A Month in Ayacucho - Jan 8-Feb 12, 2025
We spend a lot of time in Ayacucho, for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is to get our work done in an uninterrupted stretch, unimpeded by art fairs and the concerns of being in the States. This year I was inspired to keep track of our days. I thought it might help show what our routine looks like, but as it turned out, the trip was not in any way routine . . .
Jan 8th-9th The 27-Hour Trip to Ayacucho
My frequent, generally solo journeys from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Huamanga, the capital of Ayacucho, tend to be long. This time, it was a 27-hour sojourn, leaving Minnesota at noon with layovers in Miami (7 hours) and Lima (5 hours). I actually like those airport respites - time to catch up on reading and computer work, often in comfy airport lounges.
Wilber loves the lounges too :)
January 8th Landing in Miami
January 9th Ayacucho foothills
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Jan 9th - Arrival in Huamanga
I arrive at the Ayacucho airport. Mario meets me outside the gate. We take a collectivo to the moto taxi stop, where we catch a ride up the steep hill to Ccocchapampa, our Huamanga home, just in time for lunch! Right away we start talking weaving - ideas for the upcoming month, colors, how far Wilber is on his new idea, “La Catarata”. In the afternoon he sits at my loom, getting ready to tie on the warp that he has already prepared while I choose colors and clean off the layers of dust that have accumulated. Ultimately though we decide that there is enough warp for one more weaving before adding the new warp. Onward!
The Welcoming Committee
Jan 10th - Preparing Colors - but Wool!
The entire day consists of preparing the colors - for Mario’s special weaving that he calls "La Catarata" (The Waterfall), a completely new design for 2025, and for Gwendi’s weaving,, Pompeii, based on our December Pompeii visit, as well as for some new little 'Woven Tiles' that we will be weaving in between the larger projects. For the Pompeii weaving, inspiration comes from colors and design motifs that we saw on the walls of 'La Villa dei Mistere', where there were still intact frescoes.
Tones of cochineal and walnut, alone and in combination, will be all the color that will enter this weaving.
Mario on the other hand is mixing a slew of his special colors, getting all of the colorfly yarn butterflies ready so he can begin his weaving on Monday.
But wait, isn't the market where he has been finding his wool on Saturday? Oops, change of plans, tomorrow morning we will leave at 2:30 am with his cousin Juan, and make the four+ hour drive up into the mountains to pay a visit to the wool creators and vendors. Everybody knows that here flexibility is key. Also, we get so caught up in doing the work of pulling out, separating, mixing, and bundling yarn that nobody remembers to take pictures of us doing that work. Hopefully next time
Jan 11th - We Head to Carhuaran - because wool!
An impromptu trip up into the mountains to find the special hand spun wool that we use in our weavings:
Juan arrives at the door in his taxi at 2:00 am to get us to the Saturday market at 6:00. Plus side, not too much traffic on the road, although the traffic that we see is very heavily ladened trucks heading to the jungle with many chilly-looking passengers perched on top. We avoid the aftermath of any number of rock slides that threaten to completely obstruct the road, and only need to help push a truck out of the mud once.
Arriving ontime, we meet with all kinds of friendly townspeople who have been spinning and collecting wool for the past two or three months on Mario's behalf. We are offered hot, sweet barley water and the freeze-dried potatoes, called chuño, upon arrival. Most conversation is carried on in Quechua. Julio, Mario's contact of decades arrives, and it turns out that he has not been able to carry the wool down to the market himself - he's probably 75, so we drive and then climb a slippery, muddy mountain path, to Julio’s place, to retrieve his portion of the wool (50 kilos) which we then carry back down to the road, Mario has 30 kilos on his shoulders. Missing - photo of the super precarious path we took up to Julio's and back down.
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Back in the village Mario bargains with some other wool collectors, we are offered goat soup and more chuño, and then we embark on the now five-hour return trip. The food is just a memory by the time we get back to the house, so we eat leftover soup lunch, take a nap, and work on improving our designs. Saturday afternoon into the evening inviolably for soccer in Mario's case. I keep working on my colors in the meantime, thankful that altitude sickness has not been a thing.
Back from football, Mario showers, we snack and head to sleep early, but the nighttime rain storm is so heavy (it's definitely the rainy season), and the sound of the rain on the corrugated metal roof is so extreme that we awaken in the middle of the night. Fortunately we get back to sleep eventually!
Jan 12th - Sunday, the animals have a day of rest
There is an early morning visit by a fellow weaver, Cesar, with hot chocolate and local anise flavored bread (chapla, the Ayacuchan version of pita). Mario is cleaning up his loom and workshop space, bundling up all the extra yarn from previous projects. He winds a skein of pure white to incorporate into the special weaving that he will begin weaving tomorrow. Then there's Sunday cleaning, washing the freshly prepared skein, and everyone does some drawing and design work.
Gwendi finally sits at the loom and gets the first border color woven in - cochineal of course.
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In these pics, the virtuous Ton is relaxing in the shade, on comfy walnut dyed wool, which is hanging out to dry after Mario's hard work dyeing last week. Fortunately, Mario is nowhere in sight or loud yelling might ensue - white fur, dark brown wool!! Meanwhile, Gaton (male) is hanging with his best friend Negra (female) in our favorite friends pose ever.
Later, the pretty afternoon lures us out for a walk on the newly redone "Alameda".
Jan 13th - Yarn, Weaving, Repeat
The first real day of weaving! Mario is closing in on his color choices for his new special design. 50 different colors? 100? I can't even guess. All he has told me so far is that it will be a waterfall surrounded by animals and birds. He made a few bird sketches, but mostly his design work is in his head and is dictated by color choices. He has dyed some gorgeous greens, using molle (native Pepper Tree), along with four varied skeins of walnut, which will be the foundations of all trees, plants, leaves. Mario's colors are often combined, "chispeado", which means he is splitting apart the three strands in the single color skeins and recombining them, then making the yarn butterflies that we use - we call them yittuas (Quechua). Twice as much work, more than twice as pretty.
Today I added a single new color – black! My designs tend to be drawn out in a dotted graph paper journal. When it’s a new design I often change my mind – twice so far – or realize that proportions aren’t quite what I want.
The atmosphere is relaxed here. Our Ayacuchan studio is essentially outdoors, so there are sounds of birds, the neighborhood, the people we live with. When the sun began to set, from the loom I viewed some incredible, rosy clouds. Also, the sun is setting here at close to 6:30 – a far cry from a Minnesota winter – and the temperature is in the 70’s during the day.
Jan 14th - Getting into the Weaving
Today we are both in the thick of weaving the borders of our weavings - essentially, the frames - and being challenged – me, by a new technique that ultimately didn’t work out the way I thought it would – I tore out a section three times.
For Mario, it is working on a new design and figuring out how it will all fit onto his loom. We are each seeing some progress.
Jan 15th - Progress
Weaving weaving weaving. Progress is being made.
Mario passes the bottom border to his design, and now is beginning with grass and rocks - although he is still frequently leaving his loom to combine more colors, with two or even three colored yarns.
We shoot a video - when somebody figures how to edit, we will post it here!​
Jan 16th - Sunrise Sunset
Here in Huamanga we leap up with the sun – at 5:30! So different from up north this time of year – and we keep working until the sun gets ready to go down, around 6:30. That being said, almuerzo (lunch) needs to cooked which requires a visit to the local market(s) for fresh ingredients, and often there is resting period after eating almuerzo, the main meal of the day.
The Huamanga weather has been beautiful, sunny and in the 70’s during the day all this week, not rainy.
Mario has made so much progress. He has animals and plants growing like mad!
Jan 17th - A bad dream leads to good things
This morning Mario wakes up with a heavy feeling from a terrible dream in the night,but he pusheds through and achieves an incredible 10 cm on his new design, really a crazy advance, given that it is a new design that needs to be sorted out every few rows. And Gwendi arrives at the center of her new design – always an exciting, landmark moment!
In the afternoon Mario walks to the center of town to retrieve some wool that will be used for upcoming dyeing – 20 Kg sent to Huamanga by a longtime friend. The heavy mood is lifted.
Jan 18th - The return trip
A quiet, productive day. Making the return trip on the weaving is a faster process – all of the decisions have essentially been made so it’s a question of following the pattern set by the first half of the weaving and remembering what was done, hopefully and helpfully noted in a diagram on the way there. This leaves a lot more time for contemplation.This does allow for a single-minded focus on weaving, and opens a window to the best, most creative work - pretty much a weaving workshop. Does that also allow for some dark moments? Maybe.
There isn’t a lot to do in Huamanga in some sense, once you get beyond the basics: weaving and cooking! Today, because it was Saturday, we had a traditional Ayacuchan Saturday meal of fried trout with little native potatoes, rice,corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, canchita and the special tomato, onion and lime salad that makes it all taste wonderful.
We also wash clothes in the morning – a multiple barrel process. Not much in the way of modern conveniences, here in Ccocchapampa, more like camping in many ways.
This morning Mario is called to visit a very sick relative, goes to the market in town to get all of the ingredients for the very delicious lunch on the way back from the hospital, and rests. On Saturday afternoon he almost always heads out to play soccer. So not much weaving this weekend. Mario imagines that he will go crazy at his loom on Monday.
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Jan 19th - Sundays
The Sunday routine here is different. When it's a heavy duty weaving week Mario often gets up early on Sunday morning to dye the colors that he will need during the week. After dyeing is done there is something of a “day of rest” flavor to the day. Today, instead of dyeing, we are “amontanando” which I generally translate as plying. We are combining three strands of wool together to make 1.5 kg skeins, which will need to be skeined and washed in preparation for dyeing.​​​​​​​​​​​​​
During his morning errands and afternoon rest period, I advance my weaving.
In the late afternoon when we finish plying Mario heads over to the big field near us to watch a soccer games, and I take the opportunity to make my own skeins using carefully selected balls of yarn that are already lovely natural sheep shades of gray and tan – very excited!
After soccer is done – all of the yelling dies down – Mario comes back excited to eat tuna. Our company, Woven Tuna, is meaningful inasmuch as cochineal grows on the tuna plant (Spanish for prickly pear cactus), but the word tuna here in Huamanga also means the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. On Mario's land, there is plenty of tuna, both prickly pear cactus, with a fair amount of cochineal – and at this time of year, plenty of tuna to eat as well.
It's the first tuna of the year, in three colors, each with its unique flavor: red, orange and white.
Jan 20th - a typical Monday? Maybe in Ayacucho
Today is a Monday like any other.- well, maybe not. Nonetheless we sit at our looms and productively weave throughout the day (as I try to ignore what is going on back home). It seems that things are going pretty well, Gwendi is making progress and making lunch, until mid-afternoon when boom! - a significant error in calculation, leading to pulling out 12 or 15 rows. Kind of a lot! By the end of the day everything is back on track, position recovered and even a little farther.
Mario meanwhile cruises along, weaving amazing animals, plants and trees.
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Also in the afternoon we have a visitor, a dear friend of Mario’s from his home village of Paccha. Kuchihara (his nickname in Quechua and translates to 'Skin of a pig') was the person we went to Sicily to visit in December. Fun to see him here at home!
Jan 21st - Concentrated effort
Having set a goal of getting lots of weaving done today, we get to work at the loom before 5:30. Early morning is the most productive for weaving it seems.
Watching the skill and economy of movement when Mario weaves is a pleasure, and his color combinations are always beautiful. Every color that Mario is using has been specially dyed by him, but more than that he has mixed several colors together for each color that he uses.​​
In the afternoon I take a little walk and stretch and behold, a gorgeous rainbow. I send a photo to a friend of our stunning view from the piece of land where we live, along with this picture of all the cochineal on the cactus.
Jan 22nd - Finishing and Warping & Tying & Dyeing
I didn’t finish my weaving last night because yesterday was a long day, and figuring out how I had begun things a week ago was more than I could handle. I figured it would take a couple of hours this morning to weave my way out, but it ended up taking more like five hours to complete, calculations in reverse being tricky little guys. Our friend Alex, who teaches weaving, told me it is a puzzle to figure out. I made a mistake taking the weaving off the loom so there was an extra bit of untying from the long iron bar, and then it was done!
That was the last of the weft - it was used up to the very last revolution – so then it was time to warp the loom. On a previous day we had wounds the warp, using rebar spikes stuck into the ground. Now it had to be tied on to the existing threads, which meant tying 336 knots. I hadn’t done a full set before, and that also took two or three hours longer than expected!
In the meantime Mario discovered that he was completely out of the dark tara that he needed to continue his weaving, so an impromptu dyeing session was initiated in the middle of the afternoon.
But it’s the rainy season, so there was a huge rainstorm with hail and the sun shining all the time through it
After getting done with tying it was time to wind the warp, which takes like three or four sets of hands. Fortunately, the aforementioned friend, and his nine-year-old nephew, were around for untangling, separating, and pulling. Mario was busy doing loom repairs throughout. And at last the work day is done!
Jan 23rd - El Maestro at his Loom
It rained a lot last night, and was still raining a little in the morning – which didn’t stop anyone from washing out some skeins of natural wool
Mario tied the new warp onto the loom, after it was rolled yesterday.
Since I finished my weaving I needed to get colors ready for a new weaving
Mario also needed to put some new colors in play for his weaving
After a fair amount of thought and discussion, I started on the new weaving late in the afternoon and kept at it til 9:30!
Jan 24th - Tristeza
Today a long ill, elderly relative passed away, which took Mario away for all sorts of preparations and rituals, all day and all night. This changed our plans completely for the weekend, Mario will be involved with family matters into next week.
Also, there was a birth, a nephew “Gabriel”, to our friend and neighbor Alex.
I wove and worked on reviving a design from 2020.