Saturday, April 5, 2025

Taquile Textiles

 Trades and purchases 

The ever-popular rechargeable headlamps call for trading without delay. Taquile is known for exceptionally skilled knitting and weaving, which we bring back to Colorado and sell on our Etsy site.

Moises needed cash for school supplies for his grandchildren. His work is exceptional and we were happy to buy quite a bit. 

We help pay for the school supplies of over a dozen children, with considerable help in the form of donations from neighbors and friends back in Colorado. Moises is a more distant relative, so we bought with cash rather than free donation. Education is important, and now we find ourselves pitching in on advanced education for young graduates. 

Bernardo has perfected a design for fold-over mittens. Open for fine finger tasks, such as texting, close for warmth.We bought all he had; possibly our biggest single purchase ever. He did trade for a headlamp and 12v LED strip lights. 

Flora and her daughter spin and weave at Edwin’s house and B&B. 

Leocadio shows Sam a “mountain” of textile possibilities in trade for a few headlamps. 

It seems that everyone is warping a new project on the loom. 
Celbia is making a fully hand-spun wool blanket. Kusi helps toss the balls of yarn back and forth to warp the loom. 



The courtyard at Alejandrina’s home is full of looms in action. 

Olivia is weaving estalias, the special cloth used in the coca leaf ceremony, especially at Easter. 

Kusi helps Noemí this time, starting a wide belt for her son, who will be in his 3rd year of high school this year. 

Some trade items: 
Charge controller, for those still using rooftop solar and batteries. 

One kind of flashlight this year is “sensor activated,” on certain settings you can wave your hand over the light to turn lights on and off. 




Arrival on Taquile 2025

 Boat trip went smoothly 3/16/2025

Sometimes this huge lake can have big waves and winds, but we were lucky this time with a calm passage. When tourists are on the boat, we stop at the floating islands of Uros, where the totora reeds not only make up the islands themselves, but are used to build houses and sculptures and boats. 



Condor sculpture made of totora reeds

A piece of a new island in the making, towed by motor

School Opening Ceremonies 

All the schools gathered in Taquile’s main plaza to inaugurate the opening of the school year: kindergarten, primary, and secondary. The mayor and principals and school officers gave speeches. Teachers performed dances! Students received gifts of notebooks and pens. 





Reconnecting and trade goods/gifts

Our suitcases were full, with a foldable portable solar panel,  a weatherproof fishing coat, books and toys.




¡Esperar no es Fácil!
Waiting is Not Easy! 
Elen has this book memorized within two weeks!

Twisty little metal puzzles livened up our evenings. 

My “granddaughter” is nearly 5 years old. Smart, curious, and fun. “Quieres jugar pelote?” usually starts our mornings.

Good 

itious Food

Silvano and Clever regularly go fishing with uncle Alipio, setting nets at night and gathering them in the wee hours of the morning. We eat very well. 

Fresh Ispi, a native fish

In addition to the fish soup, salty, crispy Ispi are like fishy potato chips. Quite yummy. 

Extra Ispi are set on rocks in the sun to dry. 

Also, typically steamed with potatoes and chuño

This dish, caldo con pejerrey (kingfisher) was served with a piquante sauce of chili, the herb huatacay and onion all ground together in a mortar

And, of course, trucha a la plancha


Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Arrival in Peru 2025

28 hours after leaving our home in Colorado, and 4 airplane flights, we arrive at our hotel in Puno, the Hotel los Uros, where we were welcomed by the owners as longtime customers. A group of singers from Bolivia had taken up all the first floor rooms so we were on the third floor for the first night, up steep stairs and noticing the altitude. Happily, for the next three nights we were on the first floor.


Silvano joined us looking for an electrolyte-rich soup to help with the altitude, and of course we had coca leaves. The first day was mostly about resting. Then Friday, we got our new cell phone numbers, changed money, explored a little in Puno, and began to shop. Puno still had decorations up from the carnival celebration and was quite colorful.






That evening we took a dozen or so people out for Pollo à la Brasa, a fine tradition where we treat the family to a special dinner.



Saturday is the big Market day in Puno and we shopped for special items that are nutritional treats for our family, like olive oil and Maca. The 2024 crop of olives in Peru was damaged by hard rains during the flowering of the trees. So the olive oil price was quite high, but the vendor told us that the new crop would be available in April with reduced price! 



Because the restaurants are always really busy on market day we had asked Fredy and Rita to have a simple supper at their place in Puno. As it turned out, several families were in town and we all got together in a big happy reunion. Rita made Caldo de Pollo, a rich chicken noodle soup. 


I don’t show pictures of the whole group, because I didn’t get permission from the 4 beautiful teenage girls to publish their pictures. You just have to imagine. 

Saturday, October 26, 2024

What's going on

Colorful scene from Ivan’s wedding 

 MORE TO COME

These days, we've stayed in touch regularly with our family in Peru. Hooray for the internet!

Their economy has not really recovered from the political upheavals in Peru that followed economic disaster of the pand*mic (I don't know if these things are searched and bothered, hence the *asterisk). Tourism is currently very low in this place that has invested a lot of the community's energy into developing that tourist industry. Therefore, Sam and I have continued sending money (sometimes with help from other godparents) to help out over a dozen families, at least enough to avert hunger keep many/most of them on Taquile island. Living in the big city for awhile to earn money is not a bad thing, but is not for everyone. We are so blessed for the integrity and willingness of our son-by-ceremony who acts in our name when we are not there. 

Next post will have stories: Ivan, our oldest grandson's matrimonial ceremony--and Fredy's! Kids growing up! Dancing videos from holidays. These will be news and pictures sent to us by Silvano, Olivia, Delfin, Asunta. So please consider following this otherwise rather neglected blog.


Right now our textile sales page is seeing an uptick in sales activity. We brought suitcases full of beautiful textiles when we returned last January, and it appears we will not be joining holiday fairs this year (?). So check out our Etsy site to see what is most available: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaquileFriends

Pictures coming!





Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Native Wool Blankets

 Fortunata is making blankets from the wool of her own sheep. She starts by caring for the sheep, shearing the sheep, cleaning and the spinning the wool. 


Next she dyes a few colors and weaves the blanket. Her loom is staked to the ground; each thread is pounded into place with a polished llama bone. Here her granddaughter looks on:


Spun yarn is ready to weave.


Fortunata has been busy.

H

We were only able to purchase one blanket to fit in our bags to travel back to Colorado—and it sold right away! 

Congratulations to the new owner! 

You can be sure we will buy more blankets in future years. 

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Native Clay

Pottery making on Taquile 

In 2020, while we were “stuck” on Taquile during the p*ndemic, I got ahold of both white and red clay and made a few little pots. Fuel is not abundant, so they were never fired—that is, until now. 

Final results were tea and maté offerings for the dining table.

THE PROCESS

Of course, one of the first uses was clay-play with the kids:


Next, I made a fairly ambitious planter with rich texture.  I used a technique with corn cobs to raise the walls, which I had learned years ago from Guatemalan potters in Totonicapán. 

The clay had some small rocks and plant material and took some cleaning.

Some of the process:


I thought it was quite beautiful:

Sadly, it cracked in the drying. Nevertheless, the dry clay was then better cleaned (ridding it of small rocks) for further work on smaller pieces.



I also found some white clay and decided to make simple little boxes for serving a selection of tea bags, pleasant for both for the family and for tourist guests at our homestay dining room. This photo shows it in the raw, unfired state, the texture inspired by Incan rock work:

And the same piece fired:


FIRING 

Our fuel came from grass weeds. Normally these weeds are burned immediately in the field, but I collected a substantial amount and spread it out, turning it frequently, and doing all, I could to knock the soil from the roots.

Silvano helped me bang soil from the dry grass roots, but they were still fairly rich with dirt. We didn’t want to use good firewood, that would normally be used for cooking.

Silvano and I try to get rid of some of the soil clinging to the roots, a dusty job. Note the pile of prepared fuel. 

A smoky fire
We used paper trash as fire starter.

Sam played with the fire to get air to the fuel.
Eucalyptus leaves made some exciting flames.

So did a few dry branches.

After a night of rain, our ash pile was a mud pile and our little boxes were Carbon blackened.

RESULTS




I missed firing this little piece, safely tucked away on the top shelf with the other pottery. The white clay represents the sacred three-leaf coca k’intu. 

SUMMARY 

First, I regret that I forgot to take pictures of the unfired pieces before they went into the combustibles.

The fuel was extremely heavy, mainly because of the soil that was mixed with it. In a future attempt I will pull the pottery to the top of the pile right at the end before putting on the hot flash of the eucalyptus leaves. I think that hot fire could have burned away some of the carbon and given some color variability to the white or red clay.

The clay IS fired. Besides sitting in the rain overnight and remaining intact, I put them on top of the propane burner until a spot turned red with the heat. I was trying to burn off some of the carbon to be able to see the clay color. I got only a very small revelation of that uncarbonated clay. This clay and firing method could certainly be made into cook pots that would work just fine on directly on open flames. I may yet slip them into a wood-burning cook fire and see we can burn away some of the carbon. If I do, I will amend this post and show the final product.

GRATITUDE 

Finally, I’m blown away that this indigenous household was able to safely store raw clay pottery for 3 1/2 years until I was able to come back and fire it. I’m grateful for their kindness and support and for the love that we share.