When PK Chithrani was 10 years old, her mother taught her how to use a traditional lace-making machine to weave thread into intricately detailed strands to adorn hems on pants or dresses or as a border on pillows.

Little did she know at that young age how this traditional craft would later help her recover from the most traumatic experience of her life.

In the early morning of December 26, 2004, as Chithrani was preparing breakfast for five members of her sister's family, she heard a tremendous thundering noise. She stepped outside and was stopped in her tracks by the sight of a 10-foot wave bearing down on her house.

Chithrani ran back inside and screamed to her family to run to higher ground.

After about 20 minutes, when the waves subsided, we came back down. The only thing we saw was the foundation of our house, Chithrani recalled. This ancestral home has been in our family for generations, but everything was gone, the walls, furniture, clothing, cooking utensils. Later I learned I lost a nephew. It was devastating.

Like thousands of tsunami survivors across Sri Lanka, Chithrani struggled to put the pieces of her life back together again. Before the tsunami, she made lace and clothing to support herself. She said she had a good life before the wave came.

But the waves took away everything, including her sewing machine and the lace-making machine her mother gave her as a child. She was not married and had no children to help support her. At 55, she felt her life was over.

When she heard about the American Red Cross psychosocial support program (PSP) starting in her community, she was eager to participate. PSP engages people in community- and school-based activities such as games, mural painting, singing and dancing to help individuals rebuild bonds following a disaster. Ultimately, PSP helps survivors by enhancing their resiliency and restoring their communities.

In the village of Welligama, PSP brought women together to talk about their loss and fears in order to help them overcome trauma and find new solutions. During the initial meetings, the women spoke of the importance that lace-making machines played in the lives of the community.

Mitesh Govender, a psychosocial support expert with the American Red Cross, approached a local craftsman about producing 28 machines to replace the ones that were lost.

When I first met the women they were consumed with grief and anxiety. They explained how the lace-making machines gave them a sense of belonging to their past, since the craft is handed down from generation to generation, Govender explained. Once we gave them the machines, we quickly noticed the women talking to each other and sharing their sorrow and grief. They helped each other cope with their loss. Over time, we noticed their stress levels decreasing.

Using these machines, it takes the women about four to six hours to make a yard of lace, which they sell for about 45 Rupees (US$0.45). More importantly, Chithrani said that the true benefit of the program lies in the process of making the lace.

A lot of concentration is required to make the lace. Concentrating deeply helps take our minds off our loss and brings back positive memories of our childhood and life before the tsunami, said Chithrani. It cheers us up and gives us hope for the future.

The PSP program in Welligama is just one of many programs being supported by the American Red Cross across Sri Lanka. The American Red Cross is also working with school children and women to help individuals deal with stress and trauma they experienced after the disaster. Specialists for the American Red Cross are training members of the local community so they can pass along their knowledge at the local level. These skills can then be shared with other family or community members, leaving a lasting impact on the many villages ravaged by the tsunami.

We find that many of the PSP participants are now thinking about what they have to offer, what assets their community can build upon. They have started seeing the glass as half full, said Govender.

Chithrani sees the benefits of working together as a community and even the possibility of expanding their efforts.

Making lace is a start. But we hope to be able to sell our lace directly to clothing retailers in Colombo. That way we can make more money and hopefully get the life we once had back, said Chithrani.

Weaving their way back from disaster by Brian Hatchell — American Red Cross

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Some people are pressured to work for the family firm.

Roger Berkley chose to, and found himself facing one of the more daunting tasks in North Jersey commerce today: running a successful textile company.

A staple of Paterson's hustling, bustling silk industry in the early 1900s, Berkley's company — Hackensack-based Weave Corp — is one of the few surviving relics from that era.

The company has marched on even as the industry shifted first to the Southern states and then abroad, lured by low cost foreign manufacturers, most notably those in China.

Now in its fourth generation, the family business has succeeded by carving out a lucrative, expanding market niche, making top of the line fabrics, including silks, mainly used for high-end upholstery.

You won't find Weave Corp. products in many stores; mostly they are bought by interior designers and quality furniture makers. Company fabric, for instance, decorated the Camp David presidential retreat while Ronald Reagan was in office. It graced the chairs on which British and Chinese officials sat as Britain ceded Hong Kong to China in 1997.

And Berkley is confident that by mining the same market, he can continue to make fabrics in the US, going abroad only to expand his line and buttress his profitability.

We are very efficient with a high level of worker productivity, he said. In the long run, I believe that we will become increasingly customized, increasingly exclusive, and that will allow us to prosper.

By making short runs of material made to order — sometimes as small as a 25-yard roll — with a rapid turnaround, Weave Corp can provide quality products and service that no foreign manufacturer can match, he said.

It does so with 168 employees in headquarters in Hackensack, a sales office in New York and a factory at Denver, Pa, in the heart of Amish country. The company also contracts for the manufacture of silk fabric in China. Revenue, under $50 million a year, is rising at about 3 percent a year, Berkley said.

The company's competitive edge is dedication to quality, said Karl Spilhaus, president of the National Textile Association, a Boston-based trade group.

While the Chinese have mastered simpler weaves, he said, they neither have the technical ability nor the desire; they are more interested in apparel than taking on the 20 or so US-based weavers who compete with Weave Corp for the top end of the American market.

The company's other secret weapon is Berkley himself, Spilhaus said.

He's very capable. He's smart and he's a good people person, Spilhaus said. It's a company that's got the personal stamp of a very personable owner.

Berkley's grandfather, Louis Cohen, a South African immigrant, began the company — then a silk mill — in Paterson in 1910. Cohen passed it to his son-in-law, who passed it to his two sons-in-law — one of whom was Berkley's father, Robert. He gave the company's reins to Roger in 1995.

The company's focus, over time, has changed to meet the rapidly evolving environment, mostly through innovation. In the 1950s, Weave Corp became the first in the country to use the European-style Jacquard weaving machine, a faster and cleaner process, Berkley said.

Other innovations that have kept the company competitive include its use of shuttleless weaving machines — which are faster, more versatile and create fewer defects. In 1979, the company was the first in the US to use electronic Jacquard weaving machinery.

The company closed its Paterson mills in 1967, as much of the industry around it fled to cheaper, Southern states, Berkley said.

The equipment was ancient, he said. The building stood in the way of Route 80 and looked like it was going to go.

In its place, Weave Corp opened the Denver, Pa, factory, which has since grown to 160,000 square feet. Squeezed by high raw-material prices, the company stopped making silk in the 1960s and switched production from fabric for apparel and ties, to upholstery material.

Berkley joined the company in 1973 as the transition commenced. Until then, he had sought — somewhat unsuccessfully — to become a tenured teacher. He was brought to his senses by one of his old high school teacher.

He said, 'You don't work well with anybody', Berkley, 59, remembers. You need to be your own boss.

He said his father, who was about to sell the company, agreed to hold off while his son got a taste of the business. It felt good, Berkley said. He took over the fledgling upholstery material line and helped make it the centerpiece of the company, closing down the manufacture of material for men's ties, which faced tough competition from low cost Korean manufacturers.

In 1999, Weave Corp began getting silk made in China. And in February of this year, the company began selling weatherwize, a new line of material that doesn't fade in the sun, mostly for use in garden furniture.

Berkley said his drive to keep pushing the company forward comes from the exhilaration of developing and selling product.

I love watching the looms weave, he said.

I love watching the fabrics being created. I go to the mill pretty regularly.

A family pattern for success — North Jersey Media Group

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Michael Gardner has his heart set on a cashmere blanket — canine cashmere, that is.

Beth Guislin already has a large afghan made from canine cashmere and cherishes the keepsake from her dog, Leo, a golden retriever mix who died in July.

After saving their dogs' fur for years during grooming, both Gardner, who lives in Los Gatos, and Guislin, of Palo Alto, found their way to VIP Fibers in Morgan Hill.

The 5-year-old company offers a distinctly different... uh, spin on a niche market: For a fee, Victoria Pettigrew will spin the fur from your dog or cat into yarn that can be used to knit or crochet into almost anything.

A scarf, a hat, a pettable picture frame. Even a bikini that Pettigrew made from her Samoyed's fur for shock value.

It's just to show that you can use pet yarn for anything you'd use commercial yarn for, said Pettigrew, whose original one-woman company now includes a fibre manager and part-time fibre primers.

And no, her Samoyed, Bon Bien, has not seen the white bikini made from her fur and Pettigrew hasn't worn it — yet.

But she is making a living spinning the fur and hair from pet dogs, cats, rabbits, goats — even a pet buffalo — into yarn. Costs range from $6 to spin enough raw fibre — less than an ounce — to make a pettable picture frame, to several hundred dollars for enough yarn to make a blanket.

About 60 percent of her customers hire VIP Fibers to make the keepsakes for them. The most popular requests are teddy bears and picture frames, but the newly added fur-get me not flowers promise to be hot items.

All of the items are a remembrance, something they can hold or touch, whether the pet is alive or deceased, Pettigrew said. We're very excited when the customer's pet is still with them because it makes it even more special when the pet passes on.

Not everyone buys into the idea. At dog and craft shows where Pettigrew has shown her work, some people respond with a quick ick! but as she states on her Web site: Why not?

That beautiful wool sweater you love so much started out on the back of a sheep, standing endless days out in a pasture, exposed to the elements and collecting vegetation, ticks, lice and the like. The cashmere sweater that you saved up for actually came from the belly of a goat! And your silk blouse? Well, I won't bother telling you which end of a worm it came from!

The quality of the pet yarn depends on the coarseness of the animal's fur — some dogs have silky hair, others coarse and thick — but regardless of how crappy the yarn turns out, we get calls from people saying, 'Oh, my God, it's so beautiful. I can't believe you gave me my Fido back,' Pettigrew said.

Pettigrew isn't the first to spin pet fur into yarn, but her extensive Web site — www.vipfibers.com — has attracted customers from around the country.

Guislin, for instance, saved her dog Leo's fur for years, knowing it could be spun into yarn, but she didn't know who did it.

She was still grieving over Leo's death when she came across Pettigrew's Web site.

Having an afghan made from her former pet's fur is like a gift from Leo really, she said. It's a way of remembering him. He was such a sweet, gentle dog and his fur was like cashmere.

Gardner came across Pettigrew's booth at a dog show but he'd been saving his chow chow's fur since he got the dog 14 years earlier.

I got a solid black chow chow puppy in 1988, said Gardener, who is general manager of the Almaden Country Club. I had read an article that said chow chow fur sweaters were all the rage on the East Coast — they cost about $600 — so I said, 'OK.' I brushed Bizmark for almost the 14 years he lived and I saved and I saved.

By the time he took bags of Bizmark's fur to Pettigrew, he had enough to spin almost a linear mile of yarn. And his mother, Donna Lee Gardner, a world-class knitter, plans to crochet it into a blanket.

We're going after a blanket and a little jewelry pouch to go to my ex-wife, he said. She spent a lot of time with him, too.

Gardner plans to put the blanket on his bed but I'm pretty sure I'll have to be careful with it. I have a new dog and I can see him acting funny.

But have I started saving Kodi's fur? You better believe it.

Spin zone for fur — The Mercury News

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People lacking any sense of fashion no longer need worry about their scarf clashing with their clothes this winter — researchers have created one that automatically changes colour to suit an outfit.

The colour-shifting garment, dubbed a chameleon shawl, was developed by Akira Wakita and colleagues at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.

Interwoven into the scarf material are pixels containing red, blue and green light-emitting diodes (LEDs), so adjusting the brightness of each type of diode turns the scarf a different overall shade.

A small sensor embedded in the garment also enables it to identify the colour of the nearest item of clothing. A microcomputer then selects a suitable colour for the scarf itself to adopt.

Tasteful Shade
In the default setting, the microcomputer in the shawl is programmed to change to the coordinative colour of the input data, Wakita told New Scientist.

This means that if its owner is wearing dark blue, for example, the scarf will instinctively turn a tasteful shade of light blue to match. A kind of colour coordination will be established automatically, Wakita says.

If, however, the wearer fancies making a more daring fashion statement, the scarf's computer can be configured to match more unusual colours together. Theoretically, about 4000 colours can be generated, Wakita says. However, the difference may not be perceivable for human eyes.

The scarf was demonstrated at the International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC2005) in Osaka, Japan, in October 2005.

Chameleon scarf coordinates with your outfit — New Scientist (via Warren Ellis)

Posted by Red Wolf at 2:58 PM | Permalink

If you only know how to tie a knot in a shoelace, I Will Knot! has examples of several useful knots and simple to follow instructions.

I Will Knot! — (via digg)

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German Artist Patricia Waller uses wool and the technique of crochet to create works of art that are out of the norm in the crafts world.

She uses the intricate detail of the artwork to convey such irony and humour in her pieces, such as Accidents, How to Kill Your First Love and Don't Kill Your Idols.

Crochet Art by Patricia Waller — Patricia Waller (via MAKE: Blog)

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Matt Gilbert crochets and sells US$50 scarves that resemble long, floppy scrollbars with a repositionable scroller. Perfect for the cold, nerdy necks in your life.

Hand-crocheted scrollbar scarf — Fit For Use (via Boingboing)

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The same knitters responsible for the Dawn of the Dead knitted zombies, have created a knitted re-enactment of the hilarious British zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead

cakeyvoice's photos — flickr (via Boingboing)

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Pat Thompson says the music made by her loom is just as relaxing as music made with instruments.

Weaving is very peaceful, Thompson said. It's like playing the piano; the rhythm of the loom is music that you lose yourself in.

Thompson, 59, shares her love of weaving with members of Hartland's Black Sheep Weavers, a local fibre guild dedicated to keeping the weaving heritage alive and growing in Hartland and the state.

Weaving has been a part of Hartland Township since the 1930s when founder J Robert Crouse Sr urged the training of farming women to learn weaving as a home-based skill to supplement their agricultural income in the winter. As a result, in the 1930s and '40s, Hartland's was the third largest hand-weaving industry in the country.

You can go to states as far away as California and tell weavers that you are from Hartland, and they all recognise it, Thompson said. Sometimes, they even have a loom made in Hartland.

With more than 80 members, Black Sheep Weavers expanded into other fibre crafts, including spinning, dying, needle felting and beading and rug hooking.

The group will hold its 23rd annual weaving and fibre crafts sale on Friday and Saturday. The event helps support continuing education and operation costs of the group.

Black Sheep Weavers continues the mission set forth by Crouse and the original Cromaine Crafts weavers of creating things beautiful and useful by offering classes, workshops, lectures on fiber craft techniques, as well as artistic support and mentoring new and existing members.

They volunteer at local history and educational events to pass along Hartland's weaving's legacy to the community.

Nadine Cloutier, 55, has been a Black Sheep Weaver for nearly 15 years. She attended her first meeting as a guest and was overwhelmed by the tactile experience, the feel of the yarn, the colors, the enthusiasm, and the genuine interest in sharing and teaching the craft.

In addition to weaving, Cloutier makes dolls, incorporating many types of fiber and textiles into her creations.

I was an artist and weaver in the late 1960s, Cloutier said. The group was a touchstone, bringing me back to my artistic roots that had been shelved for so long.

Cloutier has formed a weaving study group that explores vintage weaving patterns used by the original Hartland Cromaine Crafts weavers during their heyday.

Some of us felt we were losing the heritage weaving connection, Cloutier said.

Black Sheep Weavers spinning a proud tale — The Detroit News

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