A Woman Reports

Abstract

I got my first lavalava from my mother in 1987 when I was thirteen years old (Field Notes 09/2006). It was a peig besh (white peig, a certain design of lavalava). This depends on the individual taste of the person giving the gift; there is no special pattern for the first lavalava. The girls start wearing lavalava after their first period. In contrast, they can actually start to weave at any time, mostly at around eight years of age. I first learned to wrap the threads around the pegs of the base of the loom called the shoou. When my legs got long enough to operate the loom (biisal), I began to weave. I was about ten years old. Unfortunately, my mother could not teach me at that time because she was off-island. I had to try to work on my own and study the problems and, with the help of old lavalava, teach myself to weave. For really difficult patterns I asked my aunts for advice.