Batik

This is a blog post a few months in the making: caranya membatik. How to batik. 

I can't remember exactly how this all got started, but one day I went to a batik shop in Yogya with my second host father and came home to Karangjati with a bunch of supplies. After that I spent a good number of hours after school drawing patterns on cloth with melted wax (called malan) using a batiking tool called a canting.

     There are many different sizes of canting, meaning the spout of the tool is larger or smaller depending on how detailed you need to be. I was told by an SMKI teacher that the canting should never be out of the malan for more than 15 seconds (which is longer than it sounds). I've found this is a good rule to follow because it makes sure the wax you're using is always hot, and it lessens the chance that you'll drip. A canting isn't an advanced tool; it's made from a piece of wood and thin metal cup/spout attached with wire, so if you let it sit over the cloth long enough, it's bound to drip. (And I am much too familiar with this, as you can see in the picture above). In order to batik, you dip the canting cup into the malan, fill it about half way or less, then directly draw it on the fabric. If the malan is too hot, it'll run out of the canting in a continuous stream; if it's too cold it won't come out at all. So you have to watch the consistency of the wax and adjust accordingly.

     The other necessity for batiking is the kompor, or burner. This is also not very advanced; the one I used was made of tin (and cost around four dollars). There are six strings dipped in oil that you light by hand, and a small lever to raise or lower the string tips to control the temperature (in theory). The kompor is sometimes frustrating- not heating evenly, or becoming too hot even at the lowest setting. Electric burners work much better, these are what they used at the professional batik shop where I once took a batik lesson. What would be better yet is an electric canting- looks like a hot glue gun- but these are expensive by Indonesian standards (over 30 US). And I figure if I'm going to learn to batik the traditional way (called 'tulis' or 'written' as opposed to 'cap' (stamped) batik, or the printed kind) I should use traditional tools. (I suppose the most traditional would have been using a ceramic, wood-burning kompor, like we used at the SMKI cook-out... That would have been a bit complicated though). 

                     

     There are two different kinds of malan that they sold at the batik store- brown and a lighter, clearish kind. Now, the picture above looks like I used both kinds, but that's just because the malan gets increasingly darker as it cooks in the kompor (I always bought the brown malan). Also, I admit, I liked to bake the heck out of my wax when I was first starting because the hotter the wax, the faster it spreads on the fabric, speeding up the whole process. This resulted in some messy lines and dark malan. I don't know if it will make a difference in the dying process, using well-done malan to batik, but hopefully my laziness didn't cost me too much. When I was first starting to batik everyone told me batiking was an art of patience- you have to work slowly. I thought I was all over the 'patience' thing, but as I got more practice and started caring more about the results, I stopped to change the malan in the canting more often (actually following the 15 second rule) and used cooler wax. You can see the difference between my first cloth and my last, too. Neater, less drips. 

    Now for the dying process. 

   Like I mentioned before, I took a short class at a batik shop (this was after I had started batiking at home, though another inbound signed up to take a class so I tagged along), and that was the first time I saw the batik dying process. It was intimidating, to say the least, particularly mixing the dye. There was a table full of little bags of white powder and a scale, and one of the workers would take spoonfuls of one powder, weigh it, then add another powder, weigh it again, take some away... As an Indonesian would say: pusing. Gives you a headache. After that I started thinking that I may not want to dye my fabric at home by myself- after all the hours I spent drawing on the wax, it'd be a pity to ruin the results because I'm a novice dyer. At this particular batik shop, they dipped the fabric in water first, then dipped it in another clear liquid, then dipped it in dye. For the first two steps, the fabric soaked just in plastic buckets but the color dye was poured into a hip-height cement trough and the fabric was pulled through the dye about six inches at a time until the whole pieces was colored. Then the fabric was hung on a line to dry for a few minutes, and if the color wasn't dark enough, they'd pull it through the dye again.

   Since I finished all of my wax work right before I changed houses, I enlisted the help of my third host mom to find a batik place that would dye my fabric for me (she took me to the place in Tamansari she regularly buys batik 'paintings' from). Here, they did a slightly different dyeing process. 

     First, the fabric was stretched and pinned onto a bamboo frame, then soaked with water. Pak Widoto (the person doing the dyeing) used a towel to wipe off the excess water, then started applying the dye. 

     

     He used a sponge to apply the dye, then used his fingers to blend the colors together (I chose to do two different types of blue). I'm not sure if this was the same type of dye as at the first shop, but it's machine washable, which is a plus. There are certain batik fabrics that are hand-wash only (which wouldn't be too big of a deal since I'm already experienced in that particular area :) ).    

                            

     After finishing putting on the dye, Pak Widoto said we have to wait until the fabric completely dries,  soak it again with water, wait for it to dry, then finally boil off the wax. This part I didn't see, but I did get a glimpse of it at the first batik shop. The fabric is put into a big metal pot of boiling water, stirred around with a stick for awhile, then taken out to dry. Fingers crossed my batik turns out well! I really like how the pattern looked with the gold wax and blue dye, but hopefully it looks just as good when the motif is white (after the wax is gone, leaving the plain white fabric). We should be picking up the final product in the next few days. Pak Widoto said it'd be ready by Monday or Tuesday, but my host mother Bu Dwi said, for the Javanese, that means Wednesday or Thursday. 

    To round out my post, as always, I have to add a piece about food. Last Friday I finally met a chance to redeem myself, though it wasn't fish brain this time but goat brain (either goat or sheep, Indonesians call them both by the same name). I went to a street-side food stand that sold sop kaki kambing- goat foot soup- and just about every other odd piece of meat/tissue you can find on a goat, including the brain. My host father and I bought a good mix of everything  and brought it home, where I carefully fished out a piece of brain from broth. It was a modest chunk, white and squiggly, and it turned right to mush in my mouth, like a cracker that's been left in soup for too long. I managed to eat the one piece, but I definitely didn't ask for a second taste. Now, I've eaten intestine with rancid smelling I-don't-want-to-know-what on the inside (and that tasted awful, really) but brain is still something that I'm less than enthusiastic about putting on my spoon. It doesn't even taste bad, but still makes my insides squirm, and that's frustrating. I suppose that's something I just have to accept. Brain isn't my thing. 

    For my little time remaining in Indonesia I have several more events on my culinary agenda, so stay tuned. I'm experiencing a last minute burst of blogging energy- I still have so much more to tell about my experiences here in Yogya before I'm a plain old American again. 

Until next time! Sampai jumpa!