Backstrap Weaving-Backstrapped Bookmarks and the Lovely Llama

A bevy of backstrapped bookmarks

My favorite ”on the road”  project is weaving bookmarks. Many times I find myself at night in a deserted hostel in some small town with no internet access and nothing to do so I entertain myself by weaving bookmarks. There always seems to be a bed rail or something to tie my loom up to.  I make bookmarks, key fobs and sometimes small coin purses to give away to fellow travelers and weavers that I meet along the way. Often I swap coin purses with weavers and spinners for interesting spindle whorls, small tools or other bits and pieces. I take all my loom rods with me in my backpack as well as a nifty little warping board that I made which was inspired by my very first weaving teacher in  Huancayo, Peru. My teacher, Margarita and her daughter used to come into town everyday with their little warping board to teach me.

Warping with a board and nails in Huancayo

My warping board is even smaller than this one. It is basically a flat narrow stick about the thickness of a ruler and I use long screws in place of nails as I can secure them to the board with the nut-no leaning warping stakes. It gives me a warp just long enough to make one bookmark or two key fobs. I use two or three widths of warp from this board to make a coin purse.

I like to start my woven pieces with a smooth edge-that means one less hem, braid or fringe to worry about- and I achieve this by threading a steel needle through the warp ends and lashing that to the loom bar. You need to lash it firmly so it won’t bend when you put tension on the warp. Once off the loom, the needle is removed and I pass the first weft tail through the end loops back and forth two or three times on a large sewing needle.  Then I braid the other end or sew over the end and leave a fringe. The book mark sits within the pages of the book with fringe or braids protruding.

Part of my mini warping board. I wrap the screws with paper to stop the warps from catching in the screw threads.

Steel knitting pins and lengths of piano wire that I use to create a smooth start for my weavings.

Finishing the smooth start by passing the weft tail on a large sewing needle.

Finishes for bookmark ends-one has a sewn over edge with fringe and the other has 4-strand braids.

Two weavers from Yanque in Peru chose my bookmarks over the coin purses. Even the little guy got one!

For a nice thin bookmark that is not too bulky within a book, I use a 35wpi crochet cotton and recently used it to make a double woven bookmark with a cute llama motif.

The llama is a much loved symbol of Bolivia and Peru but you certainly don’t need to be trekking down to South America to see this lovely animal anymore. There seem to be more than enough of them being successfully raised in many other countries around the world. I saw many on the outskirts of the city on my last visit to Sydney. There was even a llama festival on at the time.

Here in Bolivia and Peru the llamas have many uses. They are used as  pack animals for transporting grains in sacks, often woven from their own fiber, from villages to markets. Their fiber is woven into blankets, coca bags , belts and other accessories as well as braided into slings and ropes.

Their dung is used as a fuel for cooking fires and their meat is often enjoyed as charque-dried meat similar to jerky. The bone from a llama’s lower leg is shaped into a pick up tool and beater-the wichuna-part of a weaver’s basic tool kit. Enterprising locals pose with their beautiful animals for tourists and they are irresistible!

Dried llama fetuses are sold at the market stalls that sell homemade remedies. The llama fetus is buried at the cornerstone of a new house as an offering to PachaMama in the hope that she will bring prosperity to the home owners.

Ladies posing with their llamas near Cusco, Peru

Llamas carrying produce on the road near Yanque, Peru

Produce at an agricultural festival is displayed in sacks made from llama fiber and wool.

You can see the dried llama fetuses hanging up high in this market stall. On the table are drop spindles, llama fiber and wichunas.

A closer look at llama ”charque”, llama fiber and two ”wichunas”.

Slings, which are beautifully braided from llama fiber, are used, among other things, to hurl stones to help control animals wandering from the herd.

As there are no llamas here in lowland Bolivia where I live, I bought bags and bags of their fiber many years ago when I was in the highlands-enough to keep me occupied spinning and weaving for many years to come. I am no spinning expert and just do as I was taught here. The fiber needs to be spun very firmly to stand up to the weaving of warp faced textiles on the backstrap loom. All the weavers that I have studied with weave with a two-ply yarn and all spinning and plying is done on drop spindles.

From left to right-two shoulder bags, a tool bag and a band that I used for a journal cover-these are all made from my handspun llama fiber. The yarn for the band was dyed after plying with cochineal, coca leaves and spearmint leaves. The designs are inspired by designs of, from left to right, lowland Bolivia, highland Peru, and highland Bolivia.

On the road near Tarabuco, Bolivia grazing alongside sheep, goats and cattle.

 

A full-page drawing by Guaman Poma de Ayala depicting part of a llama festival where a man is singing to a llama and, apparently the llama is singing back!

Finally, I would like to share with you all a spectacular web site with hundreds of beautiful drawings like the one above.. This is the offiicial site of the chronicles of Guaman Poma de Ayala, an indigenous Peruvian of a noble family who became disillusioned with the treatment of the native peoples of the Andes by the Spanish after the Conquest.

His  nearly 1200-page chronicle, written between 1600 and 1615,  is addressed to King Philip III of Spain and outlines the injustices of colonial rule. The 398 pages of drawings capture many aspects of daily life in pre and post Conquest Peru-festivals, costume, weaving, spinning, agricultural cycles,  Inca royalty, government……..

You can view digital facsimiles of all the pictures in this chronicle here.