Weekend weaving wananga at Napier

I have had a wonderful long weekend away at Napier taking a weekend school on korowai weaving. Thanks to all those who helped organise this and thanks to those who participated and made it a joy to teach.
The evening and two days were held at a fantastic cooperative at the Waiohiki craft village.

There were 20 people enthusiastic to learn who by the end of the weekend had learnt all the basic skills to make a korowai and some were even experimenting and creating lovely ideas. 

The shop, itself, was one of the best NZ craft shops I have seen.  Beautiful work, so interesting and innovative. Things I had never seen before. It is well worth a visit, so don't just drive past but stop in some day if you are in the area.  I can't praise it enough. 

We are hoping to have another day in May to look at design options, other techniques and bags.  The class is full already but one of the ladies is looking at doing another course for beginners sometime,  so that's great.   My whole mission is to pass the skills on so others can pass it on too,  just as I have been taught by my kaitiaki in Papakura. 

March marches on

Last week I took the Wakari korowai in to show Craig at the Doc office, the Museum where the Kereru were distributed from and finally up to the school.  I was pleased by the reception as it seemed to go down well.  So now that is off my hands.

We have also organised to take all our little Angel korowai in to the maternity hospital and who will deal with them there.  Judy finished her beautiful one this week.  She does such a lot of finishing work.

Judy's angel korowai

The whenu were getting very short at the back so she worked a lot of rows to hold them.  Very beautiful.  

While I was up in  Timaru lady week I screwed up my courage and went to see a lovely lady at a marae up that way to see if they would like korowai classes.  They were very enthusiastic so hopefully some classes will be organized for April. 

And tomorrow I set off on my adventure to Napier/Hastings to take classes up there. It will be a big class but with help I hope we will cope and people will learn this interesting craft. 

Yesterday I went to see Margery Blackman again about taaniko.  She loaned me some samples she had made of interesting taaniko patterns taken from old cloaks in museums around the world. 

You can see that although this is taaniko it is only one colour yet with texture. This is achieved by different taaniko stitches. This is my next learning project. I think I have got the hang of the last taaniko learning project. That of doing multi directional taaniko

This is the start of a pouch using this taaniko where the direction of the stitches changes depending on the direction of the slope. This means that every slope is a clean line and not staggered as is usual when doing taaniko stitch always the same direction like tapestry stitch. This patten is my adaption of a cloak in the Stockholm museum. Lots of working out required but fun to learn a new technique, well not new but very old.