Ella's Travels: Ock Pop Tok (옥 팝 톡)

A few days ago I went to a Lao cloth shop called Ock Pop Tok. It was started by a Western woman and a Lao woman, working together to preserve the Lao weaving culture. Daddy said that Ock Pop Tok means East Meets West, and they have a workshop where you can see people make the cloth. So we rode a tuk tuk (kind of Taxi) to the workshop.

며칠전에 옥팝톡이라는 라오스옷가게에 갔습니다. 라오스의 직조 문화를 보전하기 위해 서양의 여자와 라오스의 여자가 함께 시작했습니다. 아빠말씀이 옥팝톡의 의미가 동방과 서양의 만남이라고 하셨고 옷을 만드는 사람들을 볼수있는 워크샵이 있다고 하셨습니다. 그래서 우리는 툭툭 (택시같은 것)을 타고 거기에 갔습니다.

I took all of the pictures, except for the very last one.

제일 마지막 사진을 제외하고 모든 사진을 제가 찍었습니다.

MAKING CLOTH (옷 만들기)

Phase 1. Making and dying the silk thread.

과정 1. 실크사 제작과 염색

The silkworms. They're the little tan things eating the green leaves. If you click on the picture, you can look at them close up. The big white thing on the left is a silk worm cocoon.
누에. 초록빛을 먹고 있는 작은 탠칼러가 누에입니다. 사진을 클릭하셔서 클로즈업을 해보시면 잘 보실 수 있으실 겁니다. 왼쪽에 있는 하얀 것은 실크누에고치입니다.

The silkworms make these cocoons. People take the fibers from the cocoons to make silk.
누에들이 이 고치를 만듭니다. 사람들은 이 고치에서 실크를 만들기 위한 섬유를 뽑아냅니다.

This is the silk after the first boiling. They can boil it several times to make it softer.
이것은 처음 삶은 후의 실크입니다.

This is after it is boiled again.
이것은 다시 한번 삶은 후의 모습입니다.

This chart shows all the different plants and things that make different colors.
이 아트는 여러가지의 색상을 만드는 식물이나 물건들을 보여줍니다.

Here is one of the seeds from the tamarind tree. This seed is one of the dyes in the chart above.
타마린드 나무의 씨입니다. 이 씨는 위 차트에 염색재료중 하나입니다.

Here is the tree where the seed pod came from. It is really cool that they can get everything they need from their garden to make their silk and weave it.
위의 씨가 나온 나무가 여기에 있습니다. 실크를 만들 수 있는 모든 재료를 여기서 얻을 수 있다는 것이 아주 멋집니다.

Here you can see some of the other things to use for dying silk different colors. The materials are on the right, and the dyed silk is hanging on the left.
여기에 다른 색깔로 염색할 수 있는 재료들이 있습니다. 재료들은 오른쪽에 염색된 실크들은 왼쪽에 걸려있습니다.

this is the pot and the stove for boiling the dyes.
염료를 끓이는 스토브와 남비입니다.

This is a photo of the spinning wheel used to wind the colored thread onto a spool so you can use it on a loom to weave cloth. The lady turns the crank, which spins the big wheel. The big wheel turns the little spool of thread which is the long skinny orange thing on the left side. Each time the big wheel turns, it spins the spool of thread one hundred times, so you can spin the thread really fast.

Phase2. WEAVING

과정 2. 직조

These are some of the colors of thread to choose from.

This is the shuttle, which holds the spools of thread. The weaver slides the shuttle back and forth between the strings on the loom. Some shuttles have one thread, others have two, and some even have three! Actually, if you look closely, you can tell that this shuttle has room for three spools of thread, but only two are being used.

The looms look very complicated. Here is a video of a woman we saw weaving at a village near Luang Prabang. You can see how she uses the foot pedals to move every other thread up or down, and how she slides the shuttle between them to weave the thread. Then she uses the comb to make sure it is tight.

Here is a much fancier pattern. This kind takes a lot more work.

This picture shows which ethnic groups from where make what sort of cloth patterns (and elephants). Ock Pop Tock does about half of their weaving at the workshop and about half is done by women in these villages.

This is a different kind of pattern made with white cotton fabric, wax and dye. You use a pen-like thing to make patterns in black wax on the cloth. Then you dye the cloth and then clean off the wax to make white pattern on your cloth where the wax used to be!

The pillow in back shows what it looks like after it is dyed and cleaned. Sometimes the sewing people add beads and things on the bags and clothes like this...
저 뒤에 있는 쿠션을 보시면 염색하고 세탁 후에 어떻게 보이는지 아실 수 있습니다. 어떨 때는 구슬을 가방이나 천에 이렇게 더하기도 합니다.