Shoe laces and decoration

In the early 70's I read a wonderful book called  the Narrow Road to the Deep North. It was written by a Buddhist monk.  Bashō made a challenging journey on foot through Japan in the late 17th century.  It is interspersed with haikus.

On one occasion he was given new sandals.  They had blue laces which reminded him of iris flowers. He wrote this haiku which caught my imagination at the time and I have always remembered it.

The Haiku.

It looked as if

Iris flowers had bloomed

On my feet

Sandals laced in blue

I decided to make some shoe laces and designed my own sanada-himo band. 

Warp ends: 34 ends of 16/2 cotton.

Warp Order

Purple           2               5                  3
Pale purple                 3                  3
Lilac                        3                  3
Pale blue              3                  3
White                3                 3

Weft: Purple

drawdown of the weave pattern

I am indebted to the web site Inkled Pink for the suggestion about securing the lace ends.
do check out this lovely web site.  https://inkledpink.com/2013/05/28/inkle-shoelace-tip-how-to/

 I had not heard of the term 'aglet'. I found that I could buy aglets on-line and made a pair of laces.

A: Unbound end. The end of the band needs to be bound.

B: The ends are bound with a purple thread.

C: Once the end is bound, the aglet, the narrow plastic tube is put onto the bound portion.

D:  Once this is in place, it is is ironed to shrink the plastic so that it is a tight fit.

Here are the finished laces.

a pair of warp-faced weave shoe laces

I also decided to weave another set of shoe laces with a flower pattern.  This pattern is in my latest book published be Schiffer Press- Weaving patterned bands - how to create and design with 5, 7, and 9 pattern threads. https://durhamweaver64.blogspot.com/p/books-about-band-weaving.html

The pattern is 9:8 on page 81.

These shoe laces are part of my display at the Braids conference in Iga Japan in October 2019.

 I also decorated a new pair of flipflops with a woven band.

original flip flops

I bought these flipflops as they had an iris pattern on the insole - although it cannot be seen when being worn.

I designed a woven band in 16/2 Swedish cotton to match the colour of the flip flops.

Design for a woven band in 16/2 cotton

There are 43 warp ends.

close up of the woven band

Sewing on the band

I carefully sewed the bands onto the strap.

The finished embellishment on my flip flops.

I think that it gives my flip flops a personal touch  and I can think of irises every time I glance down at them.

I was particularly thrilled to find out that Bashō came from Iga in Japan.

A Lovely Inkle Belt

This is a dramatic cotton inkle belt woven by Anne, a founder member of the Durham Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers.  She allowed me to post these pictures.

I love the two owls in macrame to finish each end.  Here is a close-up.

Close up showing the front and back of the owls.

Anne is very creative and she always finds some fascinating variation to add to her weaving.

Reflections about craft

Last month, the Durham Guild had a weaving open day. Two members, new to weaving brought their looms to warp and start weaving. One member, Averil, brought her new Ashford knitters loom.  She was helped by Jane but she warped up rapidly although she had only unwrapped her new loom the previous evening. 

Another member, Barbara,  had an old two shaft loom with metal heddles. She had brought the loom to a previous meeting and made the warp and wound it on to the back beam. On this occasion, she was finishing threading the heddles and the sleying the reed. Of course other members were around to help and advise these two new weavers.

The warp on the second loom was wool and once it was tied on to the front beam, it was clear that it was rather sticky. The weave was plain weave on two shafts. I went over to see how she was getting along. For a new weaver we wanted to make sure that her first weaving experience was positive.

Three of us looked at the warp and checked the sleying.  Yes, here were a couple of threads that had been crossed in the dents. She retied the warp and we all ran our hands over the ends to check that the warp ends were at an even tension. This is a skill which you can only gain through practice. For silk, thrumming the ends helps to separate them and we tried that as well. 

The first few picks using waste yarn proved difficult as the shed was not clear enough when the shafts were raised and lowered. She had to physically push some of the warp ends apart. I suggested moving the cross sticks at the back of the loom over the back beam. There was now a greater space between the warp behind the heddles and the back beam. This did not fully solve the difficulty.

Another solution would be to resley the whole warp so that the ends were slightly further apart. Time consuming but as a last resort it might be the answer. However, the warp and weft seemed to weave together comfortably. The problem was clearing the shed when the shafts were raised and lowered. 

The solution was to make a shed, put the weft through and then change to the next shed before beating. The act of pushing the beater back to the heddles cleared the shed more effectively. A couple of ends were still a bit tricky but it worked!  We watched as she wove a few more picks and one of us wrote down the instructions carefully so she would remember what to do when she got home. 

Barbara's loom

I still remember my very first piece of weaving.  I was so proud of it and I was hooked! Happy weaving Barbara.

I have been reading another book about craft. 'The case for working with your hands or why office work is bad for us and fixing things is good' by Mathew Crawford. It struck me that in working through the problem of this sticky warp illustrates a part of the nature of craft knowledge. Crawford talks about the tacit integration of sensual knowledge. which refers to understanding of how things work which is built up through experience of working with different materials.
Knowing and doing are related.  Craft skills cannot be analysed so completely that they can be passed on as a series of rules or precepts - or as Crawford says practical knowledge is not completely formalised or rule based. We know more than we can say. It was through discussion and trying out ideas that the three of us came up with a workable solution to this sticky warp.

He also quotes two philosophers. Anaxagoras wrote that 'It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals.'  Merely looking at something is not enough as Heidegger points out ..'handling, using, and taking care of things which has its own kind of knowledge.' 

Reference. 

'The case for working with your hands or why office work is bad for us and fixing things is good' by Mathew Crawford. 2009, Penguin Books
A fascinating book although the motor mechanical 'ethos' is sometimes a bit too 'masculine'.

Happy weaving.

Susan J Foulkes  October 2019