There was more work involved than imagined. It was a non-stop 14-16 hour a day two month slog of administration work. It's over. July 31st.
It took an entire extra month......Hallelujah.
All the homework boxes have been mailed and the workshop members are all ready to start their trips to Japan in late September. (Even a non-yogi can hear them stitching away at the prep homework across planet.)
The house is ready months in advance. Instead of going to the airport and getting out of Japan for a few weeks I will be spending the time at quiet quiet home and working on my own projects........heaven.
Many of you know I keep the doors open and the coffee ready. I've been replying with, 'I'm busy.' to good friends and foes alike the past few months. The lotus are blooming at the front door today. Pickled plums are drying in the sun. The tadpoles in the pond have sprouted legs and are almost ready to head to the forest. Heaven.
Working on endless carpentry projects on this huge house and teaching hasn't given me the time to work on textiles like I used to. It used to be possible to work on different projects at one time.
Cutting stencils and stitching shibori, growing the indigo etc. are time consuming projects. But compared to the silk farming to woven textile they are like fast food.
I had to face the facts....when you move your focus from one thing to another something suffers. And like playing guitar, you can't just pick it up where you left off a few months earlier..
There are boxes of beautifully reeled and naturally dyed silk upstairs that I've produced over many years. I set up a luxurious kimono warp late last winter. It was beautiful and ready to weave. Throwing a few shuttle passes it all was set for a smooth 14 meter weave. Sitting at the loom looking at it with a twisted frown.... the warp and weft were extremely fine. It would take hundreds of hours to weave it up. It would end up looking like it was machine made. Everything was perfect.
The investment of time and concentration wasn't worth it.
I took a pair of shears and ziiiiiip.....had all the threads off the loom in less than five minutes. Considering the time it had taken me to set up the loom and weed the mulberry field, feed the silkworms and reel the silk and dye it all...it was a pretty crazy thing to do.
Having been so busy the past few years something was lost.
That slow progression of related project one after another.
If you start a project with the criteria: "I should use up that thread" and "I haven't woven a kimono in years." There are too many wrong turns just waiting.
That whole project was off on the wrong foot. Rather than stumble through it, it was better to swallow some pride and take the loses with a deep breath.
The episode was a good bucket of cold water reality. Don't start an extremely time consuming project unless you feel right about it. All the colours and textures of the project and your own mind better be chosen carefully and harmoniously.
Hand spun silk... back strap looms. The thread-making process and the weaving itself take much much much longer than using reeled thread on a regular loom.
There are some precious cocoons left upstairs from last summer and the recent cocoons from two months ago.
So day after day the cocoons are being boiled and de-bugged and a pile of silk floss and hand-spun thread is appearing. Some of this years silk is already being woven.
The cocoons are put in a gentle-wash laundry bag. A large pot of boiling water is readied. In a mild alkaline solution (Can use freshly burned straw ash or purchased de-gumming agents.) the cocoons are kept just below boiling for a few hours. An inverted stainless vegetable strainer with rocks on top keep the cocoons from floating.
The chrysalis are picked out of the floss one by one. Manly work...not for the squeamish.
To lower the pH of the floss, it is gently rinsed to avoid matting.
The floss is squeezed and the process repeated at a lower alkalinity and temperature to ensure all the natural glue in the cocoons is removed and the silk is smooth and soft and ready to spin.
Once dry I fluff them up individually and then start to spin them.
I hand spun the floss and dyed it several shades of indigo with some light yellow gardenia dye for some ever so slight green tinges.
And it weaving up like this:
This whole process takes forever but worth it. Audiobooks are keeping the weaving company as it inches forward.
