{"id":190,"date":"2015-01-31T11:52:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T11:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=190"},"modified":"2017-08-02T01:55:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T01:55:14","slug":"doing-it-the-hard-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"Making things difficult"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of this post refers to the way I tried to teach\u00a0myself to whatu when making my first kakahu. \u00a0It was not<\/strong> the best\u00a0way. \u00a0My hands would ache \u00a0so much.
\nNot long after completing this, I noticed,\u00a0in the local paper, an advertisement \u00a0for a weaving course being offered at that time by the Open Polytec. \u00a0That same week I received a note in the mail, with a copy of the Ad,\u00a0from my daughter in Auckland. Her note\u00a0read something like: \u00a0‘I think this is what you have been looking for”. \u00a0She was right!<\/p>\n

Now, having had the advantage of being a student of an expert and having been taught, ‘in real life’ how to hold the whenu and aho, I can’t believe what I was doing. \u00a0I don’t think I could have made it any harder for myself.\"1stKakahuA\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was undertaking\u00a0the challenge of a blog post for every day in November 2014, I started an entry about the first kakahu<\/a> I made. \u00a0My comment then was that it was going to take time to get it right and say what I wanted.<\/p>\n

The reason I have found it difficult to write is because the story that goes with this kakahu\u00a0is\u00a0interwoven with special memories of my Mum.<\/p>\n

Mum and I started it together. \u00a0We had talked about weaving a cloak for a long time. \u00a0In fact Mum had been saving \u00a0different materials that she thought could be useful ‘one day’. \u00a0Some things, like the feathers I used, she had kept safe\u00a0for more than thirty years.<\/p>\n

I had been carefully reading, again, the book by Diggeress Te Kanawa;\u00a0‘Weaving a Kakahu’<\/em>, so I felt I knew the theory of how to do it. \u00a0I had studied in detail a sample of taniko that Aunty Borgia Hakaria had shown me how to do. \u00a0We felt ready to try.<\/p>\n

On one of Mum’s visits in the middle of 2004 we got out the cones of wool she had collected and started measuring. \u00a0After some calculations we had decided that we were going to need 400 lengths of the wool for the whenu.
\nWe also decided that each should be 3 meters long.
\nIt wasn’t until after Mum\u00a0had measured them all that\u00a0I remembered we only needed 200 because each length is folded in half.<\/p>\n

The memory is still very vivid. \u00a0Mum got the giggles and Mum was not usually one to giggle – laugh, yes certainly but giggle like that, I don’t think I had ever seen her do it before.
\nShe picked up all 400 lengths and dropped\u00a0them all over my head as I was sitting at the table, trying very hard to be sincerely apologetic for making her do all that extra work. \u00a0It was a futile effort on my part because seeing Mum giggling was too much. \u00a0We both ended up holding our sides, unable to stop laughing.<\/p>\n

Everything I used in creating this kakahu is something Mum had collected and saved or, like the paua shell pieces, we had gone together to buy.<\/p>\n

Mum never got to see it finished.
\nThe photo of the completed kakahu was taken by my sister in Foxton on the anniversary of her death on\u00a031 October 2004.<\/p>\n

\"1stKakahuB\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first public wearing of our kakahu was in\u00a0Dunedin on 3 December 2005 when Erik wore it as\u00a0he graduated from Medical School.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"1stKakahuC\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Erik also wore it at his wedding on 5\u00a0January 2007.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"1stKakahuD\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It continues to be\u00a0part of important family\u00a0occasions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this post refers to the way I tried to teach\u00a0myself to whatu when making my first kakahu. \u00a0It was not the best\u00a0way. \u00a0My hands would ache \u00a0so much. Not long after completing this, I noticed,\u00a0in the local paper, an advertisement \u00a0for a weaving course being offered at …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","column","threecol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":757,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weaving.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}