Posted on by MacKenzies

My First Large Purchase!!

As a knitter and a “want to be weaver”, I have been dying (no pun intended) to visit a traditional weaving studio here in Mexico.

Today, we visited the home of Josefina Mendez Lopez in Teotitlan del Valle, southeast of Oaxaca. She and her family are indigenous Zapotecs and have been weaving for generations.

We arrived early so we were treated to a private demonstration of the entire weaving process by Josefina and her mother including shearing, carding, spinning, dying, and weaving.

Josefina’s mother demonstrated carding. I wonder how many pounds of wool she has carded over the years.
And traditional spinning.
Josefina marking the next part of the pattern from her hand drawn plastic sheet template.
And weaving a traditional Zapotec pattern on another loom.

We were fascinated with the natural dying process that used all local materials to make the colors of the rainbow. The most interesting was the use of the Cochineal bug found on the prickly pear to make red and when mixed with other ingredients orange, pink, etc.

The white is the Cochineal bugs on this piece of prickly pear.
The little white pile is the Cochineal bugs. The red is the powder used as dye when they are ground. The pink, purple and orange next to the grinder are achieved by adding things like lime or baking soda to the red.
All of the natural items used to create a rainbow of dyes.

At the end of the demonstration, we had the very hard choice of selecting one weaving to purchase. It was an incredibly hard decision…I would love to have purchased a few, but the Wee Rover, our pequeña casa, keeps us from over buying.

This is a small collection of the many to choose from. We chose a tree of life runner (see a small one in the upper left corner). It is beautiful. I can’t wait to hang it on my livingroom wall…no way is it going on the floor!

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