Admittedly, the first time I attempted to weave, I struggled badly. I was clumsy and uncoordinated, and the leaves kept falling out of shape from my fingers.
Had I been doing it alone, I would have easily given up. But because I did it with my family and was supported by my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law, and not wanting to “miss out”, I kept at it and eventually improved – slowly but surely.
Unsurprisingly, as I struggled to even complete the first step – creating the skeletal base of the ketupat – my mother-in-law could finish the entire thing, tightened and ready for boiling, in under three minutes.
When she first started learning how to weave the casing of the ketupat, she would only work on the last part – tightening the woven structure of the leaves and ensuring that all the gaps are covered. It was only after she was good at tightening did she start weaving them from scratch.
