Before traveling into Peru we had a brief interlude in Bolivia. I was in fabric-colour-wool-alpaca-pattern-craft heaven.
I wanted to take the whole of La Paz with me. OK, maybe not the crazy streets, traffic and fumes.
Everywhere you looked there were indigenous ladies knitting or crocheting on the street, all without patterns, making the most complicated stuff. But my first experience of weaving was on the island of Taquile in the Peruvian side of Titicaca, the highest lake at altitude about 3900 meters above sea level. The indigenous people of Taquile are some of the finest knitters and weavers that I have ever come across. What surprised me was that the men knitted and the women weaved. But it’s not so surprising when you think that sailors originally knitted to pass the time back in the 18th century in Europe. Perhaps if there is something we should be more surprised with is that knitting nowadays is seen as gendered in the West. But even that has slowly started to change.
Both men and women learn from a very young age to knit and weave and the hats and belts they wear all symbolize their status in the community, so you know who is married, who is single and who’s an elder. The main square centre sells the crafts of the whole Island; each item has a tag to indicate which family made it so that the money can go directly to the maker once sold. The male elders of the community sell the crafts and they all sit around knitting with the wool in pockets and around their necks, needles clicking away.
I was left wondering if this was all a show for the tourists, but however much they survive by earning extra money from their craftwork, the quality and intricacies of the work cannot be argued over. I learned this the best way by trying to weave a bit myself. And I just can’t get over that fact that the pattern is in their heads, that they don’t look at anything but their own work as they are making it. And yes, that is an animal horn in my hand, used to keep the tension right as you go. You've got to use what you have, right?
I’m posting after the event, which is probably a sin when it comes to blogging etiquette, but we (the one in the woolly hat) and myself travelled around South America without any electronic devices and with the bare essentials, meaning one medium sized backpack each. We had to rely on slow Internet connections so I became very happy being away from computers, hence why I’m doing this now.
We travelled in Patagonia from the end of January to the first two weeks of February. The place blew my mind. It was a hikers dream. But before getting swept away (almost quite literally) by it all we had to stock up on provisions and make sure that we were going to be warm enough. The wind even in the summer months is extreme. It would cut through you or almost knock you over, and the sound... Luckily there was wool everywhere to insulate against the cold air.
There is long history of sheep trade dating from the late 1800’s in Punta Arenas. It’s not as prosperous as it used to be thanks to the Panama Canal. But we still passed rolling fields full of sheep, and catching a glimpse of the gauchos herd up hundreds of the beasts made it all the more real.
The hardest part about travelling light was not being able to buy small things like Patagonia wool, and to knit and crochet along the way, because I didn’t have anywhere to put it! So the closest I could get was seeing the ladies in the town square market making hats, scarves and all other woolly things. One of their hats coming in very handy over the next few months…
