Weaving... WHAT FUN!!!!

I am going to lump together the last few days because I have been busy on a weaving course at the Community Office!!!  Over the past few years I have been lucky enough to take part in the Cyprus Handicrafts Association initiative to teach people in the Laona region traditional crafts to keep them alive.  In the past I have done gourd carving, basket weaving and mosaicing and always wanted to do the weaving but previously that was over subscribed then we were told that the teacher spoke no English and then last year nothing was offered.  I signed up again this year and opted for weaving and again we were told that the teacher did not speak English so I arranged to do the course with Kelly who is our resident translator!  Initially Judi was going to be doing the weaving but because of the number of days and length of time needed she declined and Di took her place.   So the three of us had to pitch up yesterday lunchtime to meet Stella, our teacher, who speaks pretty good English as it happens!!

Our community office now has three working looms and one ancient loom in situ.  The looms had been prepared in readiness for our arrival - this is itself is a work of art and a real feat of engineering.

Today we were to make a test piece runner getting to grips with a number of techniques.  We had already prepared our fabric at home last week and it was up to us to chose our colour scheme.  Although we all had the same colours in our bags we all produced very different pieces of work.  I chose dark colours because my reckoned if it was going on the floor it was less likely to show the dirt than if I used the pastel shades.

After an hour or so I am now a fan of James Hargreaves who invented the spinning Jenny!!!

By the end of the afternoon I had managed to get more than half way through my test piece and I had decided that for my second rug I would use brighter colours and would give this to my friend Sonia if it looked ok.  Sonia celebrates a special birthday next week and although she has asked for no presents I cannot go to her lunch with nothing and apparently she loves hand made items and bright colours!

This is the lovely Stella firstly with Diana and secondly with Kelly and her first rug which she completed really quickly and then bugger me she finished a second one this afternoon before I was even half way through mine!  I am guessing that a lot depends on the thickness of the strips of fabric you are using and how tightly you pack the lines of weaving together.

Kelly's first rug was colourfully striped but her second one was a Christmas rug in lovely shades of green, beige and red and I really liked it and unlike when we have done other crafts she barely swore except when there was some major disaster with the strings!

Apparently Kelly has done the maximum she is allowed to do so didn't have to pitch up until lunchtime Friday as it is only the fringing element to be mastered - Di also managed to complete two rugs by the end of day two and started on a third so was also exempted from the crack of dawn start on day three - I, on the other hand, still had a load to do on my second rug so I was billy no mates on Friday morning trying to catch up!!

We had approximately 3 metres of the cotton allocated to us so after doing our initial test piece it was up to us whether we did a second long rug or two smaller ones and the design was up to us but we had to use colours from the fabric we had prepared in advance.

I made two long rugs - you weave them consecutively in one long line with a 'separator' between them - I have a friend who celebrates a special birthday on Wednesday and apparently she loves handmade items and bright colours so the orange, red and yellow rug will be hers.  Apparently a handmade rug the size of this retails for anything around €60!!!

I managed to get my two rugs completed before Di and Kelly turned up - I guess having the room to myself concentrated the mind!!!  Once unwrapped from the machine I was really really happy with what I had managed to produce and have decided exactly where my first rug will go.  Chivers will be pleased - he likes to beat the hell out of my rugs at the best of times but this new one will be a whole new ball game!!

Foolishly we though that once the rugs were finished and taken off of the looms and separated that that was it but how wrong could we be?  We had lots left to do before we would be released for the weekend!!! We had visitors whilst we were working this morning who came to see what the weaving was all about.  Two of the good looms are remaining in the community office for people to use so we can go back if we want and do some more.

Our next lesson was all about finishing off the rugs with fringing using colours that we had used in the rug itself.  The jury is out on this - we kind of liked the knotted cotton but we had to learn all the aspects of traditional rug making so this included fringing and making tassels.  This technique is very very time consuming.  At this point I would like to say that I do have other clothes but you get absolutely covered in bits of fabric so there wasn't any point putting on clean clothes each day!!!

The final part of the weaving course was to learn how to prepare the looms for us to use again.  This is a complete nightmare - Stella prepared the loom that Di had been using with us watching and taking notes and then we had to move on to the loom I had been using and we had to do it ourselves.  Let's just say it was ok whilst she was watching and we took loads of photographs of each stage but left to our own devices we are going to end up with a right old dog's dinner!!!

So here they are - my two rugs made over the last two and a half days.  The dark one I have finished completely with the fringing and the light one I need to decide whether to fringe or to knot.

It was a brilliant opportunity and I am very grateful I got the chance to do this even if I never do it again.  I have an aching arse and pneumatic boobs from pushing and pulling the 'bit' that pushes the wefts and warps together.  I did my super tight so I have dense and heavy rugs.

We were lucky that we only had a small glitch in the electricity today even though it was stormy outside and we had plenty of thunder, lightning and rain.  Without good light we really would have struggled.

Poor John got stuck at Mum's this afternoon trying to sort her ethernet cable and never got to pickleball.  The whole exercise was exacerbated by the fact that when they came to test the work there was a power cut.

As a treat this evening the Droushia Weaving Duo (Di and I) went to Fitos with John and Rob for our supper and it was fabulous - Joanna's beef and mushroom pies are the BEST!!!