Liu Min saw that Grandpa Huo was serious, and he already believed that the master of Xuanji Cave was his mother; But how is this possible, even if she is her own mother, how to recognize her; Moreover, this place is Xuanji Cave, and it is not the Bianliang City of the Great Song Dynasty or the Chengdu Mansion of Yizhou......

Liu Min thought in his heart, the red-clothed cave master on the Xuanji platform had already walked down and came to a very elegant brocade loom to operate it himself.

Liu Min dragged Grandpa Huo and said, "Grandpa, my mother went down to the Xuanji Terrace to practice on the spot, let's go over and take a look......"

The red-clothed cave master sat on the wooden brocade loom and introduced several important links of Shu brocade weaving to the honest men and women who surrounded him.

One is knotting. This is the basic skill of the weaver, and it is also the first pass to learn handmade brocade; The work of filling a bag of cigarettes is to tie twelve knots with very fine silk threads and cut the ends of the threads so that they look like they have never been broken.

The second is to fight Qian'er. The most important skill of body coordination, the left hand pulls the line to do short distance forward and backward movements; Turn the spinning wheel with your right hand and beat out different numbers of strands as needed to make the weft.

The third is latte art. In the thousands of threads that are slightly thicker than silk, the warp thread on the loom should be lifted by latte art, the strength should be appropriate, and the warp thread should not be lifted too high and easy to break; It can't be too short to get through. The pay-off should be crisp, otherwise, many threads will be mixed together.

Fourth, the shuttle. The feet change and step on the vertical pole to rotate the 16-sided heald frame up and down, and open the bow and shuttle left and right with both hands, during which each shuttle should be pressed with a crimping weft. The power used in both is very important. If the force is too heavy, it is difficult for the other hand to connect to the shuttle, and if it is too light, the shuttle will not pass, and the warp will be cut and the warp will be broken. Otherwise, thousands of warp threads would need to be knotted by hand. When using the crimping weft, due to the uneven control of the force, the brocade pattern will be tight and loose and deformed.

Fifth, turn the next song. A must for weavers to do this on a regular basis. Go down to a one-meter-deep pit and turn the lower bend to prevent the thread from breaking and tangling. This work usually takes one day.

Sixth, joints. When weaving Shu brocade, the silk thread will expand and shrink according to the change of weather, or thousands of times of natural friction during weaving, resulting in fatigue and fracture of the silk thread. In the case of broken warp threads, weavers have to find the broken thread among the bewildering tens of thousands of threads and use the knotting skills they have learned to tie it together. The above mentioned are just some of the basic skills necessary when weaving, and the most difficult thing is that the weaver maintains coordination and familiarity with the weaving mechanism while using his hands, feet, eyes and ears at the same time.

After the teaching of Shu brocade weaving was completed, the red-clothed cave master walked to the spinning wheel and loom not far away to explain the methods and steps of spinning and weaving.

Liu Min stared at several spinning wheels and old-fashioned looms, and couldn't help but think of the scene he saw his grandmother weaving homespun cloth in later generations; The spinning wheels and looms in Xuanji Cave are no different from those of later grandmothers.

Liu Min's grandmother's home was in Zhouzhi County, Guanzhong Plain, where women still weave cloth on old-fashioned cloth machines.

This is because the demand for homespun cloth in the market is quite large, and the city people who are tired of wearing silk and satin are nostalgic; I like the homespun cloth in the countryside very much.

The market development of homespun cloth was constantly expanded, but Liu Min did not expect the Kaibao period of the Song Dynasty in the tenth century; Xuanji Cave has such an advanced and amazing spinning wheel and loom.

This time, the master of the red-clothed cave taught in great detail step by step from the process of making cotton twists to the weaving cloth, and every small link was not missed.

The red-clothed cave master first asked the black stagecoach and a few handymen to open a bag of cotton and spread it out, and then asked Qing'er and Wen'er to fold a few sorghum stalks from the sorghum field and select a very smooth one to carry in their hands; Then tear off a piece of cotton and tear it up about a foot long, about three fingers wide dough; Put the sorghum pole in the middle of the cotton, wrap the cotton with the sorghum stalk as the center, and finally pull out the sorghum stalk from the twisted cylindrical cotton; A cotton twist is formed.

The red-clothed cave master took the twisted cotton twist in his hand and showed it around: "Brothers and sisters, come and see, this is called cotton twist; Also called twisting, it is the first process of weaving and spinning, and with the process of twisting, the subsequent spinning and weaving can be carried out in an orderly manner! ”

Liu Min was shocked, because the red-clothed cave master's method of twisting his hair was exactly the same as that of his grandmother in later life.

Liu Min stared at the red-clothed cave lord and said silently in his heart: "Is the red-clothed cave master Minzi's mother?" If not, her every move Minzi seems to be very kind! ”

Liu Min was thinking in his heart, when he saw the onlookers men and women invariably let out a cry of amazement, these capable men and women selected from all over the world will return to their respective villages and tribes after being trained by the red-clothed cave master; Use the textile technology learned to let the people dress warmly and sleep comfortably.

But they didn't know that cotton was made into clothes step by step in this way, and in some places they simply used an animal skin as a coat and put it on their bodies all day long.

Liu Min doubted Dou Sheng in the exclamations of men and women, and said to himself: "Is this a folk or a fairy world?" Or is it the Chengdu Jiuyan Bridge that Grandpa Huo said......"

Without waiting for Liu Min to finish thinking about what he wanted, he saw the owner of the red-clothed cave sitting cross-legged in front of the spinning cart with his left hand pinching the twist; The right hand shakes the spinning cart and spins the thread.

The spinning sound of "squeak squeak ......" is endless, and the movements are simply poured out of the same mold as Liu Min's grandmother in later generations.

Honest men and women imitate twisting and shaking spinning wheels under the professor of the red-clothed cave master; Soon there were piles of twists piled up in the square of the yin and yang poles.

Dozens of spinning wheels began to spin flowers, and the sound of "squeaking and whining" spinning threads seemed to be the sound of heaven echoing in the sky above Xian Miscellaneous Courtyard and Yin Yang Taiji Square.

Liu Min was excited, and his eyes were full of tears: How similar such a scene is to the people in the border area back then, but this is not the border area, but more than a thousand years ago, it was the Xuanji Cave in Qionglai Mountain.

The cotton thread was spun into hundreds of bobbins, and the red-clothed cave master actually taught the craft of pulping thread; Add flour or flour to rice soup or make flour into a paste, put the spun thread into it and soak it and then dry it to make the cotton thread hard; The next process is to wrap the pulped thread on a thicker bamboo tube, which is called a punching tube.

These processes are not completed in one or two days overnight, but in several days; Of course, there is time for eating and sleeping in between.

When beating the tube, dozens of threads should be placed on the open ground in a fan shape, and then the thread on the cylinder is wound on the wooden pillar of the loom, which is called the warp - the Guanzhong people call the wooden pillar that winds the cotton thread Lao Peg.

After the warp, the threads should be threaded one by one on the reels and put on the loom, which is controlled by the foot pedals of the loom; When the two coils are weaving, they are called crossing; The shuttle shuttles back and forth from the scissor-like intersection.

After the thread is threaded on the thread, the thread is threaded to the stick, which is tightly fastened with a bamboo stick.

After threading all the threads and sticks, the threads are placed on a large wooden loom and ready to weave.

After sitting on the loom, the master of the red-clothed cave took a tassel from the small basket - a wrapped thread - threaded the tassel on a thin bamboo skewer, and then pulled out a thread with his hand, put the thread in front of the left and right holes on the shuttle and sucked it with his mouth, and the thread passed through the hole into the mouth of the red-clothed cave master.

The red-clothed cave master holds the thread between his lips, then lengthens the thread, and then places the tassel in the rectangular hole in the middle of the shuttle; The weaving process began in earnest......