From Cochineal to Indigo

Eating indoors

Eating table at night by the cooking stones

The  ever fascinating Teotitlan del Valle Market

The juice bar

Indoor market in Teotitlan del Valle

My camera is charging now so I can't show you the market and workshop quite

yet, but here is the Heron Art and I saw just before I left. It was near Pt. Cabrillo Drive 

and it was the closest I have ever been to one of these amazing birds.

 He was definitely in "stalking mode" and seemed quite unaware of us.  Beautiful, eh?

I'll post today's pics soon so please return to this post later.

We started the morning with a visit to the market. Always a satisfying venture. I ordered one of those drinks filled with good fruits and who knows what more with the idea that it would be good for my cold. I also bought a couple of stirring sticks and was gifted another by the smiling vendor. Such a happy place, that market. Both inside and outside is bustling with friendly exchange and commerce. 

Yesterday we prepared all our cochineal dye for use today and this morning we continued with that process until we had almost all the cochineal pots heating and filled with yarn. Cochineal is actually a tiny bug which grows on Prickly Pear cactus. It is ground to a fine powder and then added to water to make a powerful extract which give all sorts of beautiful reds depending on the amount and what additives are used. By this afternoon those pots were off the stove and cooling. Some will be the finished samples and some will go on to be over-dyed with Indigo or a yellow. This morning we also ground Indigo, prepared lime and creme of tartar for adding to the acid/alkaline balance. Lots of good, understandable chemistry which really helps to create vibrant and intense colors.

 Eric Chavez is an ace at explaining the importance of each and every stage we go to. He also has the patience to do things for us with extreme care so that we'll learn the most conservative approach to our dye projects, leaving us room to decide for ourselves where we'd like to cut corners and where we shouldn't. It is truly a pleasure to watch him work and transmit all the little secrets of the trade to us. He really cares. His new wife, Elsa, was here today to help with the whole process. It was lovely to see her again. She had been with Eric and his sister Janet when they visited us in Fort Bragg two years ago. She was his girlfriend then and it's fun to see them now as a married couple, ready and willing to help each other out every step of the way.

We ate lunch at the compound where four of us will be taking an all day cooking class on Monday. It began with a healthy shot of Mescal accompanied with a platter of orange wedges and ground chile. One sip is enough for me to begin with. It was served in sweet little decorated half gourds. It didn't take me long to actually get in the mood and before long my little cup was empty and I was quite content to turn down all offers for more.  The food included a fantastic mole with lovely roasted pork and rice. That was preceded by a warm vegetable salad. Dessert was a perfect contrast.— a lovely little bowl containing two scoops of an orange ice with brilliant flavor, decorated by a beautiful plum colored bougainvillea blossom. I bought a handsome shoulder bag from their boutique before we left. So all in all, a fine mid-day break.

We returned to the dye studio courtyard and continued the indigo process, perfecting the ph with careful chemistry combined with Eric's intuitive insights coming to the fore. The bath is resting now overnight and should be in perfect shape to put our skeins into in the morning. After the full colors are done we'll continue with several different combinations of over-dyeing.  So satisfying! Though several people in the class have brought yarns or fabric samples to dye, we will spend most of tomorrow morning beginning to cut and prepare our samples for taking home. I know we'll all walk away tomorrow afternoon a bit wiser and better prepared to repeat what we've learned. I'm not the only north coast member of this class. Jenny Henderson from near Gualala is here also and I'm already asking her to contribute an article to the Pacific Textile Arts Newsletter for our April issue. I think she'll do one for us as well as the weavers' guild and it will give you a good taste of what we've been doing here.

Partly at Jenny's suggestion and that of two others, I accompanied them by way of two little three wheeler taxis down the hill to Casa Cruz, the home and work place of Fidel Cruz Lazo and Maria Luisa Mendoza Ruiz. Lovely, skillful and good natured people with a show room filled with treasures. For those of you who remember the vibrant runner in my front hall, Fidel is the weaver from whom I bought that rug two years ago. Several of us bought pieces from them after serious consideration and, though I hesitated to begin with, I'm thrilled to have bought a small, stunning, rather classic piece, woven at thirty ends to the inch and made with an entirely cashmere weft. Fidel is amazing and is now working on two brilliant and quite unbelievable silk weavings. One is fairly small and one is large. At least one is warped at fifty (50) ends to the inch. I believe both of them are. None of us can believe he can see what he's doing but each of these weavings is growing into something truly magnificent. 

We had made arrangements with our little taxis to come back after us but we never saw them again. Fidel and Maria Luisa graciously invited us into and onto their pickup and brought us up the hill to our street. Each of us was thrilled that we had decided on that visit. We were back just in time for another lovely meal at Las Granadas, our home for two more nights. 

My cold continues but shows signs of slight improvement today. Here's hoping for more progress after a good sleep. Mike tells me the cold going around is known for doing a come back. And I'm not at all in favor of that, so ......... good night and sleep well.