“Made From Scratch” Redefined by Laos Yarn Maker

You never know when the next opportunity to photograph something amazing will come around and these images would’ve never seen the light of day if we didn’t make a random stop while biking through a small village near Luang Probang in Laos.

There was a bunch of scarves hanging by the small shop entrance, looking similar to those I’ve seen sold at the night market. I thought this was just another product from a Chinese factory being resold by local vendors, so imagine my surprise when I saw the weaving machines in the back with scarves still in the works. The patterns and designs were so complex I would have never thought someone was making them by hand.

Using gestures and pointing at the weaving equipment I asked the woman to show me how she weaves the scarves. She set down for a short demonstration, letting me jump around with my camera and capture her in action. I couldn’t believe the complexity of the process! The weaving machine was made out of wood, had 14 different handles and pedals operated by hands and feet all moving in perfect synchronicity. The woman was pushing a wooden capsule with a thread through hundreds of other threads and I’m sure it all made sense to her, but there is no way I could repeat what she was doing without hurting myself.

As we were about to leave I saw a few wicker trays filled with small chunks of cotton and two others with turmeric roots and dry flowers. The shop owner, Kham, explained that she grew her own organic cotton, made the yarn, then used the roots and plants around her house to dye it. We stopped in our tracks and made a 180 degree turn. We were completely stunned and started putting together compositions with rich and vibrant colors of yarn and the plants that were used to dye them. I guess our enthusiasm was contagious as the woman started bringing more of her already dyed yarn and plants she used for our compositions.

Kham said that it takes her about 2 weeks to make one medium size scarf working a full 8-9 hour day, which comes to about 125 hours. She sells them for $25 (many for less) so it comes to about $0.19 an hour. This is not counting the time and effort it takes to grow the plants, collect cotton, weave and dye the yarn. If we take this into account that hourly rate will drop to mere pennies.

Kham certainly redefined the term “from scratch” and made us realize how much work goes into each piece of fabric. We bought a bright red hand-stitched scarf as we wanted to take a little piece of that place with us.

We vouched not to buy anything while on the road as we are traveling with only one carry-on each, but we were so grateful that Kham let us play in her backyard and photograph some really amazing things, that we couldn’t say no this time.

Photography by Alex Oleynikov

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