Dyeing and Weaving weekend in Chinchero

I headed out to Chinchero Saturday morning to dye a hella lotta yarn with Klara (the CTTC's other volunteer, who is headed for the Caribbean Tuesday). I've been wanting to be able to do some dyeing on my own and she was in need of more colors to take with her, so we asked Nilda really nicely if we could get some dyestuffs and mordants and she was like "of course" and then didn't charge us anything for it because the quantities we wanted didn't even put a dent in the quantities by which they buy the dyestuffs (she said that most of the dried dyestuffs cost about S/. 10 (~$4) a kilo and we only wanted a few ounces of each). So Klara and I each bought a kilo of llama/alpaca mix yarn and broke it into skeins and had something like 18 skeins to dye between us. The dyes we were able to find in the dye shed were: Q'uolle (yellow giving flower), Palo-Palo (Peach giving twiggy vine thing), Chilq'ua (green giving fresh leaf), and Kinsa Q'uchu (teal giving fungus-plant combo dye). We dyed everything and then began mixing (we had about 2 skeins each for each vat-- one to leave that color and one to overdye with something else). We ended up adding a pinch of Cochineal + 1/4c Citric Acid to the Palo-Palo exhaust bath to brighten up the mixed colors.

My dye mix went something like this:

Q'uolle-- 1:1 ratio dyestuff to fiber + 1c Alum. 1 pale yellow & 1 pale yellow top-dyed with Palo-Palo/Cochineal for burnt orange

Palo-Palo-- 1.5:1 ratio dyestuff to fiber + 1c Alum + 1/4c Vinegar. Skein Count: 1 dark peach & 1 dark peach top-dyed with Q'uolle for golden yellow

Kinsa Q'uchu-- 1.5:1 ratio dyestuff to fiber + 1/4c Citric Acid. Skein Count: 1 dark teal & 1 light teal & 1 light teal top-dyed with Palo-Palo/Cochineal for a dark brick red & 1 medium teal top-dyed Q'uolle for a bright green

Chilq'ua: 1:1 ratio dyestuff to fiber + 1c Alum + 1/4c Cupric Sulfate. Both skeins came out a pale moss, which was too pale for what we wanted (NOTE: Chilq'ua needs a 2:1 ratio and not the 1:1 we used over the weekend). So, I over-dyed one kinsa q'uchu and then q'uolle & I over-dyed the other with the palo-palo/cochineal for a bright red.

Our Colors

I love my colors!! They're really different than the colors the weavers get when they do their natural dyes. (The weavers spent the whole weekend recommending we do this or that, to make things more saturated, to make this more orange, ect.) Klara and I didn't want the highly saturated colors they get (we can get those colors during group dyes, or by buying them from the weavers). Klara kept saying that our colors "looked naturally dyed" however this is a phrase I've never understood. I can get all the colors the weavers get with MX dyes, and I can get all the colors Klara and I got with MX dyes, and until someone is told "it's naturally dyed" they don't know the difference. I think it's just a left over sentiment from the 70's and it should just disappear....

And some weaving pics-- this is Klara weaving and demonstrating pick-up weaving designs.

If Chinchero were a person and not a place....

Dear Chinchero,

I know your altitude is higher than that of Cusco, and therefore it wears me out, dehydrates me, and generally stresses out my body. However, this does not give you the right to assist in getting me sick. This is the second time I've caught a cold after spending the weekend inhaling wood fire smoke and running around being active at a high altitude and I don't like it at all. You should think twice next time before being cruel to me.

Thank you,
Katie Vota

The Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu!!!

I spent the weekend following tour guides through ruins! Yay! Okay, so that's a slight exaggeration.... I don't follow very well, so it was more like me and the guide at the front of the group, with me asking the guide questions as we climb mountains, leaving the group in the dust because apparently I climb ruin-covered mountains faster than average people (and guides do it all the time so it would seem they have the endurance for it). Go figure.

I have so many pictures of me on top of mountains....


On Saturday, I woke up bright and early so I could join up with a group that was going on a one day Sacred Valley tour. First stop, Urubamba River Valley, complete with Sacred Urubamba River.

Please not the sacred river to my left.


Then immediately off to Pisac! Pisac, as far as we know, was an agricultural hub, as well as a military station, a central hub on the Inca Trail (able to access both Bolivia/Columbia and Cusco easily from that point), and the largest burial ground in the Inca Civilization (with over 3000 mummies in the cliff faces). It's a city on top of a mountain with terraces up the entire face of the mountain and a sheer drop off behind.





Then to Ollantaytambo, reportedly the crowning jewel of cities in the Inca Empire. It was the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti who conquered the region. The site houses the most amazingly beautiful, perfect Incan stone work I've ever seen.



And to make it even better, the quarry where the granite came from is 8miles away, on the other side of a mountain ridge. The workers brought the stones over on log rollers (similar to the construction of the pyramids of Egypt), except, because they were climbing mountains to do it, archeologists estimate it took 3months to get one stone from the quarry to the site. They also estimate it took 15 people per ton of stone (and the largest stone weights about 90 tons, meaning it took about 1000 people to pull this rock from the quarry to the site).



While it has terraces (indicating an agricultural component, however, this site is believed to be mostly spiritual. This is because it's construction and alignment line up with sunrise sun rays during the summer and winter solstices. Around the main section of ruins is the city of Ollantaytambo, built by Pachacuti (still original for the most part). In the face of the mountain across from the ruins, the Inca carved two faces, to honor their most important god and the soldiers of their empire. This cliff face is also where the storage houses for their crops were built.

Can you find the two faces in this mountain's facade?


From Ollantaytambo, I was on my own. I actually climbed this ruin site twice, because I could and because the rain scared off most of the tourists, so I could go get better pictures! In the evening I caught my train to Aguas Calientes (the hot springs town at the base of the mountain housing Machu Picchu). This place is an awful tourist trap and I was happy to go straight to bed once I got there....

On Sunday, I had to be at the entrance to Machu Picchu at 7am. When I got up there, there was nothing visible but the misty cloud sitting on top of the mountain. As soon as we began our tour, however, the mist began to part in spots, and the ruins began appearing through the mist before being enveloped again a few minutes later. The mountains surrounding the ruins did this as well, peaking out the top of the clouds. It was an absolutely majestic view, and I could definitely understand why coming early was so strongly recommended. In total, I spent 6 hours at Machu Picchu, between our tour, wandering and climbing amongst the buildings, drawing, and a hike out to the Inca Bridge (beautiful but scary looking narrow bridge along side a cliff face on one of the Inca's many traveling routes).











Team Darcy! "Follow me friends, I show you something special."




Inca Bridge


Spent a few hours, sitting in the shade (apparently misty clouds wear off your sunscreen and don't go away until after you realize the sun is burning you through the mist, so at that point I wanted nothing to do with the sun), reading in Aguas Calientes before catching my train back to Cusco. On the train I had the unusual experience of sitting next to a tour guide who spoke 6 languages, and I talked to him about regional textiles and my Fulbright project and archeology for most of the train ride. I was also introduced to the group of Lebanese women he was guiding for the weekend (what a crazy bunch!) who were textile specialists of some sort and were affiliated with the Museum of Art and Craft in LA. Didn't get home until 8:30 that evening.... Yay for long days of adventure!

And now, go HERE for my flickr to see more pics, because I took hundreds and managed to sort it down to 70-ish?

Weaving in Chinchero

Went to Chinchero for the day to work on my weaving. It's super nice to just hang out outside all day.... I think I need to do this once a week, sometime in the middle of the week. That should totally make all the "why am I working on a computer all day?" frustration go away.

Inca Huaca (shrine) walk and the Temple of the Moon

On Saturday, I went with my own personal archeologist (aka my roommate Adrienne) out to the area surrounding the Temple of the Moon to see some of the Inca shrines she’s been identifying, and visit the Temple of the Moon.



An Inca shrine site. The three hollows were used for housing mummies.



Caves were some of the most sacred sites in the Inca empire. This is because of their origin myth-- that 4 brothers and 4 sisters came out of a cave and journied to Cusco. Along the way, three brothers died, and one brother made it with his sisters to found the city.



You can find more pictures at my flickr site: HERE.

Urea-based Indigo Vats

How Midevil... And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A small garbage can full of fermented urine that you dissolve ground, pre-reduced natural indigo into by putting the indigo into a nylon stocking and soaking it in urine, then wringing it out until it’s all dissolved…. It’s kinda like doing laundry by hand? Except extremely smelly and horrific if it splashes. So once it’s dissolved, then you add the yarn and stir and leave it sit for a few weeks. That simple right? Except that the dissolving was supposed to be done for when we got there and it wasn’t, so Indira and I each had a vat of our own to dissolve indigo into—which took us over 2 hours. Over 2 hours standing over a tub of urine, continuously dipping and re-dipping a stocking full of indigo into it. Then, once we got it dissolved, we had to hunt for the yarn (which was also supposed to be there and weighed already). And instead of just weighing and adding it, we had to wait for the weavers to stop arguing over how much yarn each of them got to add to the vats before we could get things finished. And now? 3 weeks to wait. And then we can add more yarn to the vats for an exhaust dye.

Mmmmm Swiss Chard

Swiss Chard grows easily in Peru and it's so easy to get it fresh. Here's one of the recipes I've come up with for using it:

Swiss Chard Tart

Piecrust
• 1c butter, melted
• 1 ½ c white wheat flour
• 1tsp sugar
• 1tsp salt
• 1tbsp water, if needed

Filling
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 10oz fresh swiss chard
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• ¼ tsp red chili pepper
• 1 cup low-fat cheese (feta, cottage cheese, or some other soft cheese)
• 10 to 12 portabella mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 2tbsp butter
• 1 sweet red onion
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried thyme ¼ cup grated
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/4tsp nutmeg
• 1tsp lemon juice

Pre-heat oven to 350F/220C. Melt butter and mix flour, sugar, and salt in with a fork. Press into your lightly greased pie dish, poke a few hole with your fork, and bake 5min.

Put 2” water into a pot and bring to a boil. Clean and roughly chop the swiss chard and add to pot. Cook until limp. Strain and return to pot.

Slice mushrooms thinly. Add butter to a shallow pan and, once melted, add mushrooms. Saute on medium until they’re soft and lightly brown. Turn off heat and add to swiss chard.

Chop onion and garlic, and add to swiss chard. Grate or break cheese into small pieces and add to pot. Add all spices and lemon juice. Stir. Beat egg lightly in a separate bowl and add to swiss chard mixture. Stir again until thoroughly mixed. Add to your pie shell and bake 30-45min, until pie crust edges are lightly brown and cheese is completely melted and browned lightly.

La Selva

After much debate (and thinking I wasn’t going after all the traveling I did last week) I decided to accompany Indira on her trip to the jungle. Now remember, this is the Peruvian jungle, not the rainforest. The Peruvian jungle is at times exactly what you imagine when you hear the word “jungle”—Cliffs with vine covered trees and hanging mosses next to wide rivers, lush dense forests with tropical plants and animals…. However, for the most part, the Peruvian jungle is hot, damp, and dusty. Maybe the dusty part changes once the rainy season comes? I dunno, I’ve only been once, but I’ll say the dust wasn’t pleasant on awful windy mountain roads, and the car ride feels like you’re riding a mechanical bull or a really old roller coaster. When it’s hot so you open the windows and at the end of the day of driving you’re so covered in dust you wipe your face on your shirt and it’s just solid dust—look in the mirror, and that patch of skin you just wiped off is now a shade or two lighter than the rest of you. The dust is just uncomfortable and unpleasant, and combined with the roads it’s exhausting and difficult to take pictures.

Day #1


This is indigo, btw.

We went to la selva for Indigo scouting. The CTTC has a place where they have 2 concrete vats for fermented indigo baths, and a plot of land with indigo plants. There is also an agreement with some local land owners and because of this there are 2 other plots that are grown and tended for the CTTC. We came down specifically to fix the two fermentation vats (I believe they said they leak?) and check on the indigo crop at the two plots for a potential harvest in a few weeks. So, for the sake of Indigo, we drove through Urubamba and Ollantaytambo (I will be going back there asap) at the edge of the Sacred Valley.



Then across the mountains, through a cloud forest where there was definitely snow on the mountains we could see, and then down, down, down into the jungle. Suddenly we had tropical foliage and bad roads!



We stopped, checked on the indigo at our vat site and dropped off our most wonderful repair guy to fix the vats, then were immediately traveling again. This time to Quillabamba, the capital city of the jungle region in Peru, for lunch and supplies. Then off to a smaller city further on to talk to some government officials about the Govt’s plan to change how the funding of crops is managed in the area (which includes phasing out indigo in favor of coffee). Then to the middle of nowhere, where we got out of the car and traipsed into the jungle, past a bunch of crop plots containing mangos and pineapples, to find our indigo plot and see how the indigos are doing (almost ready to harvest Indira informed me).

Indigo Plantation:


Then further on yet to a smaller town to find a hostel for the night. I left the hosue at 5:45am and we didn’t get to the hostel until after 6. Juice (with fresh jungle fruits!) for dinner (did I mention how bad the food in the jungle is**), a short walk around the town square, and a freezing cold shower to wash off the dust. Bedtime around 8pm, trying not to be eaten alive by flying insects.

Day #2



Very similar to the day before, except in reverse order. Drive back out of the jungle on bad roads for hours to find another middle of nowhere field where we have indigo growing. This indigo is also almost ready to harvest (but the guys in charge got scolded because it wasn’t well weeded and it has to be to harvest).



Breakfast at a mercado in some city we drove through (mmm fresh juice and strong coffee and avocados on bread for breakfast). Then back to where our vats to check on our guy, buy more concrete, have a discussion with the guy who tends the indigo at the vat site. While we were there they introduced me to their pet lorikeet because it was sitting in a tree, making all kinds of racket while a group of wild ones flew overhead. Then back out of the jungle, over the mountains, through the cloud forest, down the mountains through Ollantaytambo and Urubamba, and back to Cusco. Got up at 6:30am, got back to Cusco around 5:45pm.



**A note about the food in the jungle. People in the jungle eat lots of fruit, because it’s growing everywhere. Outside of this however, the food is completely unhealthy and usually unappetizing. It’s all fried trout and white rice, chicken baked in a sweet sauce, mashed sweet potatoes with brown sugar and white rice, lamb and beans and gravy and white rice, beef with gravy and white rice. If you’re lucky you get 3 bites of lettuce and a slice of tomato with this and/or a fried potato. Ugh…

Other interesting things I saw:
-A wild parrot flew in front of our car
-A cocoa plantation
-Above ground grave yards full of concrete tombs that are bling'd out like a fiesta



-A crash site where a truck full of papaya rolled itself down the side of a mountain. Didn’t look like anyone was hurt, and there was a line of people passing undamaged papaya back up the mountain to another truck.

Fruit trees identified:
-Mango
-Papaya
-Orange
-Mandarin/tangerine
-Coconut
-“Lemon”
-Avocado
-Passion Fruit
-Orchids
-Coffee (beans are ready to be picked when the skin is red!)

This is coffee, btw....

Occupy Wall Street

To begin, this is NOT a political blog. However, it's hard to get away from US politics, even as far away as Peru. I don't know if anyone reading this is following the Occupy Wall Street Protest in NYC, but it's out there. It's real, it's happening, and it deserves your support if you ever want to see things change in our Government and our country.

occupyeverything.org

We Are the 99%





And it's spreading to cities across the country:

A quick note about Serpost

I would just like to say that my morning was awful and traumatic because the Peruvian Post Office (Serpost) is evil and disorganized (mostly disorganized). I got there at 8:45am and was like "Oh yea I have time to get my box from my mom!" Once they get to you, they have to type the paper work in on the computer while you wait, not when the box gets there, they rifle through your box without letting you see it, and then don't listen to you when you correct the value that was written on the initial packing slip... I was then nearly 20min late for my 9am Spanish lesson. Had to go back after my lesson, then to the bank because apparently there's a tariff on sweaters and chocolate ($20 too, insario) and that took an hour and I almost had to wait another hour because bank credit cards here don't work like they do in the use where you just get charged $2 for using it at the wrong bank and I didn't have exact change. Then back to the post office to wait a while longer to then get my box. By this point you're so frustrated you're almost in tears and you're sitting there wondering if they do this to you because you're not Peruvian (which is a completely valid thought-- example, the train to Machu Piccu being S/. 10 each way for peruvinas and S/.145 round trip for people who don't look peruvinan). And then you finally get your box and all the joy of getting mail has fled hours ago and you never want a package ever again, not even if its filled with chocolate and adorable kittens.

I got to work and they took one look at me and decided I was going to the Jungle tomorrow. Apparently I looked like I need to get out of Cusco for a few days....

Weaving Lesson #4-- Another day in Chinchero

Today I was feeling ambitious. I came in with the idea of learning another design (did I mention the designs are getting harder?) and of starting a much larger weaving. I managed to do all of this, however, it was a really long day. I didn't manage to get a seat on the bus out there, and the sun was HOT, so the initial warping process for the sample of the Pumal Maquin design was made in discomfort (and I missed a spot on the back of my neck, so I'm a tad sun burnt). I spent the morning working on it and only managed 2 repeats.


After lunch, I learned to warp using the two-person large warping frame method!! So exciting!! The first large weaving I'm doing is mostly plain weave, with one 15 thread design in the center. Good for a bag or a scarf or something. It's about 12" wide and at least 2m long. The design I'm using is called Loraypu-- it's a triangular design, and the first one I've learned that uses both asymmetry and uneven pairs in the pick-up. Slightly confusing but whatever. I can't continue working on it until I get myself a bone pick (hopefully Tuesday) and a piece of pipe for the changing of the sheds. All that really means is I have to finish my J'ak'acu jakima first!