The gardens at St. Michael's Mission in St. Michael's, AZ.

Quite a few of this class’s participants had never visited Hubbell Trading Post or hadn’t been there for quite some time.  For me, it is always wonderful to stand in the house and revisit the art treasures and woven wonders amassed by Juan Lorenzo Hubbell and his family.  After the home tour, we visited the rug room and saw several new acquisitions.  Outstanding were rugs done by young male weavers and a new Eyedazzler by Verna Smith.  Below is a piece by Eddie Bonnie, a finely woven Chief Blanket variation, held by class participant Arlene Anderson.

Moqui Revival rug by Eddie Bonnie (shown courtesy of Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site)

Back in Window Rock, we stopped for lunch at my favorite swap meet food stand, Scott’s, for lunch featuring frybread dishes.  Rejecting mundane frybread toppings, Diane Woods chose mustard, and I can prove it (see picture below).

b

Do you want mustard with that frybread?

The rest of our day was spent weaving and talking with visitors to the classroom.  The class participants’ rugs are proceeding very well, and one student was observed heading off for some pre-bedtime weaving with his loom and an Ott Light.  We’re up at 6 AM for a trip to Canyon de Chelly, so I’ll leave you with a picture of Marsha Herr’s weaving.  It’s inspired by the Spider Rock pattern developed by Harriet Whitney and Lavera Blake of the Spider Rock Girls.

Marsha Herr's piece is done in a combination of handspun and commerical yarns with many of her colors dyed on Sunday, August 17

After lunch, we visited Burnham’s Trading Post where the students picked up more yarn and we had a great visit with Virginia Burnham, the wife of trader Bruce Burnham.  Virginia talked about the early years of her marriage when she and Bruce were at Dennebito, The Gap and Cedar Springs.  In 1971, she and Bruce were offered the chance to trade in the New Lands area near Sanders, Arizona.  This area was added to the Navajo Nation as part of the settlement of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute settlement.  It was after their move to Sanders that Bruce began his work with weavers and rug designs.  The Burnhams even have wool custom spun for Navajo weaving and they have a large yarn room.

Although the Burnham rug room primarily features contemporary weaving, there are many vintage rugs there as well.  The picture below shows Virginia Burnham discussing her career with the class as Laurie Rosen admires a Germantown Sampler on the counter.

After we left Burnham’s we visited Jennie Slick’s home where she demonstrated weaving on two large looms (see picture below).  She is working on a 2′x3′ Storm Pattern and a 5′6″x7′ floor rug in Burntwater colors.  It is truly amazing to see a large rug in the process of being woven.  Jennie’s experienced hands are expert in transforming warp and weft threads into treasured heirlooms.

Jennie Slick, right, demonstrates weaving to Tammy Denhard (standing) and Arlene Anderson

Tomorrow, we’ll visit St. Michael’s Mission and Hubbell Trading Post National Historic site.

2008 Natural Dye Retreat plants: cochineal, cliffrose, bee plant, sage, coreopsis, black walnut hulls, ground lichen, wild carrot, sage, indigo and Navajo tea

Today was also the beginning of the first August session of our week long class and tour. Since we still had some dye materials left, we used those up, but did collect new batches of rabbitbrush, sage, ground lichen and cliffrose to replenish the pots. We also did some indigo overdyes. The picture below shows the group around the pots as we were beginning to add yarn.

From left, Diane Wood, Jennifer Thistel, Vickie Norrid, Marsha Herr, Arlene Anderson, Laurie Rosen, Tammy Denhard, Rose Dedman and Bob Rosen gather around the dyepots at the start of our weaving class and tour.

After lunch with dye master Rose Dedman, we gathered up the wool and came back to Window Rock to visit with Morris Muskett and get cleaned up. We finished the day with a trip to Gallup for dinner at the El Rancho Hotel (rated as very good by the group) and a visit to the nightly Native American dances that are held on the McKinley County Courthuse plaza. The Nááts’íílid (Rainbow) Dancers from Shiprock performed several dances that involved weaving and we felt very lucky to be there. The picture below shows the group doing a sash belt dance.

Rainbow Dance group at the McKinley County, NM Courthouse performing a sash belt dance.

Tomorrow we’ll be warping looms and visting R.B. Burnham Trading in Sanders, AZ.

WIndow Rock, AZ  Master weaver Gilbert Begay stopped by to say hello today and we spent some time talking about the yarns used in weaving in this area.  At least 95% of the rugs woven today are made with commercially spun yarns.  About 80% of those are done with Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb knitting worsted, with another 20% being woven with Burnham’s Trading Post yarn and Condon’s yarns.

A very small percentage of rugs are done with hand carded handspun wool.

Gilbert Begay and Laurie West swap yarns.

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.

The weavers in the seminar are continuing work on their individual projects and two of them, Liz Munk and Roberta Sauerwein are working with raised outline, a complex technique that introduces surface texture to one side of the weaving.  It’s a manipulation of a basic striping technique that Navajo weavers call Coal Mine or Railroad Tracks and conventional handweavers call Pick and Pick.  Basic Navajo weaving is a plain weave technique in which weft yarns go over one and under one thread in each row.  If the weft travels under the thread in one row, it will go over it on the next row meaning that there are two positions or “sheds” for the warp threads to be in.  In the Coal Mine technique, all of the wefts going from right to left are one color and all of the threads going left two right are another color.  Navajo often say the threads are “chasing” each other.  Raised Outline introduces further complexity by varying the colors in the rows as they travel through the row.

Here’s a look at the start of Liz’ project in which she’s also using variegated yarn dyed by Marilou Schultz.

Liz Munk's raised outline project.

Liz is combining areas of Raised Outline with plain weave.  Here’s view of the raised outline area close up.

Detail of the Raised Outline portion of Liz' design.

Roberta is going for a curved look to the raised outline area that she’s working on right now. She’s doing that by flattening the points in a jagged line to create the illusion of a curve. The contrast of the colors she’s using make it easy to see the outlined area.

A detail of Roberta's weaving.

Tomorrow, I’ll post some pictures of the weaving that class insructor Jennie Slick is doing.

Leaving the Exhibit Hall, we visited the pow-wow arena and enjoyed seeing some of the men’s Fancy Dance and Grass Dance events.  We’re fiber people, so the colors and designs of the costumes and the strength and grace of the dancers are a real attraction for us; it’s easy to see why these events are some the most popular at pow-wows.    Here’s one of my better pictures from the arena.

A dancer at this year's Gallup Inter-tribal Ceremonial

After we left the Ceremonial, we went to visit Perry Null’s Tobe Turpen Trading Post in Gallup and saw more inspiring weavings, including this wonderful pictorial by Cheryl Yazzie.  This rug depicts the Ye’i Bi Chei Nightway Ceremony in fine yarns and wonderful detail.

Ye'i Bi Chei Nighway pictorial by Cheryl Yazzie of Chinle, Az. Photographed at Perry Null's Tobe Turpen Trading Post.

Another wonderful rug at Perry Null’s was this small Burntwater by Lillian Joe.

Burntwater in fine yarns by Lillian Joe. Photographed at Perry Null's Tobe Turpen Trading Post.

We stopped next to visit with trader Bill Malone at Shush Yaz and got too involved with discussing rugs with Bill to take any pictures before closing time, but we’ll try to make up for it next week when we stop by again.  Bill tempted us with a 30% discount on some Native American themed clothing, so we should be a good looking group in upcoming pictures.

We had some dinner at Earl’s Restaurant, a Gallup favorite with good food and strolling Native American vendors and then attended the nightly Native American dance event, which is held at 7 PM every day between Memorial Day and Labor Day on Gallup Civic Plaza.   The Talking Eagle drum and dance group was performing tonight and we got another chance to see Fancy Dance and Grass Dance performers.  One of the younger performers couldn’t resist getting into the circle and that seemed to be just fine with the older dancers.  Here’s a picture of the youngster during the performance.

A young dancer learns his moves at the nightly Gallup Native American dance series.

I’ll post more on the weaving seminar tomorrow!