A couple of goings-on at school today. The high school art teacher had his students prepare  gladiator costumes and weapons and then put on a performance. They used the center courtyard of the upper school and staged fights to the death. Well, not so much death as destruction of their cardboard costumes and cardboard weapons. It was a great opportunity to take a break from class and cheer on the students.

This is my grade 6 social studies class watching over the railing from the second floor. Apparently the boys think the lone girl has cooties. 

 Dan gives last minute instructions to the combatants.

Students and teachers watched from all four floors and gave their approval with thumbs up or disapproval with thumbs down. Dan then either knighted them with his cardboard sword or stabbed them in the back. It was all very ruthless and a lot of fun. I overheard one of the kindergartners say, "They're hitting each other. Didn't the teacher tell them no?"

The other going-on was after-school weaving club.

There are only three of them but they begged me to have club keep going after it's supposed to end next week. It's very gratifying that they're enjoying themselves so much. 

Before we moved I got a book called "Culture Shock Taiwan: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette." It was interesting reading, although it centered on living in Taipei, not the hinterlands of Kaohsiung. The reason I mention it is that the author talks about how culture shock can reappear at any time when you've made such a big move. I wonder if I've got a little of those blues. I woke up yesterday feeling off. Not so much sick as just tired and achy. My day was okay at work but when I got home at 4:30 I lay down on the couch and didn't get up until 9:30 when I dragged myself to bed.

I called in sick today with the hope that I'll bounce back more quickly with some time off from the every day. I'm not very good about getting the paperwork in for a substitute and may get a lecture about it tomorrow. That may be a good reason to call in sick again...

A friend and I needed to take a taxi to Chinese class this evening and it was a good thing we had our notes from last week's class. The driver didn't understand the address we gave him and drove us way off in the wrong direction. I finally got him to stop long enough to look at my phone for a nearby landmark and then we looked up how to tell him left turn (zuo zhuan), right turn (you zhuan) and go straight (yi zhi zou) until he got us to our destination.

He thought it was quite funny and wouldn't accept the full fare for the ride. He even gave us lessons on the proper pronunciation of Yucheng Road. I either need to get better at Chinese or get back on my bike soon so I don't have to rely on taxis.

We've decided that we need to find some adventures here in Kaohsiung that we can do with the subway and walking so I don't feel so trapped without my bike. Today we headed to the beach. Kaohsiung has two ocean beaches, one on Cijin Island and one near Sun Yat-sen University. We've biked to both of them but never been swimming so today we packed our suits and towels and headed out. We took the MRT to the western terminus and walked along the harbor for 30 minutes to Sizihuan Beach where the University runs a hotel and restaurant through its hotel management department.

The lunch was a bit odd. The server wrote down my order wrong so I sent back the seafood pasta and waited (and waited and waited) for my rice dish to come. It was like a competition among the wait staff to avoid making any eye contact with me or Lee as they paraded dish after dish to the other tables. At one point they brought back the pasta and said I could have it for free because they had made the mistake, which was good since otherwise I may have starved while I waited. The rice did eventually come and it was quite good but the whole experience was just a bit odd.

Fortunately the beach was right there so after lunch that's where we headed. This being Taiwan, there was no one else in the water, although there were some people dipping their toes in at the edge.

The beach is beautifully black so it was quite hot to walk across but the water was just cool enough to be refreshing. A perfect combination. It's pretty cool to be able to have a beach so close to home and be able to swim in it at the end of April. One of the benefits of Taiwan living.

Saturday morning we were in desperate need of fruit and vegetables. With my inability to ride a bike we've needed to find a good produce market within walking distance, which has been hard to do. I recently heard about an all-organic farmers' market along the bike path so we decided to check it out. It was small but had some great finds. We picked out a bunch of bananas and the farmer was so pleased that we bought them he threw in another whole bunch for free. When life throws you lemons you make lemonade but when it's bananas you make banana bread.

We brought back quite a collection of purchases, including coffee and the Taipei Times we picked up at the 7-11 on our way home.

One thing we bought was a bag of spinach. I won't buy that again. It may look like what I think of as spinach but it had the slimiest texture of any green I've eaten here. Yuck. The pineapple more than made up for the disappointment of the spinach. Pineapples are in season now and they are absolutely delicious.

The Taipei Times is a little thin on interesting news but we did learn that Kaohsiung is about to enter Phase 3 of water rationing. Beginning in May parts of the city will have their water shut off two days per week unless we get some rain in the next few weeks. Unfortunately there isn't any rain forecast for southern Taiwan any time soon. Phase 1 rationing was just public announcements saying we were having a drought. Phase 2 meant that swimming pools couldn't be filled. I'm sure there were other restrictions but they were mostly geared towards industry. Now that we're heading towards Phase 3 we'll feel a real impact.

Here's a pleasant way to end the week: Head to the closest bar, have a drink and some garlic fries, then walk over to the night market for a fruit smoothie and some unusual egg and seafood omelet-y things. I even got to try out some of my Chinese. At the smoothie booth I asked for two drinks with just a little sugar and a little ice, please. At the omelet booth I understood when the seller said that we owed $80NT.

I'm picking up more of what my students are saying in Chinese. They're supposed to speak in English at school but telling them to not speak in Chinese is like telling them to not breath. Anyway, they assume I don't know any Chinese, which isn't too far from the truth, so imagine Ian's surprise when I told him to stop talking about the toilet.

My first and second graders are especially impressed when I can say "that one" (nage) and count to five (yi, er, san, si wu). My grade 3-4 class, which has five students, is harder to impress because only two of them are native Chinese speakers. The others are from Korea, Ukraine and Mexico (although that boy's family is from Taiwan). It's my only international class. In the rest of my classes all of the students are from Taiwan with the exception of one student from Japan and three cousins from the Taiwanese-Mexican family.

It's been a hard week, having to get back into the swing of teaching. My accident was seven weeks ago tomorrow and this is the first full week of teaching I've done since then. It's gone by fast but it's tiring. It doesn't help that I'm cheap and don't want to pay for a taxi to get to and from school. That translates to 35-40 minute commute times each way. I'm certainly getting exercise with all this walking but it's getting a bit dull.

At 8:00 this evening Lee and I looked at each other and decided it was too early to go to bed, although it sounded tempting. Instead, we headed outside to walk around the park for a few minutes. Us and everyone else in the neighborhood. There were people strolling and running, walking their dogs and doing tai chi. The park is quite the happening place in the evenings.

It's now 9:00 and I can turn off my computer. I had given one of my recalcitrant 6th graders until 9:00 to hand in an assignment for me to edit but he has clearly decided not to so it's time for me to unwind and him to accept a zero in the grade book.

Now that I've been teaching in my new room for a few days I've started noticing things, some good and some bad.

When all of the doors and windows are shut we get a wind tunnel effect from the hallways and there's a fairly loud hum in the room. Even the a/c and fans are not loud enough to drown out the hum. The engineers are working on it.

The technology in the building is really impressive. The internet is fast and available everywhere and I can use my computer wirelessly to show any video or website on my really big white board. The sound quality of the ceiling speakers is good so I can start my day with music blaring in my classroom. (Note: After my accident listening to music was painful with my concussion. I'm all over that now - yeah!)

There was concern that we would lose some of the friendly feel of the smaller building when we moved into this huge one, but I think it's even better. I see a lot more of my colleagues now than I did before and the students are congregating in lots of really nice ways - homework tables in the media center, social time on the big ugly stairs overlooking what will be the new soccer fields. It's seems like there's a lot of good community space, which is important.

We've lost control of our own classroom's a/c unit. We used to have individual units in our rooms but now it's centralized so we can either choose to have the a/c on or off but it's always set to 25 degrees (77 degrees F). Trust me, that's not cool enough.

The fourth floor of the middle and high school wing includes a rooftop garden with a garden lined staircase. It's one of my favorite spaces at the school.

When I looked at the weather report this morning I was very excited to see that there was a 100% chance of rain today. In fact, nearly the entire island is under a heavy rain advisory today. That's truly headline news considering how little rain we've had. The wet season ended in October and normally doesn't start again until May, but this year has been especially dry. I can remember three times that it's rained in the last six months. Taiwan is experiencing it's lowest rainfall in the last 70 years.

I'm really looking forward to a drenching rain. I know that it'll complicate my commute - without my bike I'm now walking about 40 minutes to get to school - but it'll be nice to have a change from this relentless sunny weather!

There have been four earthquakes (so far) today in Taiwan, all measuring between 5 and 6 plus. They've been felt all over the island but I only felt the most recent one. Sitting on the couch I started feeling like my concussion symptoms were coming back - the room was moving and I was feeling dizzy. Is it better that it was an earthquake instead? The telltale sign that it was an earthquake and not my concussion was that the light over the dining room table was swaying. Feeling an earthquake isn't scary for me (so far) but I'm not sure I'll ever get used to them.

Today was the first day to teach in the new building at KAS and it was nice to finally have students in the building. It's been two years of construction and all that entails so it was good to be done with the hoopla and get down to the business of teaching. I spent three days last week getting my room ready but I think I need to teach for awhile to see how to best use the classroom space.

This is the view of the room from my desk, looking towards my roommate Natasha's desk. She's a relatively recent KAS grad and teaches Chinese to the non-natives and works with ELL when her schedule allows. I think we're the only teachers that share a room but that's okay. We get along great and it's nice to have some someone to bounce ideas off of.

This is the courtyard outside my classroom door. I'm in the middle and high school section of the building and most of the classrooms look out onto this area. One of my 6th graders said it looked like a jail and I can see what he means, although it's much more beautiful than a jail. At the moment we've been told that we can't hang anything on the walls so it looks very black, white and gray but I think that will change as we settle in.

Here's the view from my balcony, looking across to where my old classroom is. Over the summer the old building gets torn down and they'll start building the new swimming pool, gym and cafeteria. There will also be new soccer fields, basketball courts and playgrounds. Until that's done there won't be much space for sports or general running around but I guess we'll make due.

Today's pollution level is about as good as it gets. What a joy to look out from my balcony and see the line of mountains that stretches along the center of Taiwan.

We've driven to the edge of the mountains twice as we've gone south, once to the beach in Kenting and once when we hiked the eastern coast in early December. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the mountains, mostly through city traffic.

Today was the first time I really missed having a car. It would be so easy to just drive wherever, whenever we had some free time. I didn't mind not having that freedom when I could ride my bike. At least then we could get out of the apartment and find new places to explore. Now the city seems really big and things like commuting and getting groceries take so much longer.

We only have two months before summer break. We'll just keep going with what we've got for now and re-evaluate come fall.

We had a lot of fun at the baseball game tonight. It was the Eda Rhinos from Kaohsiung versus the Elephant Brothers from New Taipei. I have no idea what the significance of the Brothers' name is. The stadium reminded me of the New Britain Rock Cats where we used to take the boys to watch Double A baseball except this one had seating for about 20,000. The level of play was pretty comparable to Double A as well. Manny Ramirez, the former Boston Red Sox player, was on the Rhinos during 2012-13 just before he retired. I think that may say a lot about where Manny landed at the end of his illustrious career.

The noise level in the stadium was pretty deafening from beginning to end. There wasn't even a break when a batter came to the plate. I have to say, the Brothers had a much better organized cheering section than the local team. The fans were split nearly half and half, which is pretty impressive for the Brothers since New Taipei is about a five hour drive from here. Many of the fans had noisemakers to add to the din. I may have to get Lee some for our next game.

One big difference between here and a stadium in the states is that you're allowed to bring in your own food and drinks. The seats are a bit small so you'd have trouble finding space for a cooler but people were bringing in pizza boxes, bags from McDonald's and six-packs of beer. You could buy food at the stadium too and it's cheap. We bought two sodas and a beer for less than $4.00 total. For that amount of money at Fenway Park you can get a sip of water.

Let me start by wishing my lovely niece a wonderful birthday. I've missed my son's on the 9th and my sister's on the 12th. April is a busy month in this family.

It's only noon and I've already had a busy day. A friend offered to take me with her to the produce market this morning, what I like to refer to as the big melon market since it always has a large section of really big watermelons for sale. So she swung by in her car (a car! Wow!) at 7:00 this morning and we are now all stocked up on fruits and vegetables.

Then at nine Lee and I took a taxi to another friend's place and joined him on a hike on Monkey Mountain. Chris and his wife just spent spring break hiking in Nepal so I figured I'd be slowing him down quite a bit but he was kind and kept the pace on the slow side. Spring has turned to summer here with the morning temperature around 82 degrees but the humidity isn't bad yet so the hike was hot but not unbearable.

For the first time I saw a little tiny deer in the woods. Apparently their numbers have been in decline for awhile, maybe because of the rise in numbers of feral dogs, so a deer sighting is pretty rare. That was cool. I also saw plenty of monkeys, naturally, plus a couple of lizards. I have yet to see a snake in Taiwan, which I hope continues for the duration. I try to be logical about the whole snake thing - they're just lizards without legs, right? - but my reaction to them is purely visceral and there is no reasoning with your gut reaction.

We hiked for a couple of hours and are now resting up for an evening of baseball. Baseball is an important sport here in Taiwan so we're going to experience it first hand. We're meeting a bunch of KAS teachers at a large stadium for an Eda Rhinos game. I've been told it will be like watching a double A baseball game in the United States. Apparently the crowds can get quite raucous so it should be fun. I'll let you know.

I got my cast off on Monday with instructions to work on getting back my range of motion and an appointment with the x-ray technician in four weeks. The break on my radius has healed nicely but the chip that broke off the ulna hasn't reattached so it's possible I'll still need surgery to screw it back in place. Bummer. I know I was being optimistic but I was holding onto the fantasy that when the cast came off I'd be all better. But it still hurts, especially because I'm using my arm more, and I still can't ride my bike.

But now it's time to get back to work. The administration and staff at KAS have been working hard to get the new building ready for faculty meetings today and tomorrow and the grand opening of the school on Monday. Like any big building project there have been delays and hurdles so the final cleaning hasn't been done yet and the building is filthy.

Lee and I went in to school yesterday to start unpacking our boxes. Here's my room after a few hours of work.

Yes, it still needs work. It also needs desks and chairs for the students, which everyone else seems to have gotten but somehow my room did not. I did, however, have a bird in my room. He had flown through a window and couldn't get out. Lee and I showed him the opened door to my balcony (yes, I have a really nice balcony outside my classroom) and he flew on his merry way. I think that's a good omen, having a bird in your new classroom, even if he did leave a bit of a mess on one of the tables.

Before it gets too far away for me to remember I want to write about our boating trip off the coast of Phuket on Saturday. After a couple of days of lounging around the pools, strolling up and down the beach and bobbing around in the gentle swells of the ocean we decided we'd like to have one last adventure before we head back to Taiwan. After all, one can only handle so much rest and relaxation.

We found a lovely tour company that sent a bus around to our hotel to pick us up and drive us to the eastern side of the island. (Side note: Did you know that Phuket is an island? I didn't until after we arrived there.) We, along with another 40 or so people, hopped aboard their sightseeing boat and motored for about an hour to the coolest little islands dotting the Andaman Sea.

As we got closer we started to see the limestone formations. It was like looking at the inside of the cave with stalactites dripping down and the ocean dissolving away the edges of the islands.

The coolest part of these islands though, is that many of them are actually rings with hidden lagoons inside. We loaded by pairs into kayaks, each with our own paddle man, and slipped into narrow caves where we often had to lie flat in the boat to fit through the rocks. Then all of a sudden we would pop out into a bay of sorts, completely surrounded by these incredibly steep cliffs. There were mangrove trees and monkeys and fascinating little fish.

This creature is a lung fish. He was swimming around in the water and then popped up onto a branch, above the water line, and clung on with his fins. Bizarre, right?

We circled around an island that was used to film a James Bond movie but the whole area reminded me of scenes from Jurassic Park or Pirates of the Caribbean.

The tour company also cooked us lunch on board so we had steamed fish, tempura shrimp, fried rice and fresh fruit, all of which was delicious. It was a great way to spend our last day of vacation and definitely a highlight of our entire trip.

We made it back home safe and sound. Seven flights, six airports, three brand new countries for me to visit. No lost luggage, no delays of any consequence, decent food, tolerable take-offs and landings. Air travel really doesn't get any better than that.

A few things that Lee and I learned about ourselves and travel: Pretty much every large Asian city is like every other large Asian city and we've now done that, no need to add any more to future travel plans. We would like our vacations to include more of the great outdoors, hiking, biking, boating. The best parts of this trip were spent walking around the countryside in Vietnam and Cambodia, boating on the Mekong Delta, Tonle Sap Lake, the coast of Thailand. Give us the bugs, the rain, the heat or cold. We'll be much happier than being on pavement.

Don't get me wrong, this was a great trip. I learned a lot about the countries we visited, saw some incredible places, met some incredible people. But as we plan our next adventure we'll aim for a little more country, a little less city. We're thinking Borneo, or maybe Bali. Anyone want to join us?

Here it is, the last day of vacation, our last day in Indochina. We spent the day boating and kayaking through some incredibly beautiful islands on the coast of Thailand. I'll post pics when we get back to Taiwan tomorrow night. Right now I need to take a nice little walk in the rain along the beach and then go pack.

Hanging out at Kamala Bay in Thailand. Busy day: breakfast at the hotel, walk the length of the beach and back, stroll through the little town and window shop, swim at the pool, drink lemonade, swim in the ocean, have some lunch. See? Vacationing can be hard work.

Here are some pics from last night.

Our room is the upper right hand balcony of the right side bungalow.

The view from our dinner table.

Sunset.

Internet here is kind of iffy so I probably won't be posting too much. We arrived at Phuket about midday and settled into our hotel. It's nice but not what I'd call top-notch. We look out at the ocean - beautiful, although obstructed view. We swam in the ocean and one of the seven pools and watched the sun set over the water. The stars are now out and it's time to lay back and soak in the sea breezes.

I'll preface this blog with the admission that we've decided our stay in Bangkok will be about 12 hours too long. By the end of this morning's excursion we were pretty much done with big city vacationing. I'm ready to be out of the noise, heat, smell and crowds. It's time to go to the beach.

With that said, let me tell you about our day. We felt like we had one more temple visit in us so we headed off once again, past the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. We were looking for the ferry to take us across the river to Wat Arun, the Dawn Temple, but ended up one pier south of the one we wanted. A friendly gentleman informed us that the temple was closed until noon because the royal family had spent the night there and he offered to take us to a nearby temple until Wat Arun opened. Friendly, my ass. We have learned very quickly that there are very few friendly gentlemen here but plenty of swindlers. We kindly said no thank you and found the right ferry on our own.

For 6 baht (30 baht to $1, you do the math) we got a 5 minute ride to a gorgeous little temple along the river. It's in the process of getting renovated which was cool to see because of the contrast between old and new. The buildings are decorated with mosaic tiles, some of which looked like Chinese pottery.

Even the flowers along the street were beautiful.

By the time we started back to the hotel the heat index was about 115 degrees so we made a couple of stops for iced coffee, fresh mango and lunch to keep our strength up. This vacationing is hard work, after all.

For the afternoon we spent a lovely three hours in our air conditioned hotel room watching a delayed broadcast of the Red Sox pounding the Phillies for the season's opening day. A definite highlight of our day.

A couple of lowlights: When I tried practicing a couple of simple yoga moves I started the room spinning. Just when I think I'm almost recovered from my accident some stupid little symptom will pop back up. Bummer. Also, a taxi tried to run us over on our way to dinner. I may have called the driver a few unpleasant names after he screeched to a stop just short of impact. Definitely time to go to the beach.

Monday in Bangkok, continued.

After our trip to Wat Pho we hopped onto a tuk tuk to get to the other side of the city. The tuk tuks here look like they're built onto little tiny three-wheeled truck beds. The tuk tuks in Siem Reap, which we never drove in, are more like carts hooked onto the back of motorcycles. I guess that makes the ones here a bit safer but it was still terrifying driving through the Bangkok traffic. At least you can't get up much speed as you swerve in between all the other crazy drivers.

Our driver took us to the Jim Thompson House. Jim Thompson was an American who was stationed in Thailand at the end of WWII and decided to stay after the war ended. He is credited with reviving the Thai silk industry in the 1950's, in part by supplying all the silk fabric used in the movie "The King and I." He went to Malaysia for vacation when he was 61 years, went for a walk, and was never heard from again.

He left behind a beautiful teak house in Bangkok that is now a museum, restaurant and gift shop.

You could try your hand at spinning the silk, as this man did.

Even the hook on the back of the bathroom door was beautiful.

Over the canal there's a small neighborhood that was once home to a thriving weaving community. It now has just two small studios but we managed to find one of them by wandering around in the little warren of alleyways. The proprietor was very happy to show us around, including where one lone loom was being used by a weaver who graciously let me take a video of her.

The owner of the studio had a picture of himself as a young man with Jim Thompson. He was happy to pose for a picture for me.

I couldn't buy any silk thread but we did buy a beautiful piece of fabric to remind us of a pretty special experience.

From there we decided to walk back to our hotel. In retrospect we may have done better finding a taxi or tuk tuk. We didn't have a great map and took a few wrong turns before we made it back to the hotel two hours later. That kind of walking wouldn't have been so draining if it hadn't been in the high 90's. Fortunately we had the pool and fruit smoothies to help us cool off.

This morning we set out to find the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, two important landmarks in the heart of Bankok and within walking distance to the hotel. The Grand Palace was, until recently, the residence of the king of Thailand. It covers a large area and is comprised of quite a few separate buildings.

You can't see them in this picture (because they're all dutifully staying off the grass) but the place was packed with tourists. Lee borrowed the required pants so that we could tour the palace without offending anyone with his exposed knees. (I had worn long pants and a shirt that covered my shoulders.) There were plenty of people who needed to borrow the necessary clothes but they're very generous in only asking for a deposit that they give back to you when you give the clothes back. When we were at Angkor Wat I had to buy a pair of pants (for all of $4) in order to be allowed into one of the temples.

Anyway, once we were appropriately clothed we fought our way to the main entrance and changed our minds about going in. It was really crowded with groups pouring out of tour buses and they were not the friendly groups of tourists who are enjoying the day and the sites. These people seemed relentless in their tourism. Do not get in the way of a flag-toting tour guide and his flock, let me tell you.

Lee returned his pants and we escaped the palace grounds. By then it was about 9:00 and the temperature had wandered into the 90 degree range. We were pleasantly surprised to come inside the walls of Wat Pho (official name: Wat Phra Chettuphon Wimon Mangkhlaram Ratchaworamahawihan) and found a relatively quiet and peaceful, shady little oasis.

Inside one of the main buildings was one of the largest Buddhas in the world, the 160 feet long reclining Buddha.

His feet are the most amazing inlay of mother-of-pearl.

There are also over a thousand smaller Buddhas on display throughout the complex. The whole place was like a fairy land with spires and mosaics and gold leaf and glitter. Ir was lovely to see but after awhile you realize you've had enough of the over-the-top glitz.

We're off to dinner now so I'll tell you about the second half of our day another time. (Warning: It includes another trip to a weaving studio.)

We have arrived in Bangkok. It's only an hour-long flight from Siem Reap but the weather is a bit more humid. When I checked the temperature around 3:00 it was 96 degrees with a heat index of 106. Our hotel has a little swimming pool, however, and the water was actually refreshing. Lee rigged me a new splint to wear in the pool that I can get completely wet and then I change back into the one the doctor gave me. By then it's had a chance to dry out a bit from all the sweat. (Did I mention it's really hot around here?) My ribs hurt when I try to swim at all but it's really nice to try.

For dinner we walked over to Bangkok's version of Pub Street, Khao San Road. It's lined with shops, bars, restaurants and cheap hotels. It seemed a bit seedier with a younger crowd than what we saw in Siem Reap but we had an excellent meal and plan to go back tomorrow to one of the nearby streets that seemed just a little more upscale.

Warning: this post is exclusively about weaving.

Yesterday we visited a weaving studio that's been set up to train young people in the art of producing, spinning, dying and weaving silk. From moth to fabric, here are all the steps.

These are the mulberry bushes that the caterpillars eat. The leaves are picked and brought into the cocoonerie.

They're hard to see, but the male and female moths are placed together on top of these pieces of paper where they mate, lay the eggs and die. The little black dots on the paper are baby caterpillars.

The caterpillars eat the mulberry leaves for a couple of weeks and then form yellow cocoons (you can see the cocoons in the picture with the moths). About 20% of the cocoons are saved out for the moths to mature and mate. The remaining 80% are boiled, steamed or left out in the sun to kill the pupa. If they are allowed to hatch they chew through the cocoon and cut the silk threads into too small of pieces. If you are a true vegan you do not wear silk because the animal dies in the process of making it.

Next step is the spinning. The cocoons are floating in water and are unraveled 3 or 4 at a time as they are spun into thread. The thread from one cocoon is almost too thin to see.

After its spun the thread is washed and dyed. This studio uses only vegetable (no chemical) dyes.

Then the looms are warped and the weaving begins.

My only disappointment was that they only sell the finished fabric. I couldn't buy any cones of thread. Hopefully I'll have more luck with that in Thailand.