I hope you’ll enjoy hearing Mark Winter talk about a recent trading experience that he had with 94 year old weaver Clara Sherman. Mark was at the the recent Southwest Traders Rendezvous in Cortez, Colorado and was participating in the show and tell portion of the program when he told this story on September 27, 2008. Mark wasn’t using a microphone and turned away from the camera, so a few of his words get lost as he’s talking, but I think you can get the gist of the story, which is about three minutes long.
Jennie Slick and I will be doing a Navajo Weaving Boot Camp at Friendly Crossways Conference Center in Harvard, Massachusetts starting tomorrow evening. The boot camp is an intensive three day workshop on Navajo weaving that we’ve been doing for the last six years. Jennie always takes her C-Cactusflower loom with her and gets busy working wherever we are. The little weaving that she’s working on will probably be sold by the time we return to Arizona next week. We’ll keep you posted on the workshop at Friendly Crossways over the next few days.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of Jennie with the Ganado Red piece that she’s weaving.
Jennie Slick with the Ganado Red weaving that she is working on. She's using a C-Cactusflower loom.
Jennie Slick and I are in Albuquerque on our way to do a three day workshop in Massachusetts. Just before I left Phoenix, I washed and rinsed some custom yarns for the students to look at. One group of them was dyed with cochineal. There’s a picture of the grouping below. Isn’t it amazing that one dyestuff can yield this many colors? These are only a few of the results that you can get with these amazing critters, who are just stuffed with carminic acid.
All cochineal! Clockwise from lower left, high concentration dyebath with cream of tartar, late dyebath with tin mordant, ammonia afterbath, high percentage tin mordant
Many authorities say that the Navajos didn’t dye with cochineal; that they only used raveled threads, sometimes recarding them. Others, such as Kate Peck Kent and Joe Ben Wheat thought that they could identify Navajo handspun that had been dyed with cochineal. I’m interested in following up on this to see if there’s a definitive answer, and I’ll fill you in on my results.
Today, we concluded our advanced weaving seminar, which has been newly dubbed Camp Weave-A-Lot, and we started our Natural Dye Retreat. We met at Burnham’s Trading Post in Sanders, AZ and got a look at some of the vegetally dyed colors that Marie Begay is able to achieve. We were also treated to a weaving demonstration by Jennie Slick, who was working on a C-cactusflower loom that she carries with her. After we left Burnham’s, we headed north to Window Rock and started our natural dye work with cochineal. The Quality Inn let us use their shade house and we set up our hot plate and dyepot. Just as we were getting started extracting the color, some of the Spider Rock Girls stopped by and spent some time visiting and spinning while we were waiting for the dyepot. Here’s a picture of grandma Rose Yazze, (left), granddaughter Alyssa Malone and mom Emily Malone.
Emily and Alyssa Malone look on as Rose Yazzie spins in the shade house at the Quality Inn
We’ll have pictures of the dyed yarns over the next couple of days.
One of the participants in our seminar completed her first rug today. Barbara Spelman is an accomplished fiber artist and a partner in Crone Craft Studios in Tucson, Arizona, which makes her a busy person. Once a year, Barbara comes to Window Rock to study Navajo techniques and has applied many of them to her other work, particularly in the area of dyes. Over the course of the past four years, Barbara has diligently worked on her weaving when she could and today, her efforts were rewarded. Here’s a brief video of the big moment!
Barbara carefully folded her rug, and she and Jennie Slick promptly started on another warp. Tomorrow, we’ll catch up with the other seminar participants projects.
Late this evening as we were finishing a discussion of the Teec Nos Pos rug style, our class was honored with a visit by 98 year old weaver Helen Yazzie and her granddaughter Lynelle Begay who happened to be having dinner at the Diné Restaurant next to the meeting room we are using for class. Helen expressed admiration for the Henry Lee Dedman hip spindles that we had on one of our tables and told us through translation by her granddaughter and Jennie how she had been a spinner and weaver since she was a young girl. Helen inspected all of the looms and we gifted her with the spindle that she most admired and some churro roving that we hope she enjoys. Nizhónígo naniná doo, Helen. May you walk in beauty.
Helen Yazzie with our weaving seminar group. Standing from left, Roberta Sauerwein, Jennie Slick, Liz Munk, Laurie West, Barb Spelman and Mary Weinzirl. In front, Helen Yazzie and granddaughter Lynelle Begay.
