Kirsten's taaniko

Finally finished the feathers and now on to the taaniko. This design is one Kirsten's mother had done long ago. It seemed appropriate to have it on her Arapaki.

Should finish this week. We have two more weaving days at Ocean view for the year, Tuesday morning and Saturday. 

Kirsten's kakahu

Mum and I had a wonderful holiday catching up with some of the family in Australia. But now is back to work and all the fun of creating.  I am finding more people are commissioning me to make their family cloaks or special occasion korowai for institutions. This is exciting but I'm finding I now have to make time slots (by three month periods) or I would overwhelm myself. This happened this year with Kirsten's cloak. I have come back to it now and am going to be able to finish it in the next week or two.
Unfortunately the camera on my tablet has gone all fuzzy so the photos are not good.
So here I have continued on from where I left off a few months ago.

I was puzzling how to do the poka shaping while keeping the pattern.  At first I tried hiding it under dark finishing Feathers. 

However I thought that looked too heavy on the short cape so I undid it and tried just keeping the potama pattern but doing the short rows of the shaping anyway. Then finished with one row of dark feathers. I think it's worked well and am happy with it. 

Next step is Kirsten's taaniko which is based on one her mother did. It is patterned out and all ready to go as soon as I've completed the finishing rows on the feathers. 

But today I'll have to clean feathers and make soap etc for some starter kits ready for Christmas orders. We find people are getting these sent as gifts to other family members. 

 Maybe I'll get them done quickly and get on with the taaniko.