Omani stitch

Omani stitch:  what do I want to learn about it?  Besides how to make this complex nalbinding stitch, I want to learn more about the women of Oman who were the source of the stitch.

I want to learn about the tribe and the place where the stitch comes from.
So far, I have:
-one photo of "Desert Socks" in Peter Collingwood's book, The Makers Hand.
-information that both Peter Collingwood and Gigi Crocker are gone from this world.  They brought the desert socks out of Oman.
-Gigi Crocker's papers are in the Pitt Rivers Museum in the UK.  Maybe I could write a letter to the museum and ask if I could view her papers - if I could travel to England...
-one Google image search for the tribe in Arabic. -a friend helped me write the name of the tribe in Arabic.  My friend showed me a map with the tribe's homeland.  Maybe I can ask for help from people who are actually over there.

Orange soda dyes feathers

My feathers took the dye very well.  I used white and grey feathers, orange soda, citric acid from the Asian grocery store, and heat from my microwave.  I like citric acid better than vinegar -it seems to be stronger.  When I run out of citric acid, aka "lemon salt," it will be January, much too icy to travel to the specialist market.

I heated the orange drink in the microwave for two minutes, then added a small amount of citric acid powder.  I dropped in the feathers, waited five minutes, and reheated.  It's very simple.

I dried the feathers on an old towel.  I guess feathers will set a curl just like hair.  I accidentally made curled feathers because I got tired of smoothing and flattening them one by one.  Next I will dye a handful of feathers red using leftover Gatoraide.  They will go into a brightly colored feather mask, eventually.

Insomnia and amazing Russian knitting

Regarding the insomnia I have nothing negative to say.  Maybe I am adopting the segmented sleep pattern.  Being awake at night isn't hurting me yet.  There's plenty of time for sleeping when we're dead.  I hope people will tell me if I am overdoing it.  I can't tell.

I have a slight sense of burnout, a slight loss of interest in knitting.  Usually I am obsessed with needlework, but I stayed up late to look at over 3000 photos of Russian knitting.  There are so many new patterns that are not found in my knitting books.  It will take several days to sort through all my new discoveries.

I finished a square of the Swamp Thing Afghan.  I always look forward to starting the next square, but there's nothing innovative about this one:  I need three squares in plain black fun fur.  I'm putting it off for a few days.  In fact, I can feel my procrastination creeping into every area of my life.  Maybe it's time for coffee.

I just learned something about RIT dye.  I did not know that RIT dye contains both acid and direct dyes -will double check the facts later.  Someone on Ravelry.com said that you can dye t-shirts and wool in sequence all in one dye pot.  I did this with Tulip dye- it was very successful.  I need to learn more about this process, and why other dyers do not like it.

Here's a link to the RIT dye info on Ravelry:  http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/what-a-kool-way-to-dye/3064378/1-25

China Bolillos and other daydreams

Here's what I want to do:  I'll ask my friend to record a slow motion version of the China Bolillos video.  It's a 26 second long video on You Tube, and I've watched it hundreds of times. It runs too fast, but I've woven a ribbon that looks like the one in the video.  I am hoping to put together a loom for this type of weaving.  It's a beautifully simple loom, or maybe it would be better to call it a braiding stand.  I can't wait to find out what else you can make with this type of stand.

http://youtu.be/HVzepUWIgkc  China Bolillos

What else would I do today if I spent time in my studio?  We are having some extra special guests for Thanksgiving Dinner next week.  I ought to be getting ready for the holiday, doing my baking, cleaning and removing clutter.  Dyes- experiments with bright colors are on my mind.

Feathers in aniline dye -this is going to be so cool!  My hens need more space; they have been biting each other too much.  I have tried to improve the situation, but I need to do more.  So now I have a lot of white feathers.  I'm going to start with red food coloring, citric acid, water, and about 10 minutes at  180 degrees F.  It should be easy to do in the microwave...

There is also the Walnut Dye project.  I want to figure out how to use my walnut ink to print on cotton fabric.  I don't know anything about stamping or painting on fabric.  I wish I had bought a book on it that I saw the other day.  But the book focused on modern materials like acrylic fabric paints, and professional looking dyes.  Too complicated!  I want a book about mud cloth from Africa.  So far, I can't find it.

How do I apply my black ink to the fabric?  Do I need to thicken the ink to make it go on without feathering? (Is this a pun?) I have no idea.  But I do have some plain black fabric paint from Walmart, so maybe I can practice before I open the walnut ink.  Last time I used my walnuts, it didn't go as planned - the color on cotton was permanent but much too pale.  Eventually, my goal is to print black leaves on the edges of very thin cotton scarves.  I'm going to make my own "yazmalar" : Turkish veils.  Someday, I'd like to make my friend, Nermin, famous in the States.  She showed me how to crochet a very simple lace edge for a veil.

I hope to write a tutorial for Nermin's lace in another blog post.  The key idea is that you crochet using a knitting needle to hold all the picots.  Nermin uses her smallest size knitting needle so the little picot loops turn out all exactly the same size: tiny yet easy.

Mixing colors

Just a brief report-  I mixed colors successfully.  Two variegated yarns, a plum purple mix with an autumn browns mix.  They look great in simple garter stitch, 2 rows of each color.  Next time I will use double point needles so I can see what one row of each color looks like.

I liked the mixed colors so much that I think I'm going to make a knitted bandana to cover my hair.  I need a new hat but there isn't enough yarn in these colors - it will have to be something small.  I'm using the 10 cm swatches of each color experiment: my best swatches will become organizers for my double point needles.  It's such a relief to have my knitting needles organized.  I have hope that someday all my things will be organized.  Someday...

Hairpin lace

One simple idea:  Can you use hairpin lace to make a string heddle?  Maybe it would be quick and effective.  I've got to find out!

What else can you do with hairpin lace?  Could you twine weave through the loose threads?  Maybe you could make a wool fur/pile.  How about a fake fur coat?  Could you make a very simple oya?  Something like the sequin crochet edge on my Turkish veil?

Don't tell me the veil is anti modern nor anti woman.  I find the veil to be quite practical.  I wish I'd been wearing my veil when I lit the wood stove yesterday.  It would have prevented scorched skin and smoke filled hair.  The veil is elegant yet modest, and much nicer than my baseball cap.  It's good for all sorts of things, multifunctional.  Anyway I prefer to appear without a gender in public.  I like the way Islamic women say that, "my beauty is only for my family."

Ougadougou

Do you know where Ouagadougou is?  Seems to me that most people here in New England do not know.

I just checked with the two news hounds in my family, and they didn't know.  Here we are, Americans, who supposedly love freedom and democracy, yet we didn't even notice when the people of Burkina Faso burned down their parliament building last week.

I noticed because I was getting music and news from RFI : Radio France.  If you did not know anything about Ougadougou, capital city of Burkina Faso, then you need to read this from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29994683

If only I had an atelier full of helpers...

What I actually did yesterday:  I said that I was thinking of knitting something furry, but I ran out of time.  I got as far as picking out needles for the next project.

I have a six hour road trip ahead of me today.  I'm going to finish reworking the cap sleeves on the alpaca wool vest.  There should be time to knit some experiments also.

I've got a plan to make crochet hooks work like a set of circular knitting needles.  If it works, it will make it easy to knit that cowl from Vogue - the one with the impossible texture in Condo Knitting.

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Textile daydreams

Some things I'd like to make today:

---an Argyle vest for my guy.  I'd make a really crazy one as a joke ("Teach like your hair is on fire!")
And then I'd give him a seriously good-looking vest for a Christmas present.

--a Not-Sparkly Sweater for the girl who does not wear princess dresses.  It would be a quick knit in bulky yarn the colors of a swimming pool.  I'd add polka dots to the sleeves and wavy stripes to the body.  This sweater would make you want to jump up and dance.

--more embroidered squares for the Swamp Thing Afghan.  I discovered that I can weave in the ends of my knitting in Loud Contrasting Colors.  Really terrible colors can mix together in exciting new ways.  I added some extra ends just so I could sew them in.  It looks full of thunderbolts.

--knitted explorations, gauge squares in condo knitting, in kniting wool alternated with fish line, and in intarsia using variegated yarn

--I feel like making something furry out of yarn.  Maybe I'll go find that bag of fun fur.  I need to find out if it works to use two or three fur strands at once.  Plus I want to make wool fur using hairpin lace.

I ought to be super busy, but I have too many choices.  Can't decide what to do.  I wish I had completed the wolf costume in time for Halloween.  It's not needed now, but it's still on my mind.
...

List of textiles I'd like to teach

Free one-on-one lessons:  tatting, nalbinding, finger loop braiding, medieval spinning, Bilum stitch nalbinding, dogbane cordage, twined weaving without a loom


Explore with me (I'm still learning these) textiles:  Omani stitch nalbinding, Russian nalbinding (loops round thumb and first fingers), Turkish wire weaving/ Hasir Belezik, sprang, takadai weaving + Canadian ceinture fleishe, oya lace for scarves, taaniko patterns + Maori twined weaving, Argyle knitting in variegated yarns, Kente weaving: adding foot peddles to a simple loom, adapting New Guinea bilum color patterns to tapestry crochet, China Bolios video, Karakalpak weaving for trimming fabrics, ply splitting, mad weave/tri-axial basket making

If I would only get busy, there's plenty to explore...

Searching for sieidi stones

I think I found another one:  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aibell
This Wikipedia page describes a place in Ireland that I think was used just as the sieidi stones.

I am hunting for places that would have had magic in ancient times.  It's not really the magic that I'm after-  I just want to find out what life was like in the 200,000 years before written history.

So here's my list of places I've found (and there should be many more.)
--Serre da Estrela, Portugal

--Montserrat, Catalonia, Spain

--Craig Liath, Kilaloe, Munster, Ireland

Here's the link to the acoustic archaeology research about sieidi stones:
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/EXARC/14-kierikki-iks

Looking for sieidi stone locations

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aibell
Craig Liath, Killaloe, Munster, Ireland
New sieidi stone location?

Seeing things that aren't there

http://mbabramgalleries.com/collections/south-east-other-asia/products/shaman-s-apron-nepal

This is from Nepal?

But it looks like what the Kukeri wear in Sardinia.

Here are a bunch more from all over Europe:

Wilder Mann article

There's a great deal of information about Kukeri/Wild Men in the book, The Dancing Goddesses by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.  I notice that Barber, my new favorite author, is not a lumper.  Ok, that means she does not lump together related ideas, instead she carefully splits all the related information into separate little parcels.  She writes about different countries where they had the tradition of Wild Men, and Carnival, but she does not lump them all together.  She writes about differences in these traditions that might have to do with how far north people lived, or how the traditions interacted with Christianity.

So I am about to lump together things that may not belong together.  It would really be amazing if they do belong together.  The Riverside Project links together ideas from a culture in Madagascar with Stonehenge...  I know, they are not saying that the people of Madagascar walked all the way north to Stonehenge.  Nor that the builders of Stonehenge might have walked all the way south to Madagascar.  But I'm starting to wonder if they did walk all that way...?

Here's what I have to lump together:  the incredibly ancient archaeological site of Gobekli Tepe and the monks in Nepal.  I found a picture of Buddhist monks feeding vultures, possibly to keep the birds around as part of traditional funeral rituals.  I visited Gobekli Tepe as a tourist two years ago, and I kept wondering, 'Why are there vultures carved in the stones?'  Could it be that the Gobekli Tepe people used sky burial for their dead?  I am not very interested in funerals- how awful!  But wouldn't it be amazing to find the same culture spread from Turkey to Nepal, or even further, say Sardinia to Nepal?

We know about a time in the Middle Ages when most people did not ever travel further than the edge of their own village, right?  What if it was something like today: some people stay home and some go explore the ends of the earth.  And what if there might have been a lot more traveling about in the time of Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe?  What if you could lump together all the traces of the most ancient humans?  Maybe there was a logic that made unrelated groups of people develop similar traditions.  But I think these traditions are linked- European shamen were doing things quite similar to Himalayan shamen.  I think in all the time that modern humans have been on Earth, there has been plenty of time to meet the neighbors even if they lived thousands of miles away, and plenty of time to do an enormous amount of stone carving by hand.  Whatever were they doing for the first 200,000 years?

Magical Portugal?

I think I found something exciting.  But I can't be sure -I don't speak Portuguese.  I found a place in Portugal that appears to be loaded with Neolithic monuments and pre-Christian traditions.  In other words, I think I found a sacred landscape comparable to Stonehenge:  the Serre da Estrela National Park in Portugal.

I am interested in pagans, but I am not actually one of them.  For the moment, I'm an unbeliever.  So don't run off shouting about this --I have no proof yet.  Anyway, it's not a discovery if the Portuguese people have always known about it.

I spotted an odd photo on Pinterest.com, a picture of a large brass band making music among giant boulders at Serre da Estrela.  Why would a group named, Philharmonic Band, hike way up into the mountains carrying their tubas and trombones?  Are they following a tradition from the distant past?

Then there were three photos of stones carved to look like human faces.  These could be fake, or just unrelated, but it made me want to see more of this national park.  I read that there are many megaliths near Serre da Estrela (the name translates to Star Mountain.)

The next photo was exciting: dawn at a mountain top lake labeled, Magic Pitcher, in Portuguese.  Has anyone checked the sound quality there?  It looks like the kind of place that would be perfect for a shaman to create echoing sounds.  It has stone cliff walls that hold the lake in a bowl shape.  I had recently heard about research in Norway- they studied the sounds you could make at ancient shrines belonging to the Sami people.  What if Serre da Estrela was a superb place for a shaman from around the year 5000 BCE?

I found cultural links to Celtic traditions all over northern Portugal.  And I don't know if this supports my idea, but I found lots of traces of pre-Christian culture in Portugal.  For example, Portugal has some very strange carnival traditions.  There are masked mummers, something like the Morris Dancers in England.  I would not have noticed any of this without the book, The Dancing Goddesses, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (pub. by Norton, NY, 2013.)

Then I found a guy who did a PhD on the subject of the megaliths around Serre da Estrela.  He says that all the Neolithic monuments in that area are lined up so that you can watch a bright star named Aldebaran move in relation to Star Mountain.  Seems to me that the shepards of ancient times would have stayed awake nights to keep their animals safe.  The PhD paper explains how to use the bright star as a calendar, so they could tell when it was time to move their animals to the summer pastures up in the mountains.  Only, I can't understand why you'd need a megalithic monument for that?  Couldn't you just wait until the grass turned green, and then take your hundreds of animals up into the hills?

I figure the people of around 5000 BCE would have been rich.  They would have been plump from having unlimited amounts of food.  Maybe their wealth would have looked a lot like that of the Native Americans of Alaska.  They had plenty of extra time for feasting and creating stone monuments.  Anyway, the Riverside Project (a recent research project at Stonehenge) is on my mind.

According to the Riverside Project, the stone houses are for the dead, for your ancestors.  So, could it be that there were wood houses situated near the megaliths in the valley near Serre da Estrella?  And could archaeologists find them?

That's not all- there is an enormous shrine to the Virgin Mary carved into the side of the mountain.  Pinterest has a picture labeled, Our Lady of the Stars.  If that doesn't have a link to ancient pagan beliefs, then I'll eat my hat.  I think it's really interesting to look at the different ways that Christianity absorbed the pre-existing religions.