Supporting others one yarn at a time

First tapestry with logo and the year

Second tapestry with a fluffy logo

At the event and later with the beautiful people who won the auction

I recently made a set of very special tapestry for a special event in Pittsburgh USA. It was a conference for a programming community using Python as their programming language, and the conference is called PyCon US.

I have not been programming a single line of code since university and I have never experienced using Python before. My husband is an entrepreneur and use Python, while being very active in the community that surrounds this programming language. This is the reason why I had the chance to connect with this community.

This auction is held during their conference to support women in programming and the profit from this event is channeled to a special Python community, the PyLadies. I think that it is a great initiative as many, especially women are still underrepresented in various fields of sciences and technology. The challenges that they face are different and are often overlooked. Although I am not currently working in the tech industry myself, as a woman who had been trained in science throughout school and some early part of my professional life, I do understand the difficulties that one may face being in a usually male dominated environment. I am very excited to know that that there is something that I can contribute now through my art.

I have made 2 tapestries with the Python 2-snakes logo on them. I used linen as the background and wool for the design. I choose these 2 materials because I have recently started to think more carefully about the materials that we use everyday in our clothings. Linen and wool, as far as my learning so far has taught me, are materials that are less impacting on the land, the culture and to the people in the community where they are harvested. This may not be the case for cotton. I may write down about this again later one day. Linen and wool are also two materials that are quite joyful to work with, from my experience. I have really enjoyed making these tapestries, it was a good opportunity to try out techniques that I have acquired all these years weaving, into something that is purely decorative.

The main aim of this auction event is to collect donations so that the PyLadies community can create support and opportunities for their members. The second aim is of course, to have fun and enjoy the presence of the community members and show support for each other.

I got very excited and at the same time nervous when my tapestries were up. Will people like them? Will they accept the rustic look of my pieces? All the excitement and anxiety passed by so fast, there was no time to think! My tapestries were being shown across the room, and I have a clip of my weaving process up on the screen for people to see. I hope that with the video, people could see and appreciate the work that is done in a weaving process, something that is fundamentally still the same even if its made by mega machines in the factories.

Finally my peieces were sold, for $1400 and $2000 dollars each. I cannot be happier and hope that my contribution will make the tech community more inclusive and in return make more people happier. Even though I am not currently anywhere close to any STEM work, I am honored to be able to contribute to the advancement of underrepresented individuals in STEM in some way.

I thank the beautiful souls who bought my pieces of work. I am very happy to know that my tapestries are now home with cool engineers that are also extremely kind hearted people. Your support contributes not only to the Python community worldwide, but also helped boost my confidence in my art. This gives me motivation to create more art that I can now believe will actually be useful in contributing towards any field of work, even the sciences. I thank the Python Software Foundation (PSF) as the producer of PyCon US and the PyLadies community for the opportunity.

This means a lot for me and I cannot be any more grateful.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

How long does it take to make this piece

This is a question that I get a lot, and apparently a lot of weavers get asked as well. As an intuitive weaver, this is a question that gives me the chills at the back of my neck. You’re asking me how long it took me? I have never timed myself when I weave. Time is a non existing element when I weave. Now I have to recall the process, the days when I was weaving this piece? I don’t know, I weave it in chunks when I feel inspired, when there’s a flow of creativity in my mind. It may have taken me 8 or 10 or 20 hours to weave it, depending on the complexity of the piece, with technique and also in creativity. What about the hours and days when I was having a conversation with the woven cloth to know what it really wants to be? What about the hours trying to figure out the best way to drape, to cut (or not to cut) the cloth so that it would be into the shape that I want. I don’t use a lot of specific garment patterns, so it really depends on the character of each cloth. It takes time to actually create each piece that are unique and never will be repeated again. So it does take time, but how much? I just can’t give a specific answer. It may seem really odd for most people out there to receive this kind of answer. If you’re manufacturing a product in a production line, you will know the exact time it takes, the exact amount of materials it takes to make a specific product. The thing is, I make everything specifically so that they are different than anything that is made in a production line. So the variables are going to be different. It is not how much time, how much yarn, but rather what was the inspiration, what was the circumstances, what was the challenges and what was the joy of creating this piece of work.

Although I cannot answer specific details about how much time it took me to produce a piece of work, what I can tell you is that it took me 10 years to get here. It took me another 5 years or so before that to actually discover this art of weaving while I was doing other crafts, looking for the perfect one that fits my personality. It also took me almost 500 days of classes in and out once every week to learn and immerse myself not only in the techniques but also the philosophy behind this weaving. It took hours within and out of those 500 days discussing about methods, techniques, ideas that surrounds the saori weaving with more than 100 members of the weaving community that I have known, engaged and be close friends with over the years.

Inspiration also plays an important role in creating many of my work and I get them through my travels to over 20 countries across the globe, over 100 cities, and dozens of museums that inspires me, that excites my brain to see something new, learn something new, learn something from the past as well. Step by step I get out of my comfort zone to talk to strangers, to visit workshops, to talk to people who seems to be too far up in the clouds for me to even say hi, to learn a new language so that I can make friends in foreign lands, to spend weekends or stay up late at night listening to seminars, all these efforts made throughout the years that has accumulated within me and is then sent out into my weavings, into my textiles, into the clothes that I make.

And don’t even mention how much money I have spent over those years to actually gain all these experiences so that I could understand myself, understand the world, understand the history of textile making, understand the trends, both good and bad, all so that I can create better so that I can offer something special, something unique to the world all taken from a part of me when I weave.

So, do you still want to know how many hours it took me to weave a piece?

Healing through weaving

Welcome to Magicthinking.

I would like to talk about how I started my weaving journey. I do not remember the exact date, but I remember the feeling. The feeling when I saw the loom, so close, so casually sitting there for me to come and take a closer look. The excitement when I was told that I could try weaving with the loom. The possibilities that ran through my mind when I started weaving row by row, slowly understanding the relation between the crisscrossed yarns. This was almost 9 years ago, at the 6th floor of the Seibu department store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro city.

The studio was owned and run by Saori, a family owned company that specializes in a form of weaving that is free of forms and patterns, free of rules and rigid ideas of what a piece of woven cloth should look like.

Throughout the years I have learned a form of liberation, a form of expressing oneself through the yarns, through weaving. There is no mistake in Saori weaving, there is no judgement in Saori weaving. Through each and every row you weave yourself. This experience has lead me to a new place which is not merely digits or merits, but a softer side of being human. Of understanding what makes us different than machines. This is a powerful idea to have, it helped me understand myself better and also to accept and forgive myself better too.

At the back of my mind when I’m weaving, I always remind myself to be human. That means that’s it’s okay to have mistakes, that means it okay for things to be crooked, that means that you should take a break and wander around a little bit and connect with others. Don’t overthink and I just let my mind wander and let my hands work the yarns. The results are always amazing this way.

I love my weaving community. They are a group of fun energetic people, always ready to learn something new, try something new. There’s a lot of positive energy flowing in the space when we weave together. Weaving in class with my fellow weavers lifts up my spirit every single time. It’s a zen kind of place, but it’s also like a party sometimes. A party full of colours and ideas. I have made so many friends and most I consider lifelong friends through weaving.

I have had some opportunities to meet creative individuals from various parts of the world through my enthusiasm in weaving which leads me to also dive into the wider world of textile. There’s an interesting mixture of kindness and energy within the community of crafters and textile makers that has drawn me deeper and I am excited to learn and explore more in the future!

So that’s my story of how I began my weaving journey. I hope that you are also enjoying your own weaving or any other creating journey!