Hālau Nā Pua 'O Uluhaimālama: Pellon Dyeing and Printing

After several months of traveling, coming back and not having internet, starting at a new school and more, I am finally getting back to blogging.  The next couple blogs are probably going to be out of order, but chronology is overrated right?  Besides all the great literary authors used in medias res and anachronism as a narrative technique...(Thank you 2 years of AP English, Ms. De Guzman & pompous Mr. Bates...I learned something!)

So I'll start at the most current and then blog willy-nilly as I feel like it until I'm caught up.  At the end of the last year I decided that if the opportunity arose I would try to start dancing with a new hālau, or hula school.  My really good friend Jenn recommended Kumu Emery Aceret's Hālau Nā Pua 'O Uluhaimālama.  So far my experiences have been great.  I love all the dancing we do, I love the ladies I dance with and I love dancing to kumu's voice.  Every time I get ready to leave my house, I always think, "I'm too tired!" but I make myself go and I am always so glad that I went.  The class is from 7-9pm on Wednesdays and we dance for probably an hour and a half.  I work up quite the sweat and we are already gearing up for a performance!

As part of the performance we've had to make brown jumpers.  I'll spare the pictures because they are extremely unflattering :) Plus all I did was cut the fabric and thread in the elastic since I can't sew. Thankfully my hula sister Angela happily sewed my jumper for me.  The fun part came with making our pellon, which will be our skirts.

First we needed to boil up a large amount of water:

Then we pre-soaked our pellon in some water:

I had to grab my olena and then we added it to our boiling water:

My hula sister Lisa was nice enough to stir my olena so I could "document for the blog" (Isn't it a beautiful day?):

 Next you add the pellon:

  

Then we had to stir it for an hour because if you just let the fabric sit in the water then the tumeric would settle in certain spots and you wouldn't have an evenly colored pellon. Luckily after about 20 minutes you could take it off the heat. I didn't make Lisa do my work and put in some sweat equity into my pellon...so much so that when I got home, I promptly took a nap!

DYEING MY PELLON WITH OLENA

 After about an hour of stirring the pellon in the tumeric, then you had to rinse it out.  Here's my hula sister Angela rinsing her pellon:

Then you got some people to help you wring out the water.  Here's Lisa again and a fabulous gentleman wringing out my pellon.  The guy is a separated father who is raising his daughter.  He was making a pellon for his daughter and helping out the rest of us ladies.  What a man!

Here's my pellon, drying at the hālau! (It's interesting that everyone's pellon is various shades of yellow dependent on the tumeric)

The next day (today) came the part that crafty Kristen enjoyed - printing.  There were two design elements that were non-negotiable: a repeating pattern of diamonds and a border at the bottom.  The only other stipulation was that whatever we printed, it needed to have a story.  The hālau had these reeds that people were using to print circles to represent ohana, or family.  There were also sponges.  But since I don't know when I'd ever get the chance to do this again, I wanted to get really creative with my pellon.

I began with my blank slate:

 

I added my diamonds and the border:

I was quite savvy (and as I write that I think of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow saying it all pirate-y) and brought with me some of the designs I wanted.  I put them in page protectors and slide it under the pellon.  The pellon is thin enough that you can see the image through it and therefore you just need to trace the image with your paint.  This is how I added my niho-mano (Shark's teeth design) and my canoe (wa'a):

  

Then I added some honu:

 Then I finished up the design with a circle inside a circle and a border at the top:

Now here's my story: The niho mano are in a triangle of 3 rows, with 4 dots on top and 2 on the bottom.  I did this because the 1 triangle represents my birth month: January.  The 3 rows of shark teeth (triangles) represent my birth day: 3.  The dots represent my birth year: 2x4 = 8 and 4...1984. (I like symbolism can you tell??? Yes, I'll cop to being up until midnight last night drafting ideas for this...I like to be prepared even when it comes to hula.)

The canoe symbolizes traveling because I love to travel, but also like the early Polynesians, I had to travel to Hawai'i and am not kanaka maoli ("True People" - term for true native Hawaiians).
However, the most important part of traveling is that no matter where I am, I am always centered and home.  The circle with the circle inside represents a piko, which in Hawaiian means "navel" or "center."

The honu represents longevity and wisdom which I seek.  It is also the bearer of good luck, which I always need.  I designed the honu so that the shell would kind of represent a heart.  I did this because, well I'm in love (duh) and wanted something on my pellon that would represent the life I have here in Hawai'i and the most important part of my life is Chris (Okay, this is a little too sappy when I actually write it out - blegh).

So that's my story and I'm stickin' with it!

SNAPSHOT OF MY PELLON DESIGN