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| Trekking around Montana Ausungate. |
Okay, so you may be wondering why I visited Peru if we are living in SE Asia, well I did'nt! My 16 year old adventurous daughter, Katy went on a 6 week trekking trip to Peru. She took bunches of pictures and picked up a few textiles while there. I thought I would share a few of her pics and a little bit about her trip.
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| Llama in Machu Picchu |
When Katy decided she wanted to go on a trip with Where There Be Dragons she choose Peru for a couple of reasons, mainly she figured if she told us she wanted to increase her Spanish fluency (academic reason) we would be more likely to say yes. The choices in Latin America were Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. What she most wanted to do was trek and Peru had the most trekking of any of the Latin American trips. I remember she specifically said she did not want to go to Guatemala because they mentioned weaving in the description and she already knew about that - ha! I did not tell her at that time that if she went to Peru she would most definitely see a lot of weaving and handwoven things!
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| Boys in traditional dress. |
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| Girls in traditional dress. |
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Katy in traditional dress, in Parque de la Papa.
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One of the neat things about Katy's trip was they had stayed in the homes of local people, over the course of the trip they stayed in 3 different homes in different parts of Peru. This was a great way to really learn about the indigenous people of Peru. On Katy's first home stay in Parque de la Papa her "mother" made her wear traditional clothing the entire time (5 days). Guess what - it was handwoven! When Katy told me this I think even she saw the humor in the situation .
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| Katy learning how to weave on a back strap loom, in Nacionq'uieros. |
The kids were also exposed to back strap weaving and given the opportunity to weave. There were many opportunities to buy handspun, hand-knitted hats (orange with alpaca/ llama) and traditional back strap woven pieces. Katy picked out two very nice pieces to bring home to her loving madre!
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| The orange hat is handspun and handknit, but not colorfast. The hat on the right is more traditional patterning. |
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| Katy in cute orange hat. |
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| An assortment of textiles, the balls are for the dog, a back strap belt (center top) alpaca twill scarf that got lots of wear and a "cell phone case" that Katy wove. |
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Traditional back strap woven textiles in wool.
Katy had a great trip and learned that there is indeed a lot of weaving in Peru!
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| Just in case it sounds like I'm not weaving... here is the yarn for my next towel warp! |
We are traveling to Bangkok this weekend for a volleyball tournament and to Bali at the end of October. Hopefully I'll have some new textile stories to share.
Happy Weaving,
Tracy
