NEEDLEWOMEN

My mother told me a ditty the girls sang during weaving:

"Nothing worries me more about  the tow of flax,
That my rival will make more yarn."


  Sometimes you weave, weave on a certain day. But, oh, you get so tired. And here a beggar comes, to ask for morsels.
Anushka, my girlfriend, sends me a note with the pauper: "Anfisa, I am crying bitter tears; the loom seems to be a goat."
To hand-weave, a canvas wall per day is really not a joke. Willy-nilly, you start to sing or to invent ditties ...
But there was another opportunity to eliminate the monotony of work. You could vary not only the foundation but also the ducks: by colour, by material.
The centuries-old tradition of weaving had to diversify and change how to weave. Here are the main ones, woven canvas for bedding, bags, furniture, etc. It was no longer a simple canvas, which had the same right and left sides. For Weaving in Ryadno need not two Chapko (Nitchenko), and three or four. Three Chapko warp threads are made consistently three throats, canvas turns out not only stronger, but also beautiful, with a barely noticeable scar slanted. The fabric takes on an entirely different and more complex structure. Yarn of cow, sheep or goat wool was used for duck fabric, from which they made a winter top, for the most festive clothes. / In the snatch/weaving at six and six nitchenok chicaneries.
The pattern of the finished fabrics were two alternating bands, one with a scythe with a thread, the other with a straight line. / Uzornitsa - / fabric, formed from vosmiparnoy basis. Eight consistently replace zevov eight chicanery and the hands and feet of two ... Order not to get lost in footboards, click where you want, you must have experience, a sense of rhythm and proportionality.
Wall uzornitsy expert at weaving sometimes the whole winter. The pattern was composed of identical cells, as would be filled with oblique lines, forming rhombs. The boards of this fabric, trimmed with bright stitch and bleached lace, were a rarity in high esteem for the future bride's relatives. / Stitch - / most difficult artistic fabric. Method of weaving uses selective exclusion of the main threads of the process of weaving. With thin planochki certain warp threads are raised in certain places, creating a very rich geometric pattern. Ducks can be a contrast in color with the base. But particularly high artistic expressiveness strove mistress when they took the thread to duck slightly lighter or slightly darker foundation. The cream colour pattern gave penned surprising originality. Figure tissue completely dependent on the imagination, skill and time available weaver. Stitch sewn to the ends of wedding dresses, towels, to the hem of women's shirts. / Sasha / and / straps / woven on the same principle as the canvas, but as if in miniature. The basis was made dvuhchapochnaya and narrow (its width is dependent on the conceived sash or belt). Patterns of these zones are legion, they are clearly expressed and the rhythm of color and graphics. Perhaps, if such products are used for weaving and plaiting elements. The material serves as wool and linen dyed yarn. / Prodolnitsa, or tissue for longitudinal sarafans, woven on special Krosno, which are twice as wide as normal. Width became the basis of length sundress. Sundresses such as fabric - one of many examples of mutual influence, mutual and inseparable relationship to national cultures. Thus, many young and not quite young Estonian women nowadays wear clothes fully coincides with the Russian prodolnitsey. National consciousness was completely alien to jealousy or pride in such borrowings. Wool yarn dyed in different colors and not wide stripes woven on a broad and solid basis of linen. In order to prevail specifying woolen yarn, the threads were passed on to one tooth ^ *, not two, as usual. Mistress so she could alternate the colors and match the width of color bands that the fabric began to play, turning into a man-made rainbow. However, such a transformation took place more quietly, even more important: drab weaving a holiday. / Mats, / or / track, is characterized by degeneration and disappearance of high-weaving culture. The main technology of weaving is preserved, but instead of the weft of wool are used colorful fabric strips and strings. Artistic individuality masters barely emerges from a similar fabric, although the product is often striking decorative showiness. In richness and rhythm of color combinations in rugs is difficult to find a graphic clarity and harmony: the reason for this, apparently, simplicity and vulgarity of textile material.

WEAVING OF FABRIC

Apparently, in a conversation about the past of our people, the art of weaving can be put on a par with the art of farming or building. It is difficult to assume, from which ancient (“front,” as they say) times, the flax yarn was brought to us.
The weaving technology was always combined with high artistry. Moreover, the degree of this skill in weaving actually depended on the degree of technological complexity.
The principle of weaving is based on one pair of moving, pushing, and rushing up and down threads. The horizontal row of such pairs is the foundation. The transverse thread - ducks - pulled into a moving mound and forms the basis of the fabric, weaving into a coherent whole warp thread. But this way is only for making the most straightforward woven fabric. The premise here, while pushing, is divided into two parts. But what happens if use not a single pair of threads, but two pairs, and each such pair to push in turn? In other words, it is by not splitting in two, but in four in the frame during dragging through a wet thread. And you'll get a patterned, artisanal fabric.
       Not in every peasant's house lived such skill and ability, and it was not always enough time. However, it was rare when the wedding was devoid of gifts of ornamental fabric.
 In the North, big houses were built yet because weaving tools, especially looms, required a lot of space.
      In the spring, when it became warm and sunny, the back gate of the upper shed that became pretty empty during the winter was opened. Swept its two weavers, usually, a knowledgeable friend, exhibited here, small sparrow and use them to stow the yarn on Tyurikov. Small sparrow replaced as big as a two-story, called shuttle. Double the thread that runs from two rotating from the usual tension Tyurikov was passed somewhere through the beam and stretched from top to shuttle. Snovalki turned on one turn in one direction or the other. The length of one wall was equal to the perimeter of the canvas shuttle and was constant. If there was enough yarn, then immediately scurried into two (two rotations there and two back), or three walls of the canvas (three turns clockwise, and three - against). The main secret of warping concealed the fact that one end of the base with the help of the so-called price was crisscrossed, eight. Here, a special probe knit a pair of crossed. If crossing confused or not to save, and immediately disappears and the whole meaning of the entire labour warping. Consequently, hot or impatient weave nothing to take up this matter. On the other hand, the warping brought in girl patience, perseverance and artistic flair. Simultaneously it was necessary to monitor the number of threads in the manner, and amount of right and left turns shuttle. Experienced weavers, knowing the number of available yarn, scurried precisely as the number of threads at the base, and the length basis. But other inexperienced  weaver does not calculate the number of walls or self-confidence will increase the number of threads on the basis (instead of yes and Semernikov will begin to scurry for the bird, devyaternika) - then get universally embarrassing.
When happy end basis, carefully preserving stringed prices, remove from the sparrow. It takes the form of the bound bundle, which is transferred into heat in the house, where there are ready for subsequent warping cable. The challenge is that each thread in a strict sequence stretch in the comb and fix one end horizontally on rotating basis chocks. Then prices are transferred to the other side of Byrd and the width of their bases insert pair of thin parallel bars. The ends of these strips are connected to a certain width, which allows prices to move along the entire foundation. Basis after that in a series of carefully wound on the width of the ridge on the chocks. The remaining ends to induce Nitchenko and working comb. Csurka with the base is fixed and is fixed with a special device. The ends of the base, passed through Nitchenko and comb, set on another ridge crossing, which also can be fastened. Basis tightly stretched, tied to Nitchenko step, and only now are trying to the pharynx. If all goes well, the threads scurry up and down easily, not clinging to one another. The base is expanded widely, and slippery with birch-bark canoe chivtsey, which is wound specifying the thread does not run in the throat, but just fly right to the left. At chivtsy hank yarn also Tyurikov, using a small machine, equipped with wooden knobs. He called the rock, from the word "miss a beat." Thus, the foundation established and finally can weave ... The day is a good expert at creating a wall of a simple canvas. Two walls - about fifteen meters - called end. * Everyday shroud * Russian people from time immemorial had the custom to give a special pledge - a vow. It could be a common, group, or personal, individual vow. Vows were taken during fights and in battles with the enemy in times of plague. Women's vow could be due to different reasons. Most likely, of them was because of an illness or disability of the child. In the name of recovering a child, a woman had given a vow of an ordinary veil. Everyday- means every day, one-day, a brief ( a pie, for example, can be the overday pie). In one day, it was necessary to tear several flax bundles, comb them, roll tow, spin them, make the frame and weave a shroud, in other words, the veil on the icon of the saint in the local church. Frankly speaking, this job is no joke! (Remember the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful.)
Of course, alone a woman or girl in the best case would have done at the end of the day only the yarn, maybe even span least one raps, but no more. Therefore several of the best masters would gather. They were asked in advance to avoid publicity. They would get up well before dawn and began to work, which took on a day like this a particular importance. In the evening a lot of linen flax turned in incomplete, but still a decent wall of the canvas - the overday veil. Let's not talk about all the meaningful minutiae of the day, as well as thoughts and feelings of workers. Joy, a sense of relief, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of belonging to a neighbor and to the whole world - all this leaves no room for fatigue.

A COMPANION OF WOMEN’S DESTINY - FLAX

Field crops and livestock were everybody's occupation according to their abilities: men and women, children and the elderly. However, all related to cutting and hauling wood and construction belong to adult men. There were cases when a woman with an axe sat in the corner, but this was considered abnormal, as reflected in the proverb: "Women's cities don't stand for a long time."
 Forrest is firmly connected with peasant's inventory: agricultural and domestic. Men's hands created all dishes, all utensils, and toys. A different domain was the flax.
     Of course, the farm, diverse and unified in its many layers, was a living organism, harmonious in its not-even-perfect embodiment.
    The cows, for example, were kept not so much for milk as for manure to fertilize the land. Soil, in turn, gave not only bread but also fodder for the cattle. But where there is livestock, there are food and shoes, there are shoes, and you can go into the woods to cut down the house, including a barn for cows; if there is a cow, there will be milk and manure. The circle is closed. Economic life consisted of such interacting and interconnected cycles. This situation requires not empty mechanical but a thoughtful attitude to work.
   The field and livestock labour cycles rested on the age-old tradition and ruthlessness of seasonal changes. But this does not mean that the peasant labour did not require a creative attitude, that the plowman and the shepherd do not need talent, and that inspiration and joy of creation are for peasants just hollow sounds.
On the contrary: only the age-old tradition helped people quickly (usually during childhood and adolescence) learn the most rational methods of hard work, freeing time and effort, clearing the way for the individual creative impulse at first and then to action. But the skill of the individual plowman or mower, even passed to his son or grandson, has not received a meaningful expression because the grain in the barn or the cattle in the barn not only did not surprise distant descendants but did not even live to see them.
    No, for the soul and memory, it was needed to build a house with a pretty carving, or a church on the hill, or weave a lace, which captures the spirit and will light up the eyes of a distant great-granddaughter. Because people do not live by bread alone.
   Flax was, for many centuries, a companion of a woman's fate. It was a women's pleasure and grief, beginning with infant bedding linen, a girl's shawls and ending with a shroud - a white canvas covering the person on his deathbed.
Flax is sown in warm but slightly damp soil to ripen early. So, guess when to plant!
     You must be a peasant to catch this particular moment in the year. The day before or the day after would already come out wrong. After planting flax, the hands of men rarely touch it. All the long and complicated life cycle of flax is subservient only to women. They must keep pace with flax to make all it should be, regardless of other work and family concerns. Otherwise, it could become a disgrace to the entire village. Traditionally even a girl in her early years walks around the linen strips with special reverence.
    In many families, girls as young as eight or ten years began to prepare a dowry and wedding gifts made or specially ordered in a chest or box. For many years, those chests were kept till the very wedding, woven canvas, stitches, and laces. Because of that, the flax strips excite the soul of a maiden:
"Please grow well, grow well, you, my flax, and grow well, my little white,
do not get crushed, my darling."
This old choral-game song described all ways of flax, from the tiny dark seed to a snow-white lace.
    But how long and complex it was that way! And how it was similar to a man's life, what a powerful pagan symbolism of sounds in each step of the closed cycle of flax!
   Rhythmic, precise, and validated for centuries, this cycle is positively subordinated to a heavenly process accomplished by the eternal and generous sun. One has to keep pace with the inevitable, reliable stability change of the seasons: after all, nature does not wait; it changes not only in the seasons but every week, daily and even hourly. She is always different!
      As soon as light-green herringbone stems strike up to daylight, the spring that threatened to freeze these tiny creatures ends. However, summer in the North is not always gentle: at any time, it can chill with unexpected nightly frost or cook up with heat rapidly shrinking soil. So on the first warm days, every scum climbs out of the ground: milkweed, horsetail, raps, and hundreds of other weeds. For some reason, they sit in the field so tightly, putting down roots so deep that it is not easy to take out each weed.
     At such times, women and girls have to find a free day, gather small children, take big baskets and go to the field to weed flax. Every squalid, left on the row, a germ of milkweed or the other weed will grow in five to six weeks into a disgusting unapproachable, arrogant, toxic-green, double-flowering shrub, which can be removed from the flax row only with a spade. That's why they work in a hurry with bruised hands.
 It is OK; hopefully, everything will wash away during the bath and heal. But how good looks the weeded outfield: young flax, trampled underfoot, tends to straighten up after the first rain. It is growing by leaps, not by days but hours: a proverb has not a figurative but a literal sense.
    Summer is in full bloom. In the fields, in the forest and at home, there is so much work that one has only to turn around. At this time, flax fleas appear, they will not be shy, and they devour entirely fragile, delicate stems. Flax is sprinkled with wood ashes to get rid of fleas.
   At the same time, it does not hurt to fertilize flax plots, but the peasants had yet to learn any other fertilizers but manure, slurry, poultry manure and kiln ash. When the flax was in bloom, it seemed a deep blue of northern summer skies on the fields. Indescribably beautiful is flax during white nights.
     Few noticed infinite blueness before the collective farms because the plots were too small. In the same collaborative farm sector, especially after the introduction of crop rotation, whole fields of flax and the blueness of flowering flax appeared. Only the colours of Dionysius can express the feeling of a strange combination of pale green with pale blue as if penetrating somewhere in the depth of colour. But one thing is to look at; another is to twirl flax.

LAYING OF THE ROPES

The men in the North sometimes spun yarn, but it was pretty different. If women's yarn had a thickness of the hair, men's thread was like a child's little finger. It was made for the laying of ropes.
  Sitting at the large spinning wheel, on which a big beard of the tow was attached, an older man with a cracking sound dragged out of a thick strand from the tow. Then, with a special whorl, he braided flax, having something to tell or listening to another person. Finally, the yarn was stowed in large balls with holes in the middle of the whorl. And now comes - always for some reason, suddenly - the day of laying ropes.
  The job was so unusual that it amused children and adults. Feelings and how children play, people quite often bring into their adulthood.
   Somewhere in the middle of the street was put on a wooden sled. To the head of the sled at the waist height was tied a bar with three holes, in which the three wooden handles roll. Next, a wooden board with holes was put on the handles, through which you can turn all three handles at once. While holding the yarn ball in the basket, the weaver stretched the yarn thread far along the street, then pulled it back, and so it went a few times. Finally, the saw-horse was set up for the yarn not to fall to the ground, and it hung like telegraph wires.
 An experienced weaver went to the other end of the street, taking a wooden dice with three notches. People started to rotate the handles clockwise. All three tows twist; at the same time, they are shortened. Finally comes the point when they rolled up to the limit, which inevitably had to curl between them. At that moment, people started laying off the ropes.
 At one end of the team, people started twisting the yarn, and at the other, another group gently led the dice with three plaits, always counterclockwise, making it into a sturdy rope. The sled was slightly dragging on the grass.
  The transformation of the yarn into a solid long rope, the reduction of yarn length and the connection of the three parts into one, stable and indivisible - all this was happening before everyone's eyes, and every time was surprising and exciting.
  The finished rope up to two hundred meters was cut to the desired length, and to keep the ends from being untied, the waxed thread sealed the ends.
 Usual thin ropes guys were laying from the house flax, for which it was split, and every strand was twisted by hand on the knees.
 When the fingers of the left hand were unclenching, the strands of flax curled into one. These small ropes were appropriate for many needs: to tie to bags, for weaving devices, for fishing gear, etc.
  For the cobblers and fishers, a more twisted thread was made. A regular thin thread was doubled, taking lines from the two coils in a water saucer. The maker put this double thread through the wooden perch near the ceiling, tied it to the end of the particular wheel and twisted it. A twister turned a horizontal spindle with the handwheel, slowly raising it, then lowering it. The thread was solid; however, the strength depended more on the quality of the flax.
  There is no plowing, stumping, or building if there are no ropes. In old times peasants paid with canvas and ropes. The zenith of the rope craft coincided with the beginnings of Tsar Peter's work when the indomitable, wise and flighty king decided to put part of the Russian infantry on board. In old seamen's chant sung about how "suddenly came a change," as "a storm lifts the sea " and how "boils seafoam everywhere."
 The battle of Gangut marked the beginning of the glorious history of the Russian Navy. But the fleet stood firmly not only on marine communique and charters. Without the millions of anonymous spinners and tar makers, the blue, resembling the sea linen strips flag of St. Andrew, would not be covered by the winds of all the oceans and all latitudes of the vast land. But, unfortunately, this history is little known to the romantics of "The Scarlet Sails" and countless "brigantines."

FISHING NETS MAKING

"The thieves came, took the hosts, and left the house through the windows."
 A riddle

   No one knows from which antiquity rolled up to us the wheel. Nobody knows how many years, centuries, and millennia ago, from which time comes to us a common thread. But the time between the invention of the line and the mesh was very short. The mesh and the canvas appeared simultaneously, perhaps apart, but it is clear that both owe their existence to the yarn. And initially, the fabric and the fishing net were made of animal hair.
     The brilliant simplicity of the mesh (loop - a knot) always gets people fish. It also gave rise to women's needlework.
 People have been knitting fishing tackles from time immemorial. For the prudent farmer, this occupation and hunting were not a burden or a pure amusement. Fishing in the North has always been an excellent economic help. The aesthetic and emotional in this activity are firmly connected to the practical (economic goal).
   A genuine and close communion with nature nullifies the fear of nothingness, death, disappearance, rivalry with nature, the joy of recognition, risk, physical conditioning, strange self-disclosure and self-determination - all of these and much more have been experienced by hunters and fishermen.
   In anticipation of the test, a person can stoically, all evenings knit fishnets, procure in the deep snow spruce stakes for the vertices, and twist an infinite linen thread. The tool knitter is simple: it is the bifurcated stick like a women's spinning spindle, then the gauge - a plate, the width of which defines the mesh width, and which befits the loop—finally, a flat juniper shuttle with a slot where the thread is put. Everybody was knitting for children and the elderly, young and healthy bearded men!
   Knitting was done in free time, during the bad weather or low season, and at organized gatherings for knitting. However, some self-respecting women avoided such events. They were looking at this occupation with reverence but with slight mocking. And why that attitude existed, we would understand if we take a closer look at textile artistic creations, which complete the entire complex and long path of flax - a satellite of woman's fate. The end is the crown of the process. Creative weaving, braiding, knitting, and embroidery of the linen crowned the cycle, taking the creation by human hands from the annual cycle very often, even beyond the length of human life.

INVISIBLE STREAMS

   The image of a river in folk poetry is powerful. Like poetry, this image is beyond analysis, deduction or explanation. However, analyze it all you want, pick it up to the bones and explain how you want - it will not resist. But it never reveals itself until the end, always the image keeps the right to live and does not succumb to dissection, surprising its ripper with new abysses of the inexplicable. Of course, it will die after it becomes easy to understand and explain, but fortunately, this does not happen because it cannot be ascribed to the end and be understood by the rational collective mind.
   The image is alive as long as human personality. But how could there be a likeness of perception if the people are men and women, girls and boys, children and old, beautiful and not, sick and healthy, prosperous and poor, weak and strong?
    If nature is changing all the time: the heat, then cold, then rain, then snow, and life moves swiftly, and yesterday is so unlike today, and years never repeat each other.
  The river flows. It twinkles in the sun, bubbles in the rain, is covered with ice and snow, overflows, and turns into ice. Fish spawn at the meadows site, where today creaks a corncrake; not long ago, the blizzard howled. Something native, ever-changing, careless and flowing, renewed every time and never-ending, connecting the living with the already dead and yet unborn, one can imagine and hear in a stream of water. Everybody hears it, but everyone sees the image of water flowing in their way.
   The image of the road is no less prevalent in folk poetry. Yet, is it possible to agree at least briefly to think of a river as an emotional entity and the road as a rationale? After all, the former is created by nature and has constantly flowed, and people made the latter out of necessity.   
   People needed to go somewhere (albeit for mushrooms), ride (for hay), trample the trail and build the road. Often, a road ran along a river ...
    The road looks like it tried to be shorter and more accessible, while the other side of the river, for some reason, always seemed more beautiful and dry. The road made mistakes, extending its length with appearing entirely inappropriate ferries once or twice! But from these errors, the human soul has often won something more valuable and unexpected.
    Invisible streams lay present at the intersections of the material and spiritual, mandatory and desirable, beautiful and necessary. To understand this, it suffices to recall that most folk art items were essential in life as everyday objects or tools.
    Here are some of them: women's threshers, ceramic and wooden utensils, buckets, salt and pepper dispensers in the form of birds, rosettes on wooden blocks crossing, and cast and bent candelabras.
    With a natural hook of wood (carved from the spruce root ) that supported a wooden tray on the roof, the carpenter turned into a pretty chicken with few axes blows; only two or three stitches of the needle added elegance to the sleeve of the women's clothing. With a change of potter position of fingers, a clay vessel acquired impressive interception, elongated or increased in breadth.
   Elusive and uncertain is a boundary between manual labour and creative effort. The master doesn't understand even himself: how, why when an ordinary lump of clay becomes a beautiful vessel. But in all the folk crafts, there is this subtle change from obligatory, common labour to creative, unique work.
  People cannot deduct the artistic image entirely from attempts to rationalize it.
   Similarly, the nature of the transition from conventional to creative work is inexplicable. The monotony or severity of labour pushes a worker to the art, cause to diversify not only the product but also the methods of their manufacturing.
   In addition, for the Northern people, life has always been characterized by competition and competition, not by quantity but by quality. I want to go on holiday all dressed up, better than anybody else - then please spin and weave many beautiful things. If you wish to pass for an excellent possible husband and then build a durable and pretty house, do not spare the effort on the carvings and architectural gems.
   Beauty is present in work. The beauty in the fruits of labour has many faces, but it is also self-affirmation, the assertion of own ego, and the formation of personality.
  Know-how, skill, and art are alive in any work. Therefore, the artists who are equal in artistic power to Dionysus can be at the immense apex of the pyramid, the base of which rests the rest of the people.
   So everything begins with the irresistible and inexplicable desire to work.
The desire makes a person, an ethnic group, or even the entire nation predisposed to creativity and, therefore, viable. Such people are not threatened with extinction from internal decadence.
   Creativity stems from a desire to work and a thirst for action. In the life of the northern Russian peasantry, work was the most critical condition of moral equality. The willingness to work was equated with ability.
    So encouragingly generous, noble and straightforward was the popular opinion that somebody who is not lazy and willing to work with people immediately, in advance, called the craftsman. And he had no choice but to become one quickly.
 But to be a craftsman does not mean to be a master or an artist (in our modern sense). Everybody had to become a craftsman eventually. While striving for the best work, everyone did according to their strength and natural abilities. Both qualities are different for different people.
     Almost all the craftsmen became apprentices, but only part became real masters. Legends of the "secrets" that masters supposedly kept from outsiders have been invented by lazy or incompetent people to justify themselves. None of the Russian craftsmen and artisans held their skills in vain if they were genuine craftsmen and artisans!
    Another thing is that not every apprentice was gifted with remarkable abilities; meanwhile, the master was strict and jealous. He allowed getting in trade to a genuinely interested man who was patient and not big-mouthed. Typically, self-interest does not motivate the master when he shuts his mouth.
    According to ancient beliefs, people could find hidden treasures only with "clean" hands. The secret of mastery is a unique treasure accessible to honest and selfless workers. But many people judge others by themselves!
   To a greedy person always seems that the masterworks well and hard for the money, not because of a love for art.
     But, on the other hand, a mediocre and lazy person needs to understand why people can work on a small object for hours, even days and weeks. But, unfortunately, he does not have the sense to understand even the meaning of this patience, and now he insults the master with suspicion of greed and unwillingness to share his secrets.
   Master's vulnerability was also aggravated because people paid more for the beautiful and solidly made things. But, of course, the master did not refuse the money: he had a wife and children.
   The art also sometimes requires substantial resources: need to buy paint, well-aged wood, bones, etc. But it is ridiculous to think that the master or the artist is driven by selfishness!
   The paradox is that the less the artists think of money, the more valuable products they produce and the more contracts they have. Then, some artists and artisans became concerned with cash only. But the talent quickly abandoned them.
    The secret of any skill and artistry in trade is simple: Patience, hard work and excellent knowledge of the tradition. And if all of this nature adds more talent and individual ability, we will inevitably face an extraordinary artistic event.
   Art makes work palatable, but the inspiration doesn't come from the lazy. Mastery reduces the time it takes to complete work; skill is not art. Of course, not everyone can become a master. But many tried this, maybe everyone because no one wanted to be worse than the others!
   Therefore, an ordinary skill, which has yet to become unique (i.e., art), can depend on tradition. Knowledge of a practice, polished by centuries, was required for each artisan because the leap across an accumulated treasure of people is impossible. Because of that, an apprentice was valued above all the care, diligence, and patience.
   First, learning how to do things that can do all tradesmen were necessary. Only then does one begin to learn professional techniques and skills?
  Young icon painters were first allowed to mix paints and for young shoemakers to wet and knead the skin, only after a long apprenticeship was painters permitted to pick up a brush or trowel. The ability to do the traditional, standard, yet artistic skill makes masters out of traditional apprentices.
 The master, if he were endowed with natural talent and if tens of circumstances were favourable, very soon became an artist, a creator who creates beauty. Such a person would be dissolved in his painting, and he does not need fame and glory. He felt even something shameful and bothersome in the worldly fame of his paintings. Creativity and knowledge that the art will live and make people happy filled the life of an artist with a high and joyful sense.

SEWING

In the thirties, the prewar years in some Northern villages spread a girlish custom long before the wedding to give her boyfriend scarves. Embroidered pouches and shirts were usually given only to husbands. Unsuccessful or disliked gentlemen caught these scarves by force, "snatched." The famous limericks of the time were reflected even in this tiny part of national life:
 

 
"My dear one is so broken and distorted,
 
Broken for my handkerchief,
 
 He is distorted in the mirror".

What to do with this mischief?"
 

 
 Of course, it is a comic rhyme. But through it, one can judge the rapidly changing mores: barrack life in the lumber camps forcing girls to behave with rudeness and man's manners.
 
 Yes, and not very easy to find time for sewing when there is a plan for cutting and hauling, and gloves and boots break apart every now and then, and the horse took off, or lost horseshoe,  the village did not send food and in the barracks is the smoke of the yoke: men mixed with women, old and young.
 
Yet many girls found time to embroider a handkerchief and sing this ditty. Singing and crafts since ancient times complement each other in a woman's life. Exiled to the Goritskiy monastery, Xenia Godunov was famous for her handwork and singing songs when standing and working. During that time in Russia, songs accompanied the flourishing art of ecclesiastical embroidery, presented by numerous tangible pieces of evidence.
 
There are several ways of sewing; the main is satin-stitch embroidery which is parallel stitches. For this purpose were used silk and linen threads. The canvas was embroidered with simple, often double-cross, later replaced by square waffle fabric. Embroidery by Tambora used rounded ensiform stitch, and "the "hen's feet" style was pulled in line with geometric angle stitch. 

    Finally, sewing was done in the embroidery frame after removing weft threads from the tissue. Collars, sleeves, towels, scarves, jackets, pouches, and hats were usually embroidered. Occupies a unique place a gold embroidery. Exquisite embroidery in red on the black, white and dark blue background and green on the red and pink. However, everything depended on the artistic flair of embroiders.