sweetgeorgia

Attraversiamo

_Attraversiamo._ So, apparently this means literally “to cross over”, as in “hey, let’s cross the street”-type usage. I learned this lovely new bit of Italian last night from the book by Elizabeth Gilbert, [Eat Pray Love](http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Pray-Love-Everything-Indonesia/dp/0143038419/), where she simply gushes about how much she loves this word. How beautiful it sounds. How delightful and Italian it is. It is her most favourite word in Italian.

This morning, I pass by the silk scarf currently on my loom. It is bathed in light. It actually seems like it’s emitting light… even in this soaking wet grey Vancouver weather. And I notice the beauty and profound effect of “crossing over”.

The yarn used here for the “crossing over” or the weft is bamboo yarn with several dips of indigo. It took me several attempts at first to find the best yarn to cross with this warp. The warp is varied and mixed up, with one side heavy with fat and chewy turquoise silk singles to the other side where several slim strands of osage and iron dyed silk peek out. Sprinkled throughout are the bumpy bits of silk boucle, bursting from the surface of the fresh woven fabric.

Initially for wefts, I had tried an ethereal, kid mohair laceweight yarn dyed in pale turquoise, but the core yarn disappeared into the warp stripes and all that was left was residual haze. Crossing it with something stronger like 20/2 silk only made it look and feel weft-heavy.

But this bamboo seems to fit perfectly. The warp is turquoise, warm blues, aqua greens, and even maize yellows. The indigo-dyed bamboo is still a warm blue, but less so than the warp. A cool blue, even. And so the colour shift that happens when you cross the two is the most appealing thing about weaving. It is the relationship between the two — seemingly disparate — colours that is magical. The best fitting weft will merge with the warp… not disappearing into it and not overwhelming it. But it will colour and shade the warp and produce something that makes the warp even more beautiful. The weft is subtle, complementary and supportive.

I’m pretty sure Gilbert didn’t have _anything_ about fabric on her mind when she wrote about this. But the analogy seems so obvious to me: that the person you choose to cross over with should be, in overwhelmingly simply terms, a good weft. That this person should merge and blend with you in such a way as to create a more beautiful life.

_Attraversiamo._ Let’s cross over. There’s something better on the other side of the street.