February 17th, 2014

We went to Myanmar (Burma) in December/January. The country is beautiful, and the people are welcoming and friendly. If you smile at them, they will invariably smile back at you.

We went to a silk weaving factory in Amarapura (near Mandalay), and saw women working on the looms.

They were doing incredibly intricate work, following a graph-paper guide placed above the weaving area. You can see the guide on the right in the photo above, and in the picture below.

They were counting constantly, lifting up a single strand of the warp with a bobbin to create the incredibly detailed design.

They were weaving in reverse - what you see in the photo above is the wrong side. The only way to see the right side was by using a mirror (below).

Check out all those bobbins. These women were master weavers! There were usually two women working on each loom to make one piece of fabric.

The weaver is wearing thanaka on her face; this skin protection is typical of most women and children in Myanmar. They believe it protects against sunburn and wrinkles. It consists of ground wood from a tree of the same name; there are various qualities of thanaka and also different stones for grinding it.