A Weaver’s Day Michele Laughing Reeves

A Weaver’s Day

By Michele Laughing-Reeves

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days…” wrote American author Annie Dillard. Such is the case for everyone; how we choose to spend each day defines our lives, and each person’s definition is unique. Like a lot of Navajo artists, my life is defined by what I love doing--weaving. I became a weaver at the early age of 8 or 9 without known that it would play a crucial role throughout my life. The main reason why weaving is an enjoyable profession is because, despite the daily routine, it provides endless creativity. Each day has nearly the same schedule, but each time I sit down at the loom, the experience is different.

The long Summer days are the best. Without an alarm or a rooster (he died many years ago), we would wake when the stars are still visible in the sky. I would build a fire in the metal grill, which was once a 55-gallon barrel, and start warming the water for the morning coffee. While we wait for the fire to burn down to the coals, my mother and I settle into our spots in front of our weavings. Our weavings are usually set up back-toback on the same loom so that we are facing one another. My sister retreats to her loom in another room. We do this out of habit, and we can have a productive day when we start this early. KTNN is on the radio (yes, the radio) and there’s no need to have a conversation this early. After about an hour, I check the water and the fire. They are ready—for coffee and for cooking.

The sun is up, but it is still cool, and my father and children start to make their way out to the hot grill. This morning, like many Summer mornings, we are having grilled bacon and tortilla with coal-brewed coffee and juice. The coffee pot is now set on the coal and the grill is cleaned and ready for the dough. As the smell of brewing coffee surround us, my mother flattens the dough while I place it on the grill, it cooks, I turn it over, it cooks, and onto the next piece. Meanwhile, my daughter has taken up the difficult task of grilling the bacon, because it will always catch fire. It requires a skill in quickness and coordination. In no time, we each have our breakfast sandwiches in one hand and hot coffee in the other as we sit in camping chairs, listening to the traffic heading toward Window Rock. But before we venture away from the grill, my daughter tosses a small piece of her last sandwich into the dying fire to thank the Holy People for their blessings.

The sheep and goats start to make noise, wanting their breakfast as well, so we are rushed back into our schedule. While the sheep herders feed the sheepdogs and the ducks, we return to our looms. Now, we are wide awake and fed, and we can now converse about whatever happens to come over the radio waves, which just happens to be campaign advertisements. We do this for the next two or so hours, letting our hands and fingers move automatically from left to right, right to left, and back again. It almost seems mindlessly, the designs creating themselves. However, my sister and I have been weaving for more than four decades and my mother six, so that the skill involves mostly feeling our way through the motion with our fingers and hands. Today, I am weaving a new design, and I have a mental picture of it, so this may involve some trial-and-error. I am curious to see how the design will transfer into the weaving, and whether I have the colors I want. Because I’m so invested, I skip our morning coffee break at 11am.

Meanwhile, my mother is setting up her Crystal pattern design, so she is counting and recounting the warp to make sure the design will fit vertically. After the design is set up, she starts gathering yarn to color-coordinate and to make sure that there is enough of each color to complete the weaving, especially the homedyed wool. By 11am she has her yarn and design ready to go. My sister is weaving a pictorial, her umpteenth one. She weaves as fast as she talks, which is good because we rely on her to run errands. She often volunteers to go shopping for groceries and supplies, but today she plans on dying some wool with onion skins. She has boiled the skins yesterday and let it

sit overnight, so she should get some bright peach colors. After she serves up more coffee and snacks for break, she starts to reheat the pot of dye. She is determined to dye as much wool as possible before the onion skins lose its potency. She will most likely not get back to her weaving for the rest of the day.

We usually have a late lunch around two o’clock and followed by a long break, away from our weavings. Weavers sit for long periods of time, so it helps to also take the time to exercise or do other chores. Today, we all decide to help my sister dye her wool and form an assembly line. Since the newly dyed wool must be rinsed several times, we easily arrange a first, second, and last rinse cycles. We, including my sister, also know that we have an ulterior motive for helping, we would like a skein or two of peach colored wool. I am anxious to get back to my weaving, so I’ve earned about a skein of dyed wool. But the time away from my weaving has given me time to reconsider color choices or design patterns, so I can make these changes without “unweaving” too much. My sister has a talent for matching colors, so I often ask for her advice, for design critique I ask my mother.

It is usually about 4 or 5 pm before we return to our looms, and we usually weave late into the night. Dinner is a quick break around 6pm, when the sheepherder is bringing home the sheep and goats. Any weaving done in the evening using artificial light requires careful attention to colors. It is easy to mistakenly use the wrong color, and it won’t be discovered until the following morning when the Sun rises. Whenever we are in doubt about a color, we have no choice but to call it a day. There’s always tomorrow.

Dillard also said, “We live in all we seek.” Weavers, like many artists, seek to create and find solace in their creativity. What we create becomes our livelihood, and for most of us our, job is also our hobby. How do you spend this hour and that hour?