A second week at the Weavers' Service Centre

This has been a busy week at the Weavers' Centre, and very productive for me, despite the holiday we had on Tuesday in honour of Gandhi's birthday. (It's one of the three annual dry holidays in India.)

I spent time with the trainer, who has a very full desk, and many distractions. The form of the session was for him to write in my book, explaining a particular type of weave and how it is documented to be set up on the loom, and then to give me exercises on further weaves. On Monday, a few hours passed this way before I was told I should take some time off, and come back on October 15th when he would be ready to teach again. It appears he needed surgery on his ankle, and a week to recover. Of course, this doesn't fit with my plans to leave India on the 19th, so I was a bit put out. I told him I would still come in, and work on anything available - perhaps the dyeing or printing.

The weavers were continuing to work on the student's samples, so my spare time was spent hanging around the looms watching what was going on. Here you see the weaver preparing the cloth to be cut and removed from the loom, leaving behind a setup which could be used for the next textile.

One of the people who works at the Service Center has the job of winding bobbins and pirns (these hold the thread which is fed from the shuttle), and of cutting samples as they come off the loom. He's not very busy.

Once the three sample pieces were cut and folded, work on the next set of samples continued.

On Wednesday, Chandra and I went back to the Service Centre, where she spoke to some of the more administratively responsible employees, and a small loom was set up for me to do some actual weaving. :-) 

It is definitely hand-weaving - hand operated lifting and lowering of the warp thread, and hand operated shuttle operation for the weft thread. My only comment is that it's more difficult than it looks to get a good piece of cloth. :-) As in any other field, experts make the work look very easy.