- Giving a blessing before the meal
- Familiarity with an industrial sewing machine can take time - foot and hand coordination is required to add stitches and maneuver the cloth successfully.
- Dye for monks' robes often comes from natural sources - in Thailand, monks use the heartwood of the local jackfruit tree. Dhammavaro collected bark from the native madrone tree and dyed his robes at the monks' utility building, pictured here.
- Dye drips from Dhammavavro's arm as he hangs his jiworn from a clothesline outside the monks' utility building.
- Dressed in his triple robe set, Dhammavaro, center, receives his monk ordination from Luang Por Pasanno in the presence of the Abhayagiri monastic community on May 17, 2020.
- Doubly-thick, the sanghati requires one to sew four layers at once in a garment sized approximately 300 x 200 centimeters.
- Dhammavavro stirs madrone bark in the steeping pot as Ajahn Ñaniko looks on.
- Dhammavavro separates madrone bark from the initial, weak dye solution before moving it to the reduction bath.
- Dhammavavro pulls his jiworn from the final dye solution, where it soaked for two hours. The number and duration of baths determine color density and uniformity in a robe - often cloth must be saturated in dye many times for a rich and even color.
- Dhammavavro applies mordant to a robe alongside Ajahn Ñaniko, the abbot of Abhayagiri, who dyed a robe at the same time. It's common for a novice to have dedicated help through this process from a more senior monk.
- Dhammavaro wears heavy gloves to manipulate cloth soaking in the boiling reduction bath, which helps to saturate the garment with dye. Beginning with two 40-gallon barrels of madrone bark, the resulting dye would fill only a single, 10-gallon pot.
- Dhammavaro pours bark from the madrone tree into a pot of boiling water, where it will "steep" and color the liquid just like tea leaves brewing in a tea cup.
- Decorations in the new library
- Collecting food at the meal
- Collecting food at the meal