Confined to barracks

I have been confined to barracks with Chicken Pox. Despite having it as a child, I have succumbed to it again. The miracle drug they gave me has made it very bearable. I have the red spots but feel pretty good. So what does one do when confined to barracks? Spin. Knit. Dye. Cook. Clean. Watch movies. Read and cruise the 'net. Not a bad life.  

I've been taking pictures of some natural dye material. Here's Japanese Green Tea (interesting grays with a greenish tinge) and Lac (reds) dye stuff. Lac is interesting. It is a excrement from an insect that parasitizes certain trees, mostly in Asia and Mexico. The insect colonies make a resinous cocoon from which the dyestuff is extracted. The resinous material is made into shellac and in the old days, into lacquer ware.  Who would have thought that insect excrement could be so useful?! I remember eating off 400 year old lacquer plates on a remote island off Guadalcanal thinking it most unusual to be there eating off such beautiful elegant dinner ware in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Knowing lac comes from insect excrement makes that dinner experience even more bizarre.

The spinning sisterhood

Last weekend I joined the sisterhood of spinners. I had no idea that these fiber sisterhoods existed--weekends where women get together and spin, or knit or weave. The one I went to was for spinning. Think of a large meeting room filled with 40 middle age and older women (and one man) and 50 spinning wheels, all spinning up a storm of fiber, and you get the picture...very weird. But it was two and a half days of spinning bliss. Hard to believe one could get such enjoyment from making yarns.

I took a workshop on things to look for in buying a fleece. Interesting tip when looking for fine wool. Test for softness by taking a lock of wool, twist it and rub it against your face just below the nose and above the lip. This is one of your sensitive areas and works to detect softness far better than your fingers or the rest of your face. The picture of the fleece is from a sheep named Tomeye, a lovely Romney. Shorn in 2008. We also saw some of Tomeye's fleece from this past year after he suffered from pneumonia. The fleece reflected his poor health.

Yarn bombing

I have been meaning to post this picture for a long time.  This is a bicycle that has been 'yarn bombed' outside of the Knotty-by-Nature yarn store in Victoria (great fibre store by the way). This is kinda like a knitted tea cosy but think bigger scale. Yarn bombing is taking the world by storm, stitch by stitch.  A friend had his truck yarn bombed and came back to find little knitted accessories hanging from the tailgate, the antenna, mirror, etc.  Cute in a devilish kinda way.  Anyway, the Vancouver Island University light poles got yarn bombed last week and unfortunately my camera battery died so I don't have proof that one light pole was dressed as a flasher in a grey knit sweater (moss stitch, with a cable or two) from which a pink sock-like appendage protruding.  That may be providence that I couldn't capture that image, but I did manage to capture the seaweed being circled by fish and the snake that slivered around a pole and captured one of the campus bunnies it its mouth.

Last week on Saltspring Island I saw a book on yarn bombing ' Yarn Bombing - Improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time and see that the two women from Vancouver (I just realized I am almost at the epicentre of this knit revolution) have a blog dedicated to recording yarn bombing activity around the world.  Some where I read an article about subversive knitting in Paris (of course).  Social knitworking where twitters twitknit a pub or cafe and knitters descend upon that location, armed with yarn and needles, ready to knit up a storm, usually on a public object like a mail box, tree or statue.  One never knows where or when, but wired knitters have learned to be prepared at a moments notice to do their bit and warm up the world.

Investigating the use of goat and dog wool in Coast Salish blankets

First, a little summary background on the Coast Salish Wool Dog. There are many Coast Salish blankets in museums around the world. These are said to be made of Mountain Goat wool. Someone, somewhere (I'll have to find a good reference and check this out in more detail) analyzed the fibre from one blanket to figure out what the animal producing the fibre ate (carbon isotope analysis) and found that their diet consisted of 50-70% marine in origin. It is unlikly that Mountain Goat ate that much, if any, fish, so they are ruled out. So if these blankets aren't necessarily all Mtn Goat, what are they made of? 

In addition, there are many Coast Salish territories (Vancouver Island and Puget Sound for example) where Moutain Goat are not found, and from these areas we have Salish Oral history which establishes the existance of specially bred dogs used for their hair as wool in blankets.  

We also have records from some of the early explorers of the area mentionaing these dogs Capt. Vancouver wrote in 1792 while at Bainbridge Island: "...the dogs belonging to this tribe of Indians were numerous, and much resembled those of Pomerania, though in general somewhat larger. They were all shorn as close to the skin as sheep in England..." and the Spaniards while anchored off Nanaimo mention that the dogs "of moderate size, resembling those of the English breed, with very thick coats, and usually white."  

Paul Kane (see the blog posting below) sketched and painted what could be a Salish wool dog. And George Gibbs, surveyor, collector and interpretor/translater in the mid 1800's donated his pet wool dog 'Mutton' to the Smithsonian on its death (see the posting further down).  

So we have oral history, the written word, some possible visuals referring to the dog, and perhaps a preserved dog. And you would think there has to be some dog blankets in existance somewhere but how does one identify dog wool from goat wool? Perhaps some of these goat wool blankets were really dog wool or a combination.

In 2006, 'Mutton' the supposedly Salish wool dog, was found and dusted off and the USA National Museum of Natural History provided Anne Murray, a  Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Textile Conservation, with the hair of 'Mutton', some of goat, along with some fibres from Coast Salish blankets. The idea was to try and identify what a Salish dog hair fibre looks like and how it can be distinguished from goat fibre. This was done for visual identification using microscopy (scanning and polarized light) and then DNA analysis (mitochondrial). Both the structure of the hairs and the DNA anaylsis support that the blankets did have both Moutain Goat and dog wool. The picture on he left is from a poster overviewing the research done and shows Goat hair on the top and Mutton's dog hair on the bottom.

Mexico and the Rebozo Shawl

There have been a lack of blogs in the last few weeks but I have a good excuse - - The Yucatan. We just returned from a two week vacation. Highlights included:

• New Years at Chitzen Itcha
• Thousands of Pink Flamingos at Celestun
• Millions of bats emerging at dusk from a cave near Calakumal
• Visits to many of the Mayan ruins around the whole peninsula
• Bohemian beach days south of Mahahual

And, a couple of interesting purchases in a market in Carillio Puerto, a little town not exactly on the tourist maps but known for being the centre of the Caste Wars and home of the 'talking cross' which spoke to (via a ventriloquist) and directed the population into inspired battle. South of Telum (which IS on every tourist map), Carillio Puerto is very much a Mayan town and the market reflects it. In a tiny hardware stall in the mall I admired an ikat woven shawl lying on the counter. The Mayan man laughed, said something to his wife who also laughed and put 'her' shawl away. But minuted later she lay a brand new one on the counter also beautifully woven, so I purchased it along with four hammock shuttles which I figure could be useful for tapestry weaving. The Rebozo shawl is used for covering the head and shoulders, especially when entering a church, but is also very popular as a sling to hold babies close to your body. The Rebozo shawl is apparently disappearing quickly with many weavers retiring, demand declining, and younger people not taking weaving up. Here's a video showing the process.

Salish Spindle Whorl

It has been a busy Christmas season, hence a lack of blogging. However, we purchased a special item this year, a drum made by Richard Aiscaican who makes superb drums. His attention to detail marks him as a master drum maker. Check out the photo of the sides and back of the drum where you can see the patterns created from the even application and pressure between the sinew and the drum skin.

The image on the drum is painted by Joel Good a Snuneymuxw member. It is based on a Salish spindle whorl, a crouching naked figure (needing warm fabic?) with two sea serpents wolves facing each other at the top (edited to reflect Joel's correction -thanks Joel). This is from the Snuneymuxw creation story. Apparently sea serpents are more common in the Nanaimo area than elsewhere. The mouth of the human would be where the spindle shaft would be inserted.
Below is a picture of a similar whorl design from the Canadian Museum of Nature. The Snuneymuxw First Nations Band Council uses the spindle design as a logo as can be seen in the photo of the Band Office window on the web page describing spindles.

Coast Salish Wool Dog - What did it look like?

As promised, I am adding answers, or at least more information, about the Salish wool dog as I find it. So what did it look like? In Paul Kane's painting "A Woman Weaving a Blanket" now at the Royal Ontario Museum, he paints a small white dog, almost poodle like. However, the painting is based on some sketches and his sketches of dogs look different.

Susan Crockford, an expert in archaeological analysis of bones, has done extensive research on the indigenous dogs of the Pacific Northwest Coast, has a sketch on that accompanies her monograph on 'Osteometry of Makah and Coast Salish Dogs' that, knowing her expertise, is probably a good likeness (the dogs on the right).


On a side note, on the Snuneymuwx First Nations web site, the Salish Spindle is discussed, and they mention that Cameron Island was one of the islands used to keep the Salish Wool dog breed separated from other dogs. This makes sense as Cameron Island (which is no longer an island) is very close to where the Solexwel village was, allowing easy access to care and feed for the dogs. There is also on that page, a close up of a diorama that shows two dogs, that may be more accurate than the Paul Kane painting. These dogs also look like the sketch on the right.