After a magnificent lunch at the house of some friends of Harvinder and Dimple, we went to the Ellora Caves.  I have yet to process the photos however, so this blog is a continuation of Saturday's.

Kam Khab is one name given to the lavish cloth woven from silk and gold I described yesterday.  Himroo, another Aurangabad specialty, was developed as a cheaper alternative to Kam Khab.  It is woven from cotton and silver, and most Himroo shawls and sarees are produced on power looms.  However, there are a ew enterprises that demonstrate the traditional methods. 

The looms are in pits and the weaver sits at the edge of the pit.  The light, the light he weaves by, unfortunately obliterates the backside of the cloth--the side he sees as he weaves.  Tempted though I was, I could hardly ask him to turn it off.

The side he sees consists entirely of packed weft floats.  He kindly popped out the cloth beam, unrolled the fabric, and held the beam up to show us the pattern side.  Again, there are 4-shafts for the ground, but it was far too dark for me to see what controlled the pattern shafts.  It was a repetitive draw of some detail.  Look toward the left side of the loom and you'll see the wonderful devices hanging there which hold weft yarns.  The second picture shows them in more detail:
 




Over in another dark corner a younger man was weaving a traditional cloth with inlaid borders.  Most of the pictures I took are abysmal, but the one of the actual cloth is light enough and if you look closely you can see the cartoon under the pattern area.  Check out that temple!  BTW, I noticed that with some other looms the temple is on the underside of the fabric hidden from view unless you catch the teeth.  I wish I'd asked if they always use a temple:



Then, in yet an even darker corner, we happened on a Jacquard loom, complete with mounted cards.  This loom did not appear to be in use:




Tonight we hope to go to another weaving enterprise where I'll ask all the questions I forgot to ask previously.  Stay tuned.