Weaving

Over and under

The box goes into the ground. The strip stays with you. After a few pages you have a few, and they weave into a small square of colour with no picture in it.

1When you are ready, weave your strips, over and under.

Pale stone rises in thin, cracked layers against a clear blue sky.
A ridge of pale stone rises against a clear blue sky. It is built of thin layers laid down one over another and since tilted, cracked and worn back, so each band shows its edge.

How to weave

Wait until you have at least four strips. Lay half of them side by side on the table, touching, running away from you. Take another strip and pass it across them: over the first, under the second, over the third. The next strip starts the other way, under and then over. Push each one up snug against the last.

Each strip is about two and a half inches wide and as long as the page is wide, so three going one way and three the other make a square of about seven and a half inches. If you’d like a finer weave, cut a strip in half along its length. A dab of glue or a stitch at each corner holds the square, or you can leave it loose and add to it as more pages come.

There is no pattern to follow. Colours you chose on different days end up beside each other and cross. The lines from one plant run into the lines from another. Nothing in the square is a picture, and nothing in it needs to be.

The workbook ends with an empty frame for your weaving, if you’d like somewhere to keep it.

Download the workbook
Smooth white granite rises in rounded folds above a pool of clear water.
White granite, worn into rounded folds and channels, rises from a shallow pool. A tuft of dry grass grows from a crack near the top.
Slabs of sand-coloured stone overlap, with a deep shadowed gap between them.
Two slabs of sand-coloured stone lie one over the other, a long dark gap running between them. Small round hollows pit the lower slab.
Sunlight glitters on clear, shallow water running between dark rocks.
Clear, shallow water runs between dark rocks. The sun breaks into hundreds of small points of light on its surface, and the ripples cross and recross over the sand below.