Tag Archives: textiles

“By the way, you DO have your passports with you, don’t you?” our guide asked (in Thai) after the van we were in had pulled away from our hotel. At least, that is what I finally figured out she had said – by which time we were already five or ten minutes down the highway. Negotiating […]

View full post »

If you have very little to start with, it takes very little to make a big difference. Attapeu province in the southernmost part of Laos provides access to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail and two National Diversity Conservation Areas – and very little else.  During the French administration it was a base for Nation Liberation […]

View full post »

Some people are larger than life.  James Harrison Wilson Thompson, more commonly know as Jim, or even ‘Lord Jim’, is one such person.  He is, amongst other things, credited with single-handedly revitalizing the commercial Thai silk trade.  An Office of Strategic Services (OSS; precursor to the CIA) operative during the second World War, he resettled in […]

View full post »

Isn’t the English language wonderful?  In the title “Weaving Communities” you probably read ‘weaving’ as an adjective – that is, communities that exist about or for weaving.  But, weaving is more usually a verb: the art of forming something, (a fabric or a fabric item; a basket, a story, a rug, a community…) into a pattern by interlacing long threads […]

View full post »

The only downside, for me, of traveling to up-country Thailand, is that I end up with so many pictures I have trouble figuring out how to organise them! I spent last weekend in Northeast Thailand (Isaan): Ubon Ratchathani, Sisaket and Surin.  I was with a group of women from all parts of the world who were […]

View full post »