Wesak and the Wesak Shawl

Wesak, in case you missed it, is the Buddhist version of Christmas: the day Shakyamuni Buddha was born.  Observance of the day at my zendo includes meditation, a ceremony involving ladling the water of wisdom and compassion over the baby Buddha's head, sending a prayer aloft with frankincense, listening to a Dharma talk and then eating a delicious potluck.

A woman I had never seen before came for the ceremony.  I immediately noticed she was wearing a very unusual and attractive shawl.  I managed to sit near her during the Dharma talk so I could surreptitiously examine its manner of construction.  When I got home, I started playing with string. This is a Kromski Harp rigid heddle loom, by the way.

The original shawl I had seen had used high quality bulk yarns as warp and woven them together with almost invisible lightweight thread.  I dove into my stash of yarn trouve and found the best bits I  had.  Nothing about what I wanted to do seemed to fit the usual ways of warping the loom, so I came up with what seemed like a good alternative. 

It turned out to be rather painstaking.  I worked on it little by little over the course of several days, experimenting with different bits of colored string.  While I had an idea in mind, it seemed I didn't know what it actually was until I started to warping the loom -- at which point, the colors, textures and weights of the different fibers started telling me what to do.  Eventually the whole process was complete.

Now I just needed to lie in wait until an unsuspecting housemate or visitor passed by who I could corral into helping me wind on.  Until then all ends remain, as always, neatly wrapped: