly examination of the colonialism and commodification the West has imposed on the art form of the Persian rug. 

This has also enabled the total erasure of identity or credit to the women and children who actually created the rugs, while the men who traded in them grew rich from the rug makers' poorly paid and unrecognized labor. Even Western photographers actually in the process of picturing women and children at work never got their names, just referring to them as "women at a loom" or in generic terms. 

It has also enabled a hierarchy of who has the authority to speak on the art form,  and who commodified it as a luxury item for Western prestigious customers. The notion of white supremacy underlay the assumption that colonial art was being  "rescued" by being taken from the land where it was created.

The pushback is under way, with scholars and others starting to acknowledge that the artisans should be recognized,  that Eastern cultures can curate their own art without  western input, and that there is gross disparity between artisan earnings and that of the middlemen and buyers of their work.

With that preamble, I think the slides speak for themselves.

This was a moving and well researched program, dealing with much more than the beauty of the rugs and the tradition. Politics and agency underlie it all. 

In other news, I finished the skirt!

Here it's completed and pressed

this is how I hem, so the stitches are invisible from the right side

and here you see the overlap at the side, plenty of coverage despite the slit

And this is how it works. Modeled over tights.  First fasten the back, bringing the straps to the front

then fasten the front, bringing the straps round the back.

I'm pleased with it, very nice body to the pleats, nice hang.

And here's the matching fabric I plan to make the pocket from, with the bias tape  for edging. You'll see. This is how the pocket looks

Also while I had a needle handy, I finally figured out how to fix this summer hat which is too big. I found it has this gingham ribbon attached only on one edge, inside the brim.

That was an easy fix. I stitched down the hem leaving a gap,  to create a casing, to thread elastic through, to draw in the brim. Done. Now it fits and I'm wondering why it took years to figure this out. 

In other happenings -- years ago a neighbor friend and I had a purely imaginary neighborhood newsletter, named H--- (name of development) Happenings. Whenever anything interesting happened, we'd check it as a possible feature in H---Happenings.

The latest Happening is the safe delivery of a grandchild to neighbor Gary, after his daughter's complicated pregnancy, mom and baby fine, older siblings very excited. It entailed her going for specialist care to a city hospital quite a distance away, her father going with her. 

He called me last evening,  to update me, and to ask me to coordinate moving two huge bookcases back into the house from the patio.  They were out in the fine weather,  being painted by contractor M.  Rain was in the forecast, he couldn't be there, didn't want M. to move them alone, would I ask neighbor on the other side to help. 

Eventually it was all worked out, after numerous missed connections. In the course of these, I heard everyone's earthquake stories,  where they were at the time, what they thought it was at first,  childbirth stories, both in Bangalore and New Jersey,  also dog training in progress, how dog-friendly Colonial Williamsburg is, and Tuesday Trivia Night at the local bar. All of these got involved in the arrangements. 

The upshot: bookcases safely moved indoors,  mom and baby fine, expected home in a couple of days,  grandfather touch and go! Me, drinking tea to recover from the unexpected evening, and planning to check how contractor and Mrs M did at Trivia Night.

Happy day, everyone, be ready for anything, you never know.

Misfits box arrived, and rugs ahoy

The change back to a Friday delivery worked nicely. Box arrived about noon, in excellent condition. Missing two items, one of which they'd noted and refunded already. But it does look as if FedEx moves faster on Friday.

And here's the latest box

Please note, dear Salty P, that it's Vermont maple syrup, only the best..

And these are new to me, not the sweet potatoes, but the little variegated fingerling potatoes. Like rainbow carrots only potatoes. These might only need steaming and a dot of butter.

As usual quality is fine, and there's now a little bag of trimmings in the stock bag in the freezer. I found a couple of freezer bags already labeled, which saved writing and sticking. I have found that no matter how sure I am that I'll remember, I won't.

And the floor is mopped and swept, counters wiped cutting boards washed and dried, knives wiped and away and another frenzy of prep draws to a close till two weeks hence.

Yesterday's Hajii Baba club rug presentation was given by Lawrence Kearney, long time a poet and professor, and rug collector, now a professional auctioneer of rugs for Skinner auction house, Boston.

He showed many slides with not much detail, but they ranged from the eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. The sources are from Anatolia east to China. 

Some as you see from the one way design, are prayer rugs, some runners, some composites and one a patchwork of woven pieces, like a quilt. 

There are animal and flower motifs, and some mysterious shapes that might be charcoal heating things, he didn't know, very honest about it. Some designs are Navajo in feeling, some startlingly modern.

I'll just show you a string, and you can enjoy the designs and maybe get ideas from them.

He explained that workshop rugs are more commercial, while tribal and village rugs are locally made for local or individual use.

This is not all the slides! He was so happy showing them and chatting that after two hours I couldn't see any more and had to leave. 

He might still be there, exclaiming look at the colors! See the intricate borders! 

He's a real enthusiast, and I enjoyed the images without getting a whole lot of technical information. Info's probably overrated anyway!