eine Saite

I often end up feeling like the pictures speak for themselves, so that once I’ve added a few images, there’s not much to write. And words feel thin and flimsy these days…. overly manipulated like an old piece of paper gone soft, without stability. Words can be twisted to mean the opposite of what you might have thought they meant, then flipped back suddenly, reappropriated, thrown into the air and caught like a juggler’s sword - all of which is too fast for me, over here chewing on hundred-year-old poems in German. It may explain why writing has gotten harder, why listening to the birds makes more sense than any human speech, why I’d rather share some detail photos of handmade textiles and just say “Look.”

These are woolen textiles known as lingtse, from the region of Zangskar, the southern part of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas. Lingtse are capes that women wear and make from panels of handspun, handwoven wool. The resist-dyed patterns and tied fringe are distinctive. The colors and tying of motifs are personalized enough that a young Zangskari woman I knew in Leh recognized a piece I had bought, knowing who made it. I have several of these because I find them deeply stunning, and they were on offer in the market while I was in Ladakh, between 1994 and 2006. I’m conflicted about “collecting” textiles now, but I have them and I wish for them to be seen and to be educational or edifying in some way, so here, look.

I was airing them out on the balcony. The sun highlights the texture of the twill weave, and the patina of use on the folds and seams. When I look closely like this, I can see the handwork, the particular care that went into the steps of spinning, weaving, sewing, and dyeing each piece. I can sense the human touch of the making and the daily use of the cloth. I wish you could smell them - they’ve been vacuumed but not washed, and they hold the smell of Ladakhi farms and livestock. These are not just special occasion garments - women typically wore them to work in the fields, tend animals, or whatever. They were just worn. They each have that feeling, of having been worn for a while. I’m hoping that they were sold because they were old and had been replaced with freshly made pieces, and not out of either desperation or disdain. I don’t really know - the textile marketplace gives me plenty of consternation, but my original motivation for buying them remains true: because I love and admire them, and I intend to treat them with respect.

I sometimes dream of having an educational textile gallery, a space where people can linger and appreciate the skill and wisdom radiating off of works like these. For now, I suppose this platform is that space, and while you can’t touch or smell these glorious Zangskari ambassadors, at least they will be seen and allowed to speak.

(I will add more photos to the lingtse page in the textiles tab, linked above. It will probably grow over time, as the ‘research’, ‘works’, and other tabs tend to do.)

Fungus from the Hoh Rainforest National Park, adding its song

One thing…. in writing about the details of textiles, I’m not turning away from what’s going on in the world. I consider it a way of continuing to focus on what is important, what might be wiped out if imperialism has its way. To some extent, I’m soothing my mind with this focus, if only because I don’t have the right words to speak otherwise. Some people are being very powerful with language, and I’d like to recommend Caitlin Johstone and Holly Truhlar at the moment.

I say that tongue-in-cheek, because I am very far removed from what might be considered a production spinner, or weaver, or maker of anything. But the last few days have involved making things, and doing it more quickly than usual.

For example, I spun a whole skein of coils in one day, in preparation for teaching a textured handspun class.

That was pretty quick, but it's bulky, and was done on the wheel, so a skein in a day is not surprising. The other project I'm working on, though, is pushing limits. In the post "two spindles full", I traced the slow progress of Romney spun from hand-teased locks on Peruvian spindles. Those two spindles got plied, and made a nice, hefty ball of weaving yarn.

Full spindle of plied yarn, at the moment I finished.

I was inspired to make a warp in mostly grey, using this nice Romney as a ground. It would be an Andean pickup piece, with bands of pattern in the center and on the sides. Accordingly, I starting winding a warp, picking how many rounds to use for the plain fields based on previous weavings. I wound 20 rounds for the border, then a pattern band, then 50 rounds, then the center pattern band, then ...29 rounds, and the yarn was finished. Hmm.

Given the limitation of my warping pegs, I'd already taken the first half off and laid it aside, so there the 29 rounds sat, warped and taking up space, waiting for 41 more rounds' worth of yarn. I got to work spinning, and spent most of the next day spinning what looked like a sufficient amount on one spindle, then on the second one. Plied them last night and wound on... anther 20 rounds. So 49 rounds sit there, awaiting the rest of the warp.

Many lessons rolled into one, here. I never weighed or measured the original yarn, so I had no idea how much more I would need - it's all just eyeballing, and clearly my eyeballing is not well developed in this area. Another lesson is that I should probably just keep spinning, making more than seems necessary, because the only problem then would be having more than enough. Another lesson has to do with this yarn not necessarily being ideal for backstrap weaving. I was enthusiastic about spinning it from the lock, and continue to enjoy that, but the crimp and fluff of this Romney make it challenging to spin with perfect smoothness. I will be grappling with this lesson as I weave, but I'm in that too-deep-to-back-out situation at this point, and I'm going to follow through.

As I consider the fact that I'm spinning in a few days the same amount I spun over a year or more, and mentally struggle with the prospect of spending another day or two devoted exclusively to spinning this one type of yarn, it makes me laugh to come across the photos of Ladakhi phangs and plying balls in my archive. This is what production spinning really is - the same thing, again and again until there is more than enough.