In the Weibei Dry Plateau, in the south of Chengcheng County, in my hometown Jiaodao Town, there is a kind of hand-woven cloth called Chengcheng old coarse cloth, also known as Chengcheng homespun cloth. Every time I see hand-woven cloth , the indigo stripes are dense and dense, looking refreshing and clean. I gently stroked it with my hand, feeling cool and astringent, a kind of long-lost kindness, which reminded me of the coarse cloth clothes made by my mother. It reminded me of the past events of my childhood, and it gave me a warm feeling.
My home is in Beishe Village in the south of the county. There are two to three thousand households in the village. My mother is quite famous for hand-weaving in the village. Her weaving skills came from her grandmother, who lived in Ershan. In Zhongshe Village, my mother has five sisters, ranking fourth. In order to take care of her uncle, my mother delayed her school time. But my mother is a caring person. Society and life make my mother more reasonable. To use my daughter’s words: I Grandma is illiterate, but she understands a lot.
When I was a child, we had several acres of thin land at home where we grew red heat and cotton. Every late summer and early autumn, I would always follow my mother, carrying a small bamboo cage with my mother in it. I would pick the cotton and look at the white cotton. I would occasionally pick it myself, but it would be a pity for my mother, so she would have to go back and pick it again. Sometimes I would be pricked by cotton buds and hurt. My mother would stop what she was doing and say: Pick slowly, don't rush.
Back home, my mother rolled the dried cotton to get the seeds. The cotton velvet was as light as smoke and as thin as silk. My mother gently rolled it into strands of rice seedlings, and then rubbed them with chopsticks. The base of the cloth is ready to be spun. To this day, my parents still have an old spinning wheel and an old loom in the corner of their hometown house. Even now, my mother is almost seventy years old and is always reluctant to throw them away.
I remember that when my mother was spinning, it was always during the slack season. The mother connected one end to the spindle rod at the end of the spinning wheel, gently shook the spinning wheel with her right hand, and slowly pulled the clean cotton cloth base back with her left hand. She raised and closed the cotton thread and wound it around the yarn spindle rod in an orderly manner. He was anxious and swaying freely. I watched with concern from the side and begged and tried several times. The cotton threads pulled out in my hands were either uneven in thickness or often broken. My mother said, this is a technical job, you think everyone can do it.
In my memory, there was always no sun for my mother to spin yarn. At night when there was a moon, she would use the moonlight. When there was no moon, she would light a kerosene lamp to spin the yarn. My mother would spin a big ear. I went to bed, and I took a short nap at night. When I woke up, I saw my mother still spinning under the oil lamp, and listening to the buzzing sound of the spinning wheel, which was like rocking blue music floating from the horizon. I fell asleep again.
After a winter of spinning, the next spring comes, and the weather gets warmer. My mother starts busy making threads, boiling pulp, dyeing threads with colors, and then threading, dropping, warping, and brushing threads. Busy with the preparation work before weaving.
At that time, I liked my mother’s sutra cloth the most, because if there were several people doing the sutra cloth, the neighbor’s aunt would come over to help, and my small yard became lively. But my mother always went to my grandma’s house for more prayers. It took three to five days to do the sutras, so my mother would leave me at my grandma’s house. During those three to five days, or even more days, my cousins ??and I would play and spend time together. It's a happy time.
Sutra cloth is a creative process. The mother and Concubine can always come up with clever ideas to match various thread colors, making the sutra cloth process different every time. The sutra cloth was started. There were a few wooden sticks driven into the ground at both ends to hang the wires, so there had to be one person at each end to wire the wires, and one person in the middle walked back and forth to deliver the wires. Sometimes our cousins ??would run around with us, adding more lines from time to time. It was a little mess, which made my grandma often chase us away and tell us to go aside and play and not make any more trouble here.
We were still children at that time, and we would always get into trouble. We would climb trees on the walls, catch birds and cicadas, and roast them to eat. Some people would always complain to my grandma, who was a strong person and treated us very well. The requirements were very strict, and my cousins ??were often beaten because of this. It has been many years since my grandmother left us. Whenever I recall that past event, I always shed tears, lamenting the circumstances of the beating. Maybe I was timid at that time. It’s still the love that I have for my sojourner, and my grandmother is always more partial to me. They envy me because I am the only one who has never been beaten.
Brushing and rolling the thread is the last process before weaving. My mother squatted on the ground and brushed the thread carefully. She carefully checked the thickness of each cotton thread. On the broken knot, my mother said: This is a delicate job. Most of the people rolling the Holy Son later were me. I had to hold a thin stick during the rolling process. My mother reminded me: When rolling the Holy Son, I should tighten it.
After I grew up and learned a lot, I asked my mother strangely: Why was the cotton thread so soft when she was rolled into the Holy Son? My mother told me: burn the flour you eat until it is hot, put the cotton thread into the pot and slurry it, the gluten will make the soft cotton thread strong.
After rolling the Holy Son, it’s time to start weaving. Threading the yarn is a careful job. My mother passes the thread ends one by one through every gap in the yarn, and then fixes them one by one on the loom and tightens them. This is a delicate job. My mother will sit on the loom and work all day long. .
The bamboo basket is a rectangular wire brush with the same width as the loom head and about 20 cm high. The bottom of the bamboo basket is connected to two pedals through a lead rope. Take turns to step on the pedals, and the bamboo fiber will be divided into high and low ones, evenly passing through the thin threads. The fine warp threads are divided into two layers. The weaving shuttle passes through the middle of the two layers of warp threads, leading the weft threads and warp threads to intersect, and then is squeezed by the machine to form a piece of cloth.
These are the days when my mother is busy with her work. She is sitting on the loom, weaving non-stop. The shuttle has two pointed ends and slides in the middle. The mother puts the colored thread into the shuttle. Sometimes beside the loom, Putting three or four shuttles, sometimes as many as seven or eight, my mother kept changing the shuttles in her hands, and she repeated the same action day after day. In my opinion, weaving is a boring and hard work. I really can't think of any fun in labor.
Look at mother weaving again, with her feet on the pedals alternating up and down, and her hands alternately controlling the machine and shuttle. Her hands are flying, shuttling back and forth, and her skillful movements are as beautiful as playing the piano. And the sound of "clang, clang, clang" became the natural music when I was growing up. At home, as long as I hear the chirping sound, I feel at ease.
As the coarse cloth on the loom grows one foot at a time, clear striped patterns appear in front of my eyes. The cloth woven by my mother is generally divided into stripes and plaids, and the color may be bright, or elegant, simple and childish. , with a pastoral atmosphere. Maybe it’s because my hometown is surrounded by ravines. I sometimes wonder whether my mother has woven the criss-crossing fields and ravines and the farmers’ hopes for the fields into the stripes and plaids bit by bit. I feel that my mother is a painter, not only weaving the rough cloth in front of me, but also weaving a beautiful life.
After the cloth was woven, my mother smoked the cloth, beat it, and kept it in the cabinet. Then one stitch after another turned into the clothes on the body, the bedding on the bed, which was thick, hard, astringent, and even a little bit irritating when worn on the body, but after a few washes, it became fine and soft, and the more time passed through Comfortable, the more you wear it, the warmer it becomes. The same is true when it is made into bedding or sheets. My mother often said: "Eating is still home-cooked, dressing is still coarse cloth, feeling cold and hot is still the same as having a wife since childhood."
When I got married, my mother took out coarse cloth sheets, but my wife thought the bed cloth was hard and astringent. I still don’t like it. Not many years ago, coarse cloth sheets were warm in winter and cool in summer. They were breathable and moisture-absorbing. They were comfortable to sleep on and iron. Sometimes they felt like my mother’s rough and warm hands. Now my wife can’t live without coarse cloth sheets and reminds her mother from time to time. Knit more.
After I got married and had a daughter, my mother often went to my grandmother’s house to make threads and help her weave and save cloth. I was a little puzzled and asked my mother why she was so busy at this age. My mother said: Grandma wants to weave more cloth while she is still alive, so that when she is a hundred years old, she can give each of her children and grandchildren three feet of coarse cloth as a souvenir. Now it has been seven or eight years since my grandma passed away. Looking at the old coarse cloth in the cabinet reminds me of the days when my grandma stayed at my parents' house.
In those years, my wife and I worked in the county town, and my daughter was still young. She stayed at her parents’ house with her sister’s children. In the countryside, there were few entertainment tools. My grandmother often played mahjong with the two children. He also said that it was her grandma who taught her how to play mahjong, and she also talked with gusto about the scene where the two siblings stole cards and exchanged them while their grandma was busy.