(My blog posts are going to be terribly out of order until I get more caught up.)
On August 13th Chris and I drove up to the Kohala Coast for the day. Our destination was Pu'ukohola Heiau National Park for Ho'oku'ikahi Establishment Day Hawaiian Cultural Festival. If this sounds like something Chris would want to do, than you don't know him very well :) But he's an awesome boyfriend, so he volunteered to come with me.
Pu'ukohola was built from 1790-91 by Kamehameha I himself. The kahuna said that if he should build this heiau than he could conquer all of the Hawaiian islands. Well, Kamehameha built it and the rest is history!
PU'UKOHOLA HEIAU
At the festival they had several stations for display (e.g. war weapons, traditional lures for fishing, etc) and stations for you to try things (e.g. traditional Hawaiian foods, lei-making, ride in a wa'a or canoe, etc)
Chris and I decided to try our hand at making ipu, the traditional way. Ipu are gourds that are hollowed out and then used in a variety of ways but I've seen it most commonly as a hula implement (kinda like a drum). We had to take our ipu down to the water and get it wet. The water was really gross and muddy. When you walked out, it was soft like aerated mud and you sank in. Needless to say, I only did it once and then Chris was on water duty for the rest of the time!
MINE ON THE LEFT AND CHRIS WITH HIS IPU
Next we had to use sand and a coconut husk to sand away the exterior. If you look in the picture above, you can see how mine still has all the outside and Chris has started to scrape his away so you can see the prettier warm brown underneath. You might also note that I foolishly picked a much larger one than Chris (how like me) and would soon come to regret this as I had to put in a lot of elbow grease to get it finished. See the picture below for an example of how an ipu looks when pau (finished).
After a long time of scrubbing and some good teamwork, we both finished our ipu! (Another reason why Chris is awesome...he helped me scrub my silly oversized gourd that I picked without me even having to ask!) Chris seems to really enjoy his ipu and randomly drums on it at home. (I need to take a picture of our completed ipu) Soon after he found this REALLY neat website of carved gourds that are used as lamps. They are SO gorgeous:
I tried a few of other things while Chris wandered around sipping on his coconut:
LAU HALA WEAVING
I wove a bracelet out of lau hala. Lau hala weaving is a very ancient Hawaiian art that entails weaving from the leaves (lau) of the hala tree. The hala tree is also commonly known as the "walking tree."
HALA TREE
It really does walk (albeit really slowly). I really enjoyed weaving and I talked story with the lady you see in the first picture to the left of me. She wove the hat that she is weaving! It was kind of funny because the dress you see me wearing is actually her design and she is a designer and owner of Hana Hou shop in Hilo. Of course I've already managed to lose track of my bracelet, but if I should find it, I'll tack on the picture of the completed project. She had me do a simple basket weave, but apparently it can get much more complicated
HAWAIIAN QUILTING
I also tried my hand at Hawaiian quilting. I suppose on some level I wanted to try to understand what Barbara (Chris' mother) does as a hobby. Unfortunately, I don't think I have the patience for this at all! I do love the look of Hawaiian quilts though and would love to have one some day.
We didn't spend as long as I'd like because first, the Kohala side is VERY hot and soon we were both tired of being in the sun, but also Chris can only take so much crafting (haha)... so we headed home. I was still really happy since we got out of the house, went on a mini road trip, I got to play with crafts and it was free!
No comments:
Post a Comment