Braids and bands

I’ve written here before about my fascination with weaving. For some years I was a kumihimo enthusiast, eagerly creating and swapping braids with people around the world. Two marudais still stand in the studio, awaiting a return of the braid mojo for in the meantime, I’ve moved on to other interests. Genuine enthusiasms never go away completely though, do they? Wherever we are in the world, when I see someone braiding or weaving, I’m there. I want to take a closer look, to see how they are working and what features I recognise. These processes are the same the world over, from the woman in northern Thailand, sitting weaving with the end of her braid tied to her toe to the women on the other side of the world, making a braid on a street in Pisco.

When we were in Peru I was in heaven, encountering all of these weavers creating magic with their fingers and very little equipment. No elaborate looms or fancy tools - this was braidmaking at its simplest and I loved it.

I chatted to the women with the help of our guide, discovering that they held all the traditional patterns in their head - no need for anything written down - and age seemed no barrier to creating the most lovely woven bands.

My hat band is one of my treasures from the trip!

I came home and bought a couple of books about tablet weaving, looked at inkle looms and the idea of weaving narrow bands bubbled under all the other ideas in my head for a while. I was lucky to be given a small rigid heddle loom a couple of birthdays ago and have posted here about my adventures in weaving which continue. But that little band weaving itch was still waiting to be scratched.

Then I stumbled upon a blog (as you do). Not any old blog either, but one with links to YouTube videos showing beautiful band weaving with minimal equipment. Within the day, the book was in my online shopping cart and I was investigating Sunna heddles and had added the word gehpa to my vocabulary. Yes, of course, I placed an order with Stoorstalka too.

Today, our post lady brought a package for me. The email acknowledgement of my order had a tracking number and the last I’d seen of my package was in Umeå, a city we know fairly well but when it arrived I spotted it had come from Jokkmokk, a place I needed to find on a map!

Hmm. I thought Umea was a long way north (and my Hero, who was there in midwinter a few years ago in -25C temperatures will agree!) But Jokkmokk really is a long way North, in Swedish Lapland.

There in my package was a card with a great image of where it had come from.

Not only that, but there was the sweetest of greetings from Ida Marie - good wishes I have been able to acknowledge and return by means of a Facebook chat with her. When I got up this morning, I might have expected a small package to arrive but did I realise that it would also contain a little ray of sunshine from Northern Sweden? What a lovely surprise!

I wonder if you can guess what I plan to do next?

Another little bit of sunshine and a blast from the past. During the years of my “kumihimo period” I met a delightful and extraordinary braider, Shirley Berlin. Generous with her ideas, expertise and enthusiasm, I remembered her spending time researching braiding traditions with the Sami people of northern Sweden - quite possibly, the same people who work with Stoorstalka? When I opened the book above, I was delighted to spot Shirley’s name there in the acknowledgements - all kinds of memories came flooding back together with a reminder of this small world in which we live!