Dear all,
Yesterday we arrived to Cusco after an extra night in Lima due to a cancelled flight.However we manage to arrive in time to our meeting at the El Centro de Textiles Tradicionales de Cuzco were we met Nilda Callanaupa director of the centre. The centre consisted of a small but very informative ethnographic museum showing everything from the different types of raw-materials,wool: sheep alpaca cotton etc, tools such as looms and spindles and various weaving techniques. Furthermore there were costumes from different regions showing the use of various patterns. Furthermore, they demonstrated the use of costume in different stages in life, newborn, weeding and death.Finally besides costumes there were other types of textiles bags, sacks etc.
Today we visited the Handicraft Centre were women are working, producing many of the textiles. There is also a school were young girls learn to spin and weave. We were very well welcomed and many women demonstrated all techniques in detail from raw-material to finished product. They started with spinning and plying. The yarn is in general very hard spun, the wool is washed but not combed. After the yarn dyed with colours from different plants and the plyed. Two women also demonstrated the warping to a backstrap loom and a very young girl made a warp to band and further two women were weaving different patterns on their looms. They also demonstrated band weaving and knitting and further more plant dyeing. Everything was done very professional and all textiles were of highest quality. This is really the place to go one should go to if one wants to train Peruvian spinning and weaving.
We ended the day visiting two Inca sites Pisca and Ollantaytambo.
Eva Andersson Strand