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November 1, 2007

Santa Fe Day 3 & 4

My big event for Vacation Day 3 was driving to Taos to visit La Lana Wools. It's a really amazing yarn shop where all the yarn is designed specifically for the shop. They're all dyed with natural dyes and the colors are amazing.

I got 2 1/2 skeins of Phat Silk Fines in a coral color (dark madder) and 2 skeins of Forever Random Fine in a blue-green colorway.

 

 

On Halloween night, Matt and I drove around Santa Fe madly trying to come up with last-minute costumes. Of course, every costume shop had been picked over - it was a sad sight. We finally ended up at Target, where we raided the accessories aisle (black beret for Matt, huge purse and ridiculous hat for me) and went as a beatnik and a starlet.

Santa Fe Day 4 was supposed to be a tour of the sights and tastes north of Santa Fe. We started out with lunch at Sugar's, a roadside diner near Embudo, NM. It's really, REALLY good - get the Sugar Burger if you're ever in the vicinity. Next, we visited the Sanctuario of Chimayo. This is the "Lourdes of America," and as much as I don't understand it, there seemed to be a lot of people there who genuinely believed that the dirt from the floor of that church would heal them or their relatives.

After that, we drove about 20 minutes towards Nambe Pueblo to hike around Nambe Falls and Lake. Unfortunately, we didn't get the memo that the park had been closed for the season. So... we turned around and heade back towards Chimayo. We had plans to eat dinner at Rancho de Chimayo, but we needed to kill a couple of hours and there's not a whole lot to do in that rural part of the world. There's basically houses, mountains, one restaurant, and a bunch of gift shops selling Indian pottery, jewelry, and rugs. It's really nice stuff, but it's either super expensive or pseudo-Indian crafts made in China. So, normally we don't even bother going in these shops, but we were desperate.

Most of the shops were just what I expected, but then we went into Ortega's Weaving. They only sell weavings (blankets, rugs, vests, coats, belts) made by local weavers. We went into a side room to look at the looms, and discovered one of the artists at work. I didn't catch his name, but he let me take some pictures and quiz him about the rug we was working on. I assumed he was making a pattern that he'd made many times before, but he said he was just making it up as he went.

 He had several spools of different colored wool to create the multi-colored pattern. It actually reminded me a lot of intarsia knitting, with the edges of each color block overlapping just a little to join the different sections together.  The close-up is from another loom - there were about 6 looms in the store that various weavers in the community can use.  Weaving is a major cottage industry in northern New Mexico, and large rugs or wall-hangings sell for around $3,000.  (Luckily, pictures are free!)

Posted by zarah at November 1, 2007 9:31 PM

Comments

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