here, there, everywhere

A few (okay, a great many) photos from a four day excursion into the cloud forest two weeks ago, to learn how to use natural dyes with Awamaki's master weaver Daniel Sonquo and his lovely family. 

We left Ollanta at 4 AM and caught a fruit truck in nearby Calca - minus the fruit, fortunately, but plus about twenty people, a box of baby chickens, and some furniture.

Parobamba itself is a small town with amazing views. Our first day there, we went for a hike down to Daniel's family chakra (farmland), collected some dye supplies and met his bees: 

... and hung out with his awesome sons, Acknar (8) and Nilson (12). These guys definitely vied with our host brother Pierro for awesomest kids in Peru. 

... with help from (or at least the company of) Nilson and Acknar, of course... 

Daniel's wife Leonarda still managed to get quite a lot of weaving in as well. Their collaborative works are some of the most beautiful things sold in the Awakami store, and we were able to buy a few things from them directly, which was exciting (actually, I was even able to commission a gorgeous, half-woven piece with the tools still in it - hard to describe but so, so pretty) 

By the time we were done, we had a staggering array of colors in an even more staggering amount of three kilos of yarn per person, which, even for me, is quite a lot of yarn. Fortunately, I was able to find a home for most of it back in Ollantaytambo - the rest is sitting next to me in a flour sack here in our hotel in Cusco, waiting to be taken to the post office, because there is no way I can carry it all with me throughout South America! 

Having been around weavers and their weavings for two months now, I'm probably quite late in posting these photos. Not being even remotely able to weave myself (despite the best efforts of the Quechua woman who 'taught' me to weave a hideously orange bracelet that will not be pictured here nor anywhere else), I am a bit in awe of the ability of so many people here to make the incredibly detailed weavings you saw in the last post out of an indistinguishable pile of string. 

Most weavings here are done using a backstrap loom, which hooks one side around a tree or post (or stick, as is the case below) and the other side around the weaver's waist so that you can sit down and weave wherever you like. Most tourists who try it this position for the first time find it pretty uncomfortable, and not surprisingly, many of the weavers suffer from related back problems. 

The part that's hardest for me to wrap my mind around is the way the entire design is determined by the setup of the loom - which mean the weaver has to decide exactly how everything's going to look before she even starts weaving. The chalina above, by the way, is one of the only times I ever saw any sort of preparatory notes accompanying a project (though how awesome is a checkerboard scarf of llamas?!) 

Our NGO offers weaving lessons in one of the communities they work with - when tourists go up to nearbye Patacancha for a weaving lesson, this bracelet above is the type of thing they end up weaving. I went up fairly early on in our time here, and was pretty glad to gain an appreciation of what goes into weaving early on. 

above: Cipriana, the weaver who got stuck teaching me. Sorry, Cipriana. 

It took me one and a half bracelets to even begin to grasp what Cipriana was trying to show me. In my defense, the lesson is largely non-verbal, with only a few Spanish words thrown in - the weavers speak primarily Quechua, so my first time weaving was also the first chance I had to hear what Quechua actually sounds like, as the weaving teachers chatted amongst themselves and we tried to make sense of the string in our laps (I'm pretty sure I heard Quechua for Hey guys, I got the dumb one!). By the end of the second bracelet we made, I had a faint idea of the procedure, but there's no way I could do it on my own. I'd like to be able to someday. 

(For now, I still prefer watching other people weave, or learn to weave).

One of my favorite aspects of working in close proximity to Andean textiles over the last two months has been getting to spend so much time staring at the iconography, or pallay, that's worked into most designs. Pallay, a Quechua word meaning "to pick up" (in reference to the actual act of weaving), generally take the forms of aspects of daily life - animals, lakes, flowers and celestial figures. 

Maybe it's because I stare at pallay for hours while working in Awamaki's Fair Trade shop, but I really like them: 

Some are easy to identify, like this bird.

Others... not so much. 

This guy's confused too. (Actually, this guy is probably Incan hero Tupac Aymaru?) 

One of the weavers I photographed said that frogs were among her least favorite pallay, but I think they're kind of cute. 

And of course, llamas! So many llamas. 

Like I said, maybe it's because I stare at these for hours on end, but I find pallay to be kind of amazing -  Many of these designs have been around for hundreds of years, and often different regions have their own distinct pallay. Though I can really only identify the most basic and literal pallay myself (I *think* those diamonds in the photo below are lakes, flowers, or possibly stars - but I wouldn't put money on it), I love the way the iconography has transformed the way I look at textiles here, from something that's merely decorative to something that tells a story.