Completed The Way I Work My Weave Pt. II

[Naadiya]

The Way I Work My Weave Pt II 53 of Winter 521 AV While Naadiya was getting used to waking up to find that Artik had already left, it was always a pleasant surprise to find him still there come sunup. He made soft grunts in his sleep that she could hardly consider full snores but they did have their own comical effect. Grunt, grunt, wheeze. Mumble mumble, grunt. Naadiya pushed herself up on her elbows and looked at the sleeping Svefra, wondering what he was dreaming about. Despite his sleepy speech, he seemed calm enough. Not a nightmare, then, she thought, running a hand through his hair softly enough to not pull it. Lucky boy. After one round too many the previous night, the two had come back to the inn. Artik began dozing off while seated on the bed, and Naadiya had kept him from laying back by propping him up with her bent knee as she braided his hair. First, she did one on either side of his head, behind his ears, then one at the very center of his hairline, and once she realized how enjoyable it was to not only weave his hair into plaits, but also to imagine his reaction when he became full conscious, Naadiya did the rest of his head. He would soon wake to find several braids springing out from a point atop his head where she’d tied them all together. He looked like a toddler, a palm tree, and a pirate had all fuzed together to magically create one large drunken mess. Lifting the arm that lay across her stomach, Naadiya slid out from under him and stepped off the bed. Artik rolled over almost immediately and resumed his soft snoring. Moving quietly, so as to not wake the man, Naadiya took the leather bound journal on the nightstand and something to write with along with a sharpening knife and when to open the shutters. Though the wind felt refreshing, it was wasn’t cold and didn’t bother Artik in his dreams of sailing over waves of coconut rum. Naadiya swung one leg over the window’s rail and then the other, and just like that she was out in the deck. Settling into a chair with her journal, Naadiya closed her eyes and tried to picture the design she would want to do in her forthcoming fabrics. Dawn had seemed to like the color combinations she’d been churning out and Naadiya wanted to make some place mats. They were relatively fast to weave due to their size and while locally they would have some novelty appeal, these small crafted luxuries often reached good prices far away where their style would not be so commonly found. Syka was likely one of the few places in Mizahar that would be able to produce Benshira designs in Isuas fabric, if not the only. There had to be a market for that, however niche it may be. Surely there were Benshira or at least the borderline offensive ‘Benshira-culture-enthusiasts’ with heavy pockets wanting to add to their collections in Riverfall. Ugh, she groaned inwardly, but if it takes some quasi-noble with a desert fetish in a faraway land to finance my climb back out of poverty, let them buy as many camel themed pillow cases as they can afford. And praise Syna, let them tell their likeminded wealthy friends. With her knife she whittled off a few shavings of wood until her point was fine enough then started making plans. She turned her journal so that the longer side of the pages was horizontal and sketched the loose shapes of mountains layered over each other, a sun in the sky and waves at the bottom. Then, she made little lines equally space across the top and made a note to know the space between each line would hold 5 warp yarns. Once she had drawn the lines going down the shorter side of the page as well, she looked over her design and began to estimate how the sizes of the shapes in her design would actually translate into passes with a shuttle, and amounts of warp threads caught or skipped, then adjusted her design to better fit realities limits. Word Count: 694

[Naadiya]

She didn’t have different colored pencils yet, or any type of paint so Naadiya walked back to the window of her room and leaned in far enough to grab her embroidery kit. With a thin needle, she used different colored threads to denote the different colored yarns she’d fill each section of the weave with. Content with the general visual representation of her sketch, Naadiya began working out the numbers. How many warp yarns did she need to catch and skip for the shape of the sun? It should be relatively round or it wouldn’t be recognizable. The mountains needed to each be a different tone than the last, getting darker as they receded into the background and their peaks could not be the sharp ends of a triangle, but smoother like the tip of a piece of chalk that’s been well used. And the waves. For the waves Naadiya wanted to just have a series of wavy stripes, starting lighter and getting darker till they reached the end of the textile. With a yawn, Naadiya stretched her arms up. Then, finding that insufficient, she stood up, set her things in the chair and bending her body over, she reached for her toes. She was stiff from having so recently woken up and couldn’t actually make contact. Standing straight, she brought her still stretched arms ahead of her, over her head and back so that her stomach stretched and she could feel the burn in her, pulling at her core. Another attempt at toe-touching, this time successful. She could remember a time when she could touch the floor with flattened palms and think nothing of it. But like all else, without practice, it was easy to lose one’s flexibility. And Naadiya was not getting as much exercise as she'd once done. Since she had arrived at the settlement, Naadiya had already put on a couple of pounds. Unable to be sure if they had gone unnoticed by her newest bed-buddy, she had become hyper aware of them and usually in the most inconvenient of moments. Lately, Naadiya had started to find ways of bringing those carnal activities back to her own room, rather than Artik’s ship with its carefully angled mirrors around the bed. And while bringing him to her place had its advantages, Artik was getting more and more comfortable and so, getting harder and harder to get rid of when she needed to get her day going. Having had already experienced him at his more sobered states, she knew he could be unpleasant, to say the least. But of course, seven times out of ten, he just woke up with a lingering buzz from the previous night. On those mornings, he was always much easier to deal with. Why don’t I flip a coin to see which side of Artik I’m going to be getting today? It was looking it like would turn out to be a beautiful day, if it continued like this she could go all day without sweating or being caught in the rain, though the likelihood of that was slim. Ugh… let him sleep a little longer, I’m not ready for that encounter quite yet… Naadiya took her things and left them inside by the window. The outside shower was empty and she took advantage and took a quick bath. After washing her hair and scrubbing her scalp thoroughly and rinsing off, Naadiya gave her whole body a good scrub with the natural sponge and cleaned underneath her nails and in-between her toes. Once she finished, Naadiya went back to her room while brushing out the ends of her dark tresses and thinking she might need to go back to the community pools again some time soon. She’d gotten dressed and ready, hair up, sandals on, and still the Svefra slept on. It’d almost be a shame to wake him up, Naadiya thought as she lifted the white bedsheet revealing the bared sleeping body. An idea struck her and with quick and quiet steps Naadiya slipped off to the kitchen, grabbed a piece of cheese and a knife and cut it into thin slivers. In the room, she sprinkled the cheese over the man’s laying form, freezing once when she thought he would stir. He continued snoring and she placed the rest of the cheese strategically, so as to cause the biggest effect. Her leather bag was by the door waiting and she slid her notebook and a few other things inside before hanging it over one shoulder. Still moving as quietly as possible, Naadiya wandered around the inn making kissing sounds and in a low voice whispering “Creature, come baby, I have a treat for you!” The dog was quite smart and as soon as he’d heard one of his trigger words, came bounding to where Naadiya stood. When they reached her room door, Naadiya patted the dog's side a couple of times and whispered “Good boy, now go get your cheese!” With a quick pivot of the ankle and a few rushed steps, Naadiya was already out of the inn by the time she heard the shout. Artik’s shocked yelp was carried far in the coastal air, as soon as he woke up and realized the wet tongue on his skin was a little more canine than he’d expected. She stifled a laugh and sped up her pace, heading towards the Swiftwater’s shop. Word Count: 904

[Naadiya]

When she had reached the boutique, Naadiya could hear Dawn’s voice laughing. Good omen she thought, though Naadiya had to admit that her relationship with her boss was much improved since her initial hiring. Having little contact with Tony, who for the most part, had to spend much of his time managing his crop, Naadiya saw a lot more of Dawn than her husband. A combination of faux pas and poor timing had sometimes caused her and Dawn to not see eye-to-eye so hearing her boss’s apparent good mood, Naadiya did not want to cause it to take a turn for the worst. She walked slowly, not wanting to accidentally bump something over, trip or do anything that would cause a dark cloud to appear above them. “Naadiya!” Dawn exclaimed, her laugher hardly concealed, “look at this!” Naadiya went to where Dawn stood near the counter with a small plate of rice and fish. The shop owner was pointing to the plate Naadiya realized but couldn’t see what was wrong with it. She looked at her boss with a questioning look and the woman held back her laugher and explained. “My dear husband got it in his head that he’d make me breakfast in bed, last night. It’s not entirely unlike him to make these gestures so I, of course, thanked him and went to bed looking forward to the breakfast array he’d come up with. I woke up and he wasn’t home so figuring he’d forgotten, I just went about my morning. Apparently, he went fishing for hours until he caught a red heart parrotfish and then came to drop this off. You just missed him. Isn’t he a gem?” Smiling, Naadiya asked, “was there an occasion?” She knew he could probably have bought fish that had already been caught and even de-scaled and gutted. And Dawn, while she seemed like she could handle it, also seemed like if she’d chosen her breakfast it wouldn’t have been fish and rice. “You know, that’s what I figured too” Dawn tapped a her nails on the wood of the counter trying to recall something she may have forgotten but coming up short. “Only, if today is a special date I honestly cannot recall... But he was very certain to specify that he’d caught me a heart fish… Maybe it's a Svefra tradition? A heart fish for your sweet heart? I was expecting at least some bread, and is it too much to ask for a breakfast-in-bed to actually take place when I’m still in bed? Did he think I was just going to stay in there indefinitely! Hah! Anyway, please don’t tell him that I was laughing or that I may have forgotten what today is… or I will fire you!” Naadiya smiled back at the woman and feigned shock, she did not think the threat was meant as more than a joke but she saw no reason to intervene in the couple’s dynamic regardless, they both seemed so happy anyway. Throwing her hands up to plead innocence and raising her eyebrows, Naadiya whispered “I heard nothing, I saw nothing, I’ll say nothing. Good morning by the way!” Word Count: 532

[Naadiya]

She was already walking to the back room when Dawn called out a good morning in return. The blonde woman looked down at the plate and finally took a dainty forkful of fish and rice and gave a surprised “hmph” at how well it was seasoned. “Not bad, Tony. Not bad at all.” In the back, Naadiya looked around the storage areas for a certain tool. The yarn swift was very aptly named. A collection of wooden dowels attached at each end in an almost umbrella-like contraption that contracted and expanded so you could easily take a hank of yarn, open it up on the swift, and then either by hand or with a crank, you could swiftly unwind the hank and make a either a ball or a cake, the latter differing by the hole in its center and a stout cylindrical shape. “Dawn, do you have a swift?” She asked, thinking of how ironic it would be for the ‘Swift’waters to be swift-less. “There is a pretty good one near the red yarn hanks, take the winder that’s near it too!” She replied between bites. Looking around, Naadiya found the yarn swift and went ahead and grabbed a few skeins of the Isuas yarns. When she’d walked back up to the front, she found Dawn dabbing the corners of her mouth with a kerchief and noticed the plate had already been emptied. “I take it the fish was good!” “Too good… now I’m going to have make something special for him too.” Naadiya gave a small laugh then raised the swift in her hand, “can I borrow this? I can bring it back in a couple of days.” Dawn waved her concern away, “take it, we have more, we just don’t always keep them out because they break easily. Take care of it, though, or it comes out of your pay. You might want to think about investing in one of your own, you know, they can save you a lot of time.” Naadiya knew this and nodded, thinking of how she’d recruited Artik’s extra set of hands to save some time as he wound a yarn ball for her as she wove. “Juli tells me your last placemats sold for more than she’d expected. I’m thinking there may be a trend in Riverfall so we have to jump on it while we can. I just have to figure out if it's a desert-theme trend, a table setting obsession or an artisanal craze. Whatever the reason may be, if we don’t try to seize the opportunity, it will pass by. In my experience, trends like that are usually stemming from an influential person or group. I’m going to keep my ears open and see if The Veronica can bring back some information about it before making a trip myself.” The good omens just keep on coming today! she thought, giddily. With a dart of her hand, Naadiya knocked on the wooden counter a couple of times, superstitiously warding off bad luck. “This is great news,” she said. “I will get back to work immediately!” The two bid each other farewell and Naadiya was soon on her way back to the inn, hoping the cheese-loving dog had done the trick. Word Count: 545

[Naadiya]

Her room was, Syna be praised, empty. Granted the bed had not been made and the general mess told her Tazrae or Oralie had not gotten a chance to clean the room yet. Most likely, Artik took his sweet time leaving. Naadiya did not mind the mess, she had too few possessions for true clutter to develop. Pacing around, she picked up any loose pieces of clothing and tossed them on the bed. The bottles, utensils, cups, plates and whatever else she found laying around from a long night of doing everything but cleaning, Naadiya gathered on the nightstand. She’d take them to the kitchen later and replenish her water while she was at it. She had now started taking her water with a squeeze of lemon, lime, or whatever citrus was on hand. Refusing to give up on any of the voice-damaging vices she loved so much, Naadiya figured the least she could do to keep a reasonable tone was to drip some lemon and honey in her water or tea. Naadiya already had a preferred warp yarn to work with for this type of project and already had some ready to be set up on the loom so she threaded her loom, checked her tension and got her little stool positioned where she'd sit. Eager to get started, she looked around the room for where she could set up the swift but realized she was running short on cleared surfaces with both nightstands overflowing. She tried fastening the swift to the bar of window but it was too wide for the clamp and she had to give up and give one of the nightstands. She took the trash and cups to the kitchen, and now, with a cleared nightstand, Naadiya set up the yarn swift. It was an easy contraption that had a clamp at the bottom to hold onto a tabletop once it was screwed tight enough, so Naadiya did just that. The only separate part was the winder, which theoretically one could do without, but that was where the true speed was gained. With a similar but smaller screw-clamp attachment, the winder held a spool of sorts, where the yarn would spin, and a handle to crank, which would then caused the winder to wind and the yarn swift to spin as the yarn left the looseness of the hank for a neater and tighter little bundt cake shape. With her new tool Naadiya wound so many cakes she eventually ran out of yarn, then had to stop and marvel at the speed she’d gained with the new addition to her trove. ….No…. You still have to return both the swift and the winder, don’t start treating them as your own, she could hear her mother’s voice in her head. It was something she would have said to all of her daughters, but when it came to Naadiya, it was largely unnecessary. If the fabrics kept selling well, though, maybe she’d be able to buy a swift and a winder of her own sooner than later. But looking at the measly pile of clothing on the bed that included everything she owned and wasn’t wearing, as well as the relatively confined space of her room, and knowing she still needed to pay Tazrae for her room and board, it was all enough to make her feel like she was sinking in on herself. Naadiya had worked hard her whole life, worked with her hands and worked until she sweat, but she had never had to manage her own finances or watch how much she spent versus how much she made, those were entirely different sets of skills. Word Count: 613

[Naadiya]

Most of the children in her tribe had been exposed to a fair amount of basic schooling. There had always been three or four aunts in the community who had taken to teaching and caring for the children they could not themselves conceive. In addition, Naadiya’s own father had taken pains to make sure his children were all well versed in their mathematics. What kind of merchants would they ever be if they could not confidently know their trades would be profitable. The difficulty did not come from the actual act of managing her own accounts. When Naadiya took the time she could tune all other things out and focus on her number on the page in front of her. The slightest distraction, however, might cause her to lose count or skip a step and that was all it took to get an equation wrong. And as she’d learned, when it came to math there was no grey in-between area. There was right and there was wrong. And if you were in the wrong, you were losing money, a merchants worst nightmare. She sat at her stool and tried to not think about money right now. Stressful thoughts were best kept away from the loom lest she start making mistakes left and right. As she worked the loom, Naadiya was keeping an eye out for any imperfections, combing the threads almost more often than necessary. Unless Dawn actually told her to slacken up, Naadiya was trying to be as close to perfect as possible. Her boss had hinted that the reason Naadiya’s textiles had sold so quickly may have been due to an ‘artisanal’ quality, but Naadiya was not quite sure that would ever equate to looking poorly made. She especially could not see Dawn wanting to ever buy something that looked sloppy fearing it would not re-sell. Besides, even her best may still have been considered to have 'artisanal' quality having been crafted by hand not magic, machine or divinity. The yarns on her loom right now were all greige, un-dyed Isuas yarns in the same weight as she’d been focusing on recently. Locally, there was a trend of ombre-dyed fabrics being used mainly in garments but not exclusively. Thinking, it might be a good way of testing Dawn’s theory, and trying to hone in on this sale’s trend, Naadiya planned on asking Dawn to have the next set of place mats ombre dyed in the least ‘desert-themed’ color scheme she could think of. Her throat was getting dry and Naadiya realized she had forgotten to get her bottle of water refilled. Going back to the kitchen she found a glass, a lemon and a knife. She sliced the lemon and gave a good squeeze into the glass before filling it and the bottle with water. And where is the.... there it is! With a good dollop of honey in the water, Naadiya stirred it as she went back to the loom. Back in her room, Naadiya took a minute to nearly drain her glass and think. She looked at the loom with its work-in-progress blank white fabric and then at the journal that peaked out of her bag. She wasn’t quite so confident to attempt her designs from earlier today. Naadiya knew she could do it, she just didn’t know if she could do it to the degree of skill that she’d want her products to have. As much as she wanted to prove her value and talent not only to her employer but to herself, she also didn’t want to bite off more than she could chew just yet. So she set her glass on the nightstand and got back on the stool, today would be a long day of weaving. Words Count: 631

[Naadiya]

Naadiya had been weaving for a few bells. As she had no colors to swap, Naadiya’d had few reasons to take breaks that weren’t to eat, relieve her bladder or occasionally to stretch her arms and legs. And as there was nothing complex about the weave in front of her, Naadiya decided to focuse on increasing her speed. She had borrowed a few shuttles from Dawn and filled them all with the same yarn, that way she'd have to take as little time as possible whenever one ran out. When they all ran out of yarn, she would take a pause to refill them all and resume her weaving. The shuttle flew back and forth in between the warps and even as her hand caught it at one end, her foot was already pressing the pedal controlling the heddle bar. It was a smooth motion aided by the song she could hear coming from the other end of the inn and Naadiya wondered if her landlady was enjoying her day as well. Seemed like a ‘yes’ judging by her tunes, unless she was the type of person that sang happy songs in order to pull themselves out of a depression. She hoped that was not the case and trying to encourage the music, Naadiya had sung along, wordlessly mimicking the notes she heard and hoping the sounds reached back to the singer. She was about done with the fabric on her loom and was ready to remove it. Setting it on the end of the bed where she’d been piling the others, Naadiya took the opportunity to count how many she had already finished. Six. She still needed two more to make it two full sets, but right now Naadiya felt was done for the night. Her back was already tired from having nothing to support it while she sat on the stool and the seat’s surface did no favors to her flattened buttocks. Stretching out her body, she touched her toes again and held the position for as long as she could. Naadiya let the blood rush to her head, she needed a burst of adrenaline more than oxygen right now. Adrenaline and a massage, I’d even settle for just the massage. she thought, now slightly regretting Artik’s absence. From her bed, she took all the clothes and folded them, storing each piece that was clean enough to reuse and collecting anything needing to be washed on top of the stool. With enough space cleared on the bed, Naadiya set the stack of placemats on one side and laid down on the other. She’d had an idea earlier that day while braiding Artik’s hair and wanted to see how it would turn out. Each placemat she would pick up, place on her stomach and begin braiding the loose ends she’d normally tie off, trim short or weave into the fabric so that each piece of fabric was clean on all sides. This time she wanted the left and right sides of the placemats to have braided ends. Each braid she ended with a tiny knot until all six placemats had their ends braided, tied and trimmed. Naadiya liked the effect the braids gave the fabric, and wondered if Dawn would too. Word Count: 542

[Alric Lysane]

Your Grades

Naadiya

Skills

Cleaning – 2
Design – 2
Drawing – 2
Observation – 2
Singing – 1
Socialization – 2
Stealth – 2
Weaving – 3


Lores

Artik: Adorable In Braids
Creature: Partner In Crime
Drawing: Designing A Basic Weave
Weaving: Calculating Weave Threads
Weaving: Uses Of A Swift