Weaving

1 January 2013

It was cold here all day yesterday, New Year’s Eve. It makes it so much more difficult to feel at ease if the sun is not there! I mooched around, not settling to anything, not sure what to do with myself. Eventually we went into town and had an indifferent meal and a couple of beers.

But on Sunday I went Weaving! Ock Pop Tok is a traditional handicraft centre in a beautiful setting on the banks of the Mekong about half way between where we are at the bungalows and the centre of Luang Prabang.

It was set up a few years ago by an English woman and a Lao master weaver* as a charity that helps weavers to get an education and a decent price for their work.

*Master weavers are all women. Traditional the silk weaving is women’s work, while the bamboo weaving is all done by men.

I arrived at 9 o’clock and met my fellow pupils. There were four – two Americans and an Australian – but only two of us were doing the dyeing and weaving. Mitsi was a former computer programmer from Portland, Oregan, who was travelling round SE Asia deciding what to do with her life. Her passion was textile art, knitting and crocheting.

Mr Chan - our guide for the day.

“Mr Chan”, as he introduced himself, was our guide and translator. He’s working at Ock Pop Tok part time to pay his way through teacher training college, learning to be an English teacher. As an introductory session, Chan told us a bit about the history of the centre, then about how silk is grown and harvested. There are two types – the fine silk produced by Bombyx mori from China and the coarser fibre from Indian silkmoths. Bombyx only feeds on mulberry leaves, which grow in the river valleys, whereas the Indian one feeds on a wider range of leaves.

The caterpillars are grown on round bamboo trays, like the ones used to dry chillis, and are fed three times a day. After 48 days they pupate and produce the cocoon. Sadly, if you want the silk you have to kill the caterpillar. If you let it emerge it eats its way out and breaks the thread so it can’t be drawn.

The threads are naturally sticky, so silk from 40 or 50 cocoons is drawn together to produce one piece of silk thread. All done by hand of course.

All this was news to me – I had fondly imagined an orchard of mulberry trees with cocoons dangling like little fruits!

Then we went on to dyeing. At Ock Pop Tok they are reviving traditional skills in the use of natural dyes. Native plants such as sappan, rosewood, ebony, lemongrass, Indian trumpet and wild almond are all used, either the wood or the leaves or the fruit, sometimes fermented. Other ingredients such as rusty nails or chunks of alum are added.

After Chan had introduced all the dyes, we had to choose three that we wanted to make. I chose Sappan (red), jackfruit (gold) and wild almond (pale green). Mitsi chose the same first two but indigo as her third.

First task was to chip the wood into small enough pieces to go in the pot. Photos were taken. The master dyer was there to guide us as we popped the chips into pans of water boiling over wood fires and stirred. I had to gather the wild almond leaves from a tree in the garden, using a long bamboo pole with forked end to grab and twist a leaf.

Ammatto fruits - taste of aniseed and give an orange colour. Can be used for lipstick!

Wild almond leaves - pale green colour.

Cutting sappan chips

When the dye was ready we dipped our skeins of silk into the hot liquid, jigged them up and down a few times and left them to steep for about 20 minutes. Then we rinsed them in cold water, wrung them out, shook them and hung them out to dry. Beautiful!

Boiling wild almond leaves.

Two dyes brewing.

Dipping the silk.

Drying my skeins in the sun.

Chan gave us a basket of previously dyed skeins from which to choose two colours to weave with. We wound these onto little bamboo bobbins using a simple winding machine. These were given to the master weavers to set up the looms.

The simple weavers’ lunch we had been promised turned out to be much better than I expected. Mitsi, Jaz and I were given delicious grilled fish with a tamarind sauce, fried mushrooms, sticky rice and soup, followed by a curious sweet coconut-based dessert with gelatinous green and purple bits in it.

Then it was back to work with the weaving. The looms are set up in an idyllic spot – an open-sided bamboo shed overlooking the river, with slowboats chugging past, children splashing around on the sandbanks below. I have to admit I’m never going to be a master weaver – I made far too many mistakes and my eyesight isn’t good enough to be able to accurately pick up the correct strings on the template which holds the pattern. But with the help of Dau, my guide, I managed to produce my “table mat”.