Saturday, February 19, 2011

All about mawata

We lost internet yesterday. It was awful. How do people live without it? I felt completely isolated from the world and positively uninformed. But now it's back and I'm surfing it with vengeance. Don't you ever leave me, internet!

So, what does one do without internet? Well, luckily I got the silk hankies I ordered a while ago in the mail yesterday, so I was able to entertain myself with that. These silk hankies, or mawata in Japanese, are literally expanded cocoons. As you can imagine, pure silk is wonderfully soft, and I intend to knit it. But there are a few steps I had to do before I could start.
100% bombyx silk - colorway: fire on the mountain
First, you separate a hankie from the bunch...
...then you start in the middle and start spreading it...
You pull and tug at it until you have a worsted yarn weight.
It looks delicate, but it's unbelievably strong.
You knit it like you would do with yarn. The result so far is unbelievably soft. Can't wait to see the end product.

3 comments:

Azra Beganovic said...

What are you making with the mawata? It looks lovely but complicated. Why were you without Internet? Amra and I were wondering why you hadn't looked at our blog or been on Skype. We miss you!!

Amra said...

Wow this looks very interesting. You'll have to show us how to do that when we get back!

Jennifer said...

I cannot live without the Internet either and wonder how I made it through the first half of my life without instant information at my fingertips! :)