Weaving through the rice fields


Bamboo and string pattern rods in a mechanical loom in Northern Thailand. Pattern rods contain loops to lift the thread and are stacked in order in the loom and lifted up into place to separate warp threads in a certain configuration so the weft thread can be pulled by hand through the middle. Then the pattern rod is lifted down and the following one lifted into place. Each rod contains a single section of the pattern, the more complex the pattern, the more pattern rods are required.