Making a huipil from San Mateo del Mar
30 September 2021
We have a small community of backstrap weavers here in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico that get together once a week to weave, share and learn. After the isolation and depletion of our ranks by the pandemic we needed an invigorating project. We selected this type of huipil and invited a young, very accomplished weaver from San Mateo del Mar, Noé Pinzón Palafox, to mentor us.
Noé comes from a family of masterful weavers . He learned to weave in his family starting at age five. His younger sister, Jazmín Azucena Pinzón Palafox, wove the huipil in the picture above. His mother, Francisca Palafox, is credited with reviving the techniques for weaving this huipil. The weaving of this huipil had all but disappeared by the end of the last century. His 8 year old nephew is already winning national prizes for his weaving. That is how one learns to weave here in Oaxaca.
San Mateo del Mar is an Ikoots (sometime called Huave) community in the hot costal lands of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is located on a narrow peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and a lagoon (https://goo.gl/maps/G3mpSZWFBnbYDBxC8). It is all about the sea.
The huipil itself is made of cotton, now a days commercially spun. The cool sheer cloth is nearly a balanced weave sometimes with heavier weft stripes, woven brocade designs and several warp stripes. The brocade designs feature marine and coastal imagery or geometric patterns. A curious feature is a tassel at the end of the center front warp stripe. The huipil is woven in one or three panels, each piece with four selvages. The neck opening is a woven slit.
Here is some background information on these huipils :
- Wefts of Sea and Wind: The Textiles of Francisca Palafox https://oaxacaculture.com/2009/08/francisca-palafox-textile-museum-oaxaca/
- LA TEJEDORA QUE SALVÓ DE LA EXTINCIÓN AL HUIPIL HUAVE. https://fomentoculturalbanamex.org/noticias/la-tejedora-que-salvo-de-la-extincion-al-huipil-huave/
- Huipil de San Mateo del Mar. On page 50 of this pdf is a huipil from San Mateo del Mar made before 1956. Several pictures and a drawing of the loom are included.
Traditionally the huipils are made with natural colored cotton with colored warp stripes and colored brocade. Local natural colored cotton can be either off-white or brown (coyuche). Both were hand spun on a supported spindle. Preparing and spinning the locally grown cotton is very time consuming and has been largely abandoned now. Off-white cotton is now available commercially spun. The color grown cotton must still be hand spun because of its short staple length.
The natural dyes available locally were sea snail purple (caracol purpura), indigo and cochineal. The sea snail is now extinct in this area. A small sanctuary for the sea snail exists farther west on the Oaxacan coast, harvesting the dye is limited to a few authorized individuals. Indigo is grown inland nearby in Santiago Niltepec. A few people still cultivate indigo plants, but the production of the dye can be effected by earthquakes which destroy the tanks used for extracting the dye and by drought. Cochineal, a highly prized red insect dye is native to Oaxaca. The insect grows on prickly pear cactus. It is not particularly good dye for cotton, it is hard to get the bright red known on wool, giving instead a pale or purplish color. The cotton must be meticulously prepared and mordanted to have a stable cochineal color on cotton.
Todays huipils have evolved and updated and are woven in all sorts of colors. The huipil is woven in 3 panels a center one and two side panels. The center panel has designs created with supplementary weft, i.e. brocade. The weave structure is nearly a balanced plain weave, the openness of this structure allows space for the supplemental weft. The supplementary weft can be continuous or discontinuous but the design is formed when the brocade weft is placed in the shed. The panels are sewn together in the stripes. If the huipil is narrow enough and the weaver and loom are up to the task, it can be woven in one piece thus eliminating the seams. Each panel is woven with 4 selvages. Four selvage weaving is demanding and time consuming but highly regarded, giving a special spirit to the cloth. The neck opening is woven as a slit. The huipil made from four selvage panels is finished by sewing it together, no cutting involved.
A unique feature of these huipils is the center warp stripe, that is called the umbilical cord. It is woven into the cloth for most of the length of the panel, then it is not. The unwoven ends of these warps hang free looking like a tassel. Weaving this is a bit a a challenge to us but also why we chose this style of huipil and why we have a mentor.
Noé suggested we weave a mini-huipil to learn all the techniques. He brought an example he had previously woven.
This mini-huipil is about 30cm long and 40cm wide. The cloth is sheer enough that you can vaguely see the designs and stripes on the front. He demonstrated making the warp using 16/2 natural cotton and a softly spun merino wool silk yarn in a midnight blue. Then we made our warps, we chose different colors. You will see various warps in this post. Care must be taken with the center colored stripe when lashing on to the loom bars, as it is not woven at the beginning.
Here you can see the loom being set up. The heddles have been made. The far end has been lashed-on to the loom bar and a bit was woven before the loom was turned around. Note that the center colored warps have not been woven but pushed down to right side. The warps must be carefully distributed on the loom bar to weave a sheer cloth.
The distribution of the warps on the second beam must match that of the upper beam before lashing-on. The final distribution of the warps is done with the first wefts. The colored center warps are not woven initially but pushed down to the right side ( the cloth is woven with the wrong side facing the weaver).
The weaving continues for a bit until it is time to incorporate the colored warps in the center. These warps are raised and now woven with the rest of the cloth.
Obviously the warps near the center will have to curve around the newly incorporated warps.
Once the center stripe is incorporated the brocade designs can begin.
At the right height the neck slit is begun and woven using two wefts. Also two more stretcher bars, temples, are added to keep the cloth from pulling in at the slit.
The design may continue along side the slit. The slit in the back is shorter than the front slit.
Weaving continues with two wefts until the end of the slit in the back. The back may or may not have additional brocaded designs. Eventually the center stripe is dropped again. Finally one reaches the tedious weaving of closing the gap, or terminal area, that is part of four-selvage weaving. This requires smaller tools and finally a needle. But finally the entire cloth is woven.
The cloth is removed from the loom, washed and finished. The under arm selvages are butted and sewn by hand. Nothing has been cut.
There are no holes where the center stripe has NOT been woven.
Three of the five participants have completed their mini-huipils so far, different colors, different designs- Noé’s birds (not charted, done free hand), Karren’s dragonflies and diamonds, and Araceli’s triangles and hens. Two more participants are working on theirs.
Now that we know the techniques we can tackle larger huipils.
What do you need to build a house in Oaxaca?
2 September 2019
Short answer: Two men, some buckets with tools, shovels, pickaxes, and scrap wood and construction materials. Of course they must be the right two men.
hammers, machete, hand drill and bucket 
trowels, lines and tubing for leveling and a bucket 
saw, and tools for rebar 
buckets and trowels
The type of construction used here is a reinforced concrete frame work with adobe, brick or cement block infill. The men that do all of this are called albañiles. I don’t know a word in English that conveys the same set of skills. The team that I have here working is a maestro, with 22 years of experience and a team mate. They have obviously worked together for a long time.
They are employed by the architectural firm that did the design and oversees the construction. The firm is two architects, a woman and her husband. She handles more of the design work and he supervises the construction. They handle the logistics, they see that the construction materials arrive before they are needed, that a team of plumbers or electricians arrive as needed. The architectural firm has 3 to 4 buildings under construction all the time. The two albañiles working here arrive at 8 am, by public transportation, and work until 6pm, Monday through Friday and 8am-2pm on Saturday. They arrive here everyday on time. Last Saturday the architect took the maestro to another site to do some finish work. The plumbers and electricians also work in pairs, but are younger and arrive two on a motorcycle, their tools in a backpack. They come when needed, do their work and then leave.
The first order of business was demolition. The master bedroom suite was gutted. All fixtures removed from the bathroom, closets and dividing walls removed, doors and windows moved and the floor removed. The floor was too high so both the wood boards and the slab were remove. Each room of the house had a different floor level.
The renovated house will have all floors the same height. Sledge hammers and chisels are the main tools used for demolition. The only power tool I have seen them use is a small rotary saw to make straight, smooth cuts in the wall, say for a new window or door.
They really dislike this saw because it fills the space with very fine dust that gets in their eyes, nose and lungs. The dust gets in every page of my books too. Used only when a straight clean cut is needed.
The rubble is removed bucketful by bucketful. They make a wooden handle inside the bucket (visible in the 4th picture from the top), held in place with scrap rebar, to grab and then hoist the bucket onto their shoulders. I have seen them smoothing the bottom of the buckets so that the rim doesn’t cut into their shoulders. The rubble is carried out into the corner of the property. The whole space is very crowded when you have a truck load of sand, another of gravel, bags of cement, rebar and bricks. So when the pile of rubble got high they built a ramp from scrap wood to carry the rubble up to the top and keep the footprint small.
They also built the ladders that they needed as well as the saw horses in the photo. They make many of their own tools too.
When they had a truck load of rubble, a dump truck came to take it away. But the dump truck would not fit through the gate because of the wall above the gate. The electricians came and raised the wiring for the automatic door opener. Then the albañiles knocked out the wall above the gate. The dump truck came with a load of sand but could only get in part way , dumped the sand and was empty to take away the rubble. How do you get a huge pile of rubble out of the corner and into the truck bed?
You throw it up shovelful by shovelful.
Interestingly the truck showed up with a driver and two men. The driver watched as the other two men loaded the rubble. The truck left to return with a load of gravel. Since the truck could only back in one place to dump the albañiles moved the pile of sand, with their shovels, to make a space to dump the gravel.
Taking up the floor made it easy to upgrade the plumbing and services. After the plumbers put in the basic plumbing for the bath, the albañiles built forms for all the concrete work. Shower stall with niches in both sides, the sink and countertop. The entire bath is done in polished concrete. They moved doors and window spaces and completed the wall between the bath and large walk-in closets.
All their concrete is mixed on a with shovels. They measure, by the bucketful, the sand and cement the mix that together, then add gravel, water and mix again. The wet concrete is shoveled into buckets and carried to the form, many times up a ladder. I have seen a small cement mixer here at another nearby construction site, but the work on that site is on and off and the work here is advancing much faster. I have not seen truck cement mixer here.
After they finished the floor they tackled the walls. The electricians put in the wiring, the albañiles covered them with cement. Burying the wiring in the walls is an upgrade.
In this photograph one can see one of the most onerous jobs in this suite. The wall were covered with a textured white plaster that the architect said needed to be removed so that the new plaster could adhere properly. There did not seem to be a tool that could scrape it off effectively. They did it mostly with the claws of their hammers but tried many different things. Tedious job that took a long time.
Next job was to plaster all the walls. I have not seen this done in the US. Everything in the US is wallboard now.
plastering the walls 
on scaffolding they made
The non-weight bearing walls for the closets were made by another tradesman. He installed some aluminium frames then wall board. He left the finishing to the resident albañiles.
Next task was to make the foundation for the addition. The addition goes from one perimeter wall (see previous post about perimeter walls) to the other about 3.5m out from the end of the house. Part of the space will become part of a great room and the rest will be a covered terrace. This requires a T-shaped foundation, a straight line parallel to the back of the house and a perpendicular branch to support the wall that divides the room from the terrace. Each perimeter wall has its foundation but the new walls must tie into the existing perimeter walls and their foundation.
All excavation was done by hand using shovels and a pickax. The big puzzle was where to put the dirt. It was piled up against the back of the house making it difficult to use the only door. So they opened a provisional door where the future front door will be.
They dug an L shaped trench, only part of the T, because there was no where to put more dirt that they dug out. once they had it dug out and shaped they poured in a layer of cement, bucketful by bucketful. Then they added a long rebar grid and protruding pillars and poured cement over that.
On top of the poured cement they added cement block. Then more cement with rebar.
Adding cement block 
More poured cement with rebar. Note the right has been filled with dirt. 
raising the wall with bricks 
Brick wall full height 
Poured cement pillar attached to brick
Then on to the other branch of the T. Excavate, pour cement, place rebar grid, cement then cement block. The tricky part is tying into the existing perimeter walls and their foundations. On the side with a neighboring house the wall was only brick thick so they skipped the cement block, replacing it with poured cement.
raising the foundation 
new brick with two pillars
To be continued.
Houses in Oaxaca
27 July 2019
A colonial era building I recently visited because it was the venue for a small crafts fair.
The city of Oaxaca was started by the Spanish is 1528 and still has many buildings of the colonial period even with its many earthquakes. This lovely old architecture makes the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular tourist destination.
All the writings I can find about Spanish Colonial architecture in Oaxaca are about the churches, missions and convents. Masterpieces made by the Spanish crown and Catholic church, paid for by Oaxacan cochineal and built by the local indigenous people who were converted to Christianity. What is interesting to me is what the Spanish colonial homes were like and how they influence the style of homes in Oaxaca today.
One can see some of the grand colonial homes today as many have been converted to museums and mini-malls. Typically these have a small entrance from the street that leads to an open courtyard surrounded by columned portico and behind that rooms. They remind me of the Roman atrium style houses we studied in Latin class. Besides the open central courtyard these houses have few windows and a small secluded entrance, any opening to the street is likely to be covered by a massive door or iron grill (reja). Some of these features continue in current Oaxacan homes.
A historic interior courtyard currently used to park cars. Convergence of Colonial Spanish influences and US car culture.
The climate and geography also influence the architecture. The climate here in the Central Valley of Oaxaca, at 5000 ft in the tropics, is mild year round and no heating or cooling is required. That is the benefit of being in the mountains, the catch is there are few level places to build.
A street next to a market connecting two principal thoroughfares. Obviously not open to motor vehicles.
Many places in Oaxaca are only accessible by foot as I found out while house hunting. Floors often have a random step up or down, a constant falling hazard. My small house, so called one story home, had 4 different floor levels when I bought it.
The windows of this historic building make you wonder what is the level/s of floor inside.
As the historic center of the city has gotten crowded the houses have gone up, two stories or more, on smaller pieces of land. I saw a small house built on 6m x 6m piece of land, not even in the center of town. It had 3 bedrooms, a balcony and everything needed for a family of 4, each room on its own level; not a tiny house but a new dimension on split level homes.
The interior courtyards have either disappeared or been transformed into a smaller open space, but still paved.
The first thing that most Oaxaqueños do when they buy a piece of land is build a wall around the perimeter of the property. A wall with foundation and support columns. This is an sizable expense for most people here. Once the wall is completed you can live on the land; improvise a shelter, outhouse, have a barrel for water, cook in the open and plant corn, beans and squash on the land, ie., live.
Step 1. Build a wall around the perimeter. Sturdy gates to the street.
When more funds are available you can make a proper room in a corner, by just adding two more small walls and a roof. The roof and floor usually extend beyond the room to create a little sheltered area much like the portico.
Step2: Build a room in a corner.
This is what I saw at the humble home of my first weaving teacher. The corner room has a window and door facing the porch which is where a floor loom and yarn were stored. Later a second room was added right next to the first, also with a door and window facing the now extended porch. When the kids graduated from college they build a weaving studio and a bathroom.
Stage 3: Adding a family weaving studio.
The studio has open walls on two sides and a large window like opening to the street, which closes with sturdy wooden shutters. The columns inside the studio support the roof and the backstrap looms. My weaving teacher was accumulating building materials to add two more rooms on top of the two existing ones. Many buildings have rebar sticking out the roof so that additional stories can be added.
Most houses have been built piece meal, including the one I bought. My house has a perimeter wall and two different kinds of roofs, one made with bricks and arched (boveda) and other a concrete slab. The boveda is the older style so I think that that the first part of the house was built, in a corner of course. The main street runs across the top of the house and a side street is to the left, a neighbor shares the wall on the right. The only existing door faces the back open area that was covered in gravel and used for parking, accessed through large metal gates on the side street.
This style of building limits the windows. By ordinance windows are not allowed to face a neighbors property for privacy reasons. Windows can face the street but increase the perceived vulnerability of the house. Or windows can face your own open space, ie., the remnants of the courtyard. Because this house is on a corner and there is open space in back, windows are possible on 3 sides. The previous owner kept a 5 m strip of land at he back of the property and first built a wall of adobe and now has a two story building there. No windows overlooking my place.
The grey adobe wall was built to define the new property line. The metal structure is an apartment over the workshop/garage. No windows overlooking my house.
A bit about my new house, part 1.
17 June 2019
On 7 February I signed and paid for a small one story house at 13 de septiembre, #400, Pasajuegos, Niños Heroes in Oaxaca de Juarez. It is officially 1 block outside the historic center of the the city and next to a cultural and arts center, La Calera. I bought it from the owner of the Calera.
The street, 13 de septiembre, dead ends at the Panamerican highway, up the hill. There is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the highway there. All the traffic is foot traffic. People who live on the other side of the highway cross the bridge and walk down the street to Niños Heroes or Madero to find public transportation. Walking is the way most people get around Oaxaca.
Looking up the street to the Panam highway, the pedestrian bridge and the Cerro del Fortin.
It took 4 months to separate 5 m strip off the back of the property, which he wanted to keep as it oversees the service entrance to the Calera. The gentleman that takes care of the Calera is building an apartment and workshop on this piece of land (5m x10m).
My house has a large master bedroom suite with bath, 2 more bedrooms , 1 more baths, a closet sized kitchen and a hallway. No living or dining rooms.
Second bedroom and bath
Third bedroom, with termite tunnels up the wall due to the wood floor.
Master bath
Hallway
Closet sized kitchen
Backdoor
Exciting backyard
Actually the concept of a backyard do not exists here, this was used for parking.
What you can not see in the in the pictures, this small house has 4 different heights of floors. Common here, the house was probably built piece meal and they just put the floor at an easy height. You took a step up or down everytime you went from one room to another. The Master suite has arched ceilings, a charming old style. But also an indication that it was built first.
I had been working with a architect, who not only designs the modifications and oversees the construction, and we came to the house and made some holes to see what was under the wood floor(a curious thing here) and where the reinforced concrete columns were. He came back with workers and found many scorpions living between the floor boards and the slab.
Large black scorpion near the backdoor.
I was busy getting all the services changed over to my name. He had an uncle die in Veracruz and went off , he was executor of the will, and had to go to court. Then he disappeared. By the beginning of April, 2 months after I bought the house I decided I couldn’t wait any more and I was going to move to my house renovations or no. I gave notice at my apartment that I would be out by 15th of May. I started looking for another architect.
I had no idea how long I was going to live in the house before we renovated it, so I fumigated, had the water system cleaned (there are both underground and rooftop tanks since the water comes from the city once a week. Three months of neglect and the rooftop tank was empty and the solar water heater broke! Anyhow I got things in working order and moved here on the 13th of May.
I bought a fridge and a washing machine (one delivery instead of two). I brought both cats, Lola and Ixtle. Ixtle was terrorized. Life was immediately better for me, ice, a stove that could brown meat and a washing machine.
I talked to 2 architects, and they both presented me plans for the remodel. One’s plans make me cry and the other was exciting. The exciting one is from a couple, both architects, she does the design and office work and he oversees the construction. They were wanting to start work on the 20th of May, I had them wait until the 27th.
Exterior design
The plan
We took the 3rd bedroom and combined it with the kitchen and added a new space to make an open concept great room. In addition there is a large covered terrace and folding doors so that it can all open into one large space. The style is minimalist, modern and industrial. No fancy materials, polished concrete floors and the sinks and counters too. There are skilled artisans here who can do that kind of work. The floors have to been torn out to make them all one level, and the architects is taking advantage to put wiring and plumbing in before the floors.
So I am living in the other part of the house while they work on the master bedroom suite. They gutted it the first week, everything out of the bath and bedroom including the floors. Only thing kept were the walls. But the location and size of the windows and doors is all changed. So basically my master bedroom space now is a muddy cave. And the backyard is full of construction materials; rubble, sand , gravel, wood,….
Backyard, aka construction materials.
But there is progress everyday, the master bath, has a new door , window, floor. New electrical and plumbing went in before the floor. They have poured the counter top, sink, shower wall too. The shower wall has two niches, one on each side. They are now starting the finishing layer of cement on the walls.
The sad news is that Ixtle ran away. Too much with all the construction for him. He seems to be running with a group of cats in the Calera. I don’t know where he came from and I don’t know where he has gone. He spent two years with me.
Ixtle
February Earthquake Recovery
17 March 2018
The recent earthquake in February was centered along the northern coast of Oaxaca and Jamiltepec was one of two villages near the epicenter. We had just bought malacates from one of the two remaining makers there and we asked what we could do to help. Don Juan has gathered textiles that they make in Jamiltepec and is bring them to Oaxaca next week. We are organizing a pop-up sale to help them generate funds to rebuild.
FEBRUARY EARTHQUAKE RECOVERY
for
JAMILTEPEC, OAXACA
POP-UP TEXTILE SALE
Wednesday, 21 March
Crespo 213
4PM
Backstrap Woven
Embroidery
Huipiles
Blouses
Aprons
Skirts
Bags
Table linens
Further information
Karren K. Brito
001 937 767 8961
Here are a few of the casual photos of items they will be bringing.
Huipiles
Aprons and skirts
Blouses
Bags
Table Linens
Come and support these people who lost much in and act of nature and are trying to generate funds for their own recovery.
Another hands-on silk tour: Monday, 12 March
19 February 2018
In response to several request we have organized another silk tour. In this tour you get to try your hand at the tasks needed to transform mulberry leaves into silk attire.
Hands-On Tour
Silk in Oaxaca
Karren K. Brito, Pablo González Marsch
Monday, 12 March 2018
9am-6pm
Meet at 9 am at the Oaxaca Lending Library and travel to Teotilan del Valle, a nearby Zapotec village famous for its weavers, to the studio of Arteseda. Rina, Aurora, Miguel and Reynaldo will receive you and show you their studio where they weave and dye silk, cotton and wool and raise their silk worms.
First you climb up to mulberry grove to see how the trees are planted and tended and the leaves collected for the silkworms. Then you will see the space and beds where the silkworms are raised. There are not any silkworms feeding this time of year, there may be some eggs. You will work with the harvested cocoons, both yellow and white. Some cocoons will be perforated because the moths have emerged. Others have been stifled. They need to be sorted, ones for spinning, ones for reeling,and cleaned before degumming by boiling for an hour.
While the cocoons are boiling you will have lunch at a the local traditional restaurant, El Descanso. Pablo will take you to see Santa María, a XVI century baroque style church in the center of Teotilan del Valle. It shelters several altarpieces and some slabs with ancient Zapotec engravings. This catholic church was built atop an ancient platform.
Once the cocoons that have been selected for spinning are boiled, they need to be dried then opened to prepared them for spinning. The prime cocoons are reeled hot and wet once softened by boiling. Once you find the end of the silk thread the larva spun you can simple unravel the cocoon to produce fine silk filament yarn. The dried, degummed cocoons need to be stretched and fluffed before spinning. You will have a chance to try spinning the silk fluff with a supported spindle and/or a spinning wheel.
You will then return to the OLL by 6 pm.
Arteseda does have a shop on the premises en Teotilan del Valle and a booth a the Pochote market on Calle Marcos Perez in Oaxaca de Juarez on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Limit 12 participants
Cost person: MX$900 (includes transportation,materials, lunch and bottled water)
To register contact Pablo González Marsch at marsch@prodigy.net.mx or call
(52 1) 951 134 7391 or WhatsApp.
For tour questions contact Pablo, for technical questions about silk you can leave a comment here and I will get back to you.
A Taste of Backstrap Weaving
15 January 2018
THIS TOUR HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Backstrap weaving in Mesoamerica has pre-hispanic origins and is the oldest, most common and highly reguarded art. Zapotec and Maya goddesses weave. Weaving is considered a way of communicating with the gods.
Yet watching an accomplished backstrap weaver can be as baffling as enlightening. I have two up-coming events that are designed to enlighten you about backstrap weaving.
Victoria Hernandez, an Amuzgo,weaving brocade on her backstrap loom a San Pablo Cultural Center
1. A lecture/demonstration on Backstrap Weaving by me, Karren K. Brito, on this Friday, January 19, 2018, 5pm at the Oaxacan Lending Library. This lecture will be in English.
Arturo Hernandez of Mitla weaving on a backstrap loom.
2. A one day tour, A TASTE OF WEAVING, on Friday, 2 Feburary 2018. Tour leaders:Karren K. Brito and Pablo Gonzalez Marsch (both bilingual).
We will go to Bia Begung weaving and dyeing studio in Mitla. Maestro Arturo Hernandez weaves on a back-strap loom, and has many floor looms for production weaving and an efficient natural dye studio which he will shows us.
Each participant will have their own prepared back-strap looms. Karren and Arturo will be helping teach you how the weaving proceeds. You need to open the sheds in the right sequences and pass the shuttle.
We will take a break from weaving and Pablo will take you on a tour of the Mitla ruins with their designs inspired by weaving and have lunch at a local restaurant. Then we will return to the weaving studio for more weaving before, returning to Oaxaca.
The limit is 5 people. The tour costs 1600 Mexican pesos per person and includes:
- transportation from OLL at 8:30 am and returning to OLL about 6pm, transportation to the ruins and to lunch
- Bia Begung studio visit
- Use of the prepared looms and instruction
- Guided tour of Mitla ruins (pre-hispanic Zapotec)
- Lunch, with non-alcoholic drinks ( alcoholic drinks cost extra)
- Bottled water
For further information contact Karren by leaving a comment here. To sign up contact Pablo at +52 1 (951) 134 7391, by WhatsApp or by calling or an email to marsch@prodigy.net.mx.
Silk lecture and tour
4 December 2017
I have worked with silk since 1989 and was thrilled to find a active silk production here in Oaxaca. If you are curious about silk here in Oaxaca there are two upcoming events that might interest you.
On Friday, 15 December here at the Oaxaca Lending Library I will give a lecture/ demonstration on local silk production and products. Information and registration here.
The following week Pablo González Marsch and I have organized a one day tour to a studio that raises silk and transforms it into textiles. You will be doing the processes involved in transforming cocoons into silk thread.
Hands-On Tour
Silk in Oaxaca
Karren K. Brito, Pablo González Marsch
Monday, 18 December 2017
9am-6pm
Meet at 9 am at the Oaxaca Lending Library and travel to Teotilan del Valle, a nearby Zapotec village famous for its weavers, to the studio of Arteseda. Rina, Aurora, Miguel and Reynaldo will receive you and show you their studio where they weave and dye silk, cotton and wool and raise their silk worms.
First you climb up to mulberry grove to see how the trees are planted and tended and the leaves collected for the silkworms. Then you will see the space and beds where the silkworms are raised. There are not any silkworms feeding this time of year, there may be some eggs. You will work with the harvested cocoons, both yellow and white. Some cocoons will be perforated because the moths have emerged. Others have been stifled. They need to be sorted, ones for spinning, ones for reeling,and cleaned before degumming by boiling for an hour.
While the cocoons are boiling you will have lunch at a the local traditional restaurant, El Descanso. Pablo will take you to see Santa María, a XVI century baroque style church in the center of Teotilan del Valle. It shelters several altarpieces and some slabs with ancient Zapotec engravings. This catholic church was built atop an ancient platform.
Once the cocoons that have been selected for spinning are boiled, they need to be dried then opened to prepared them for spinning. The prime cocoons are reeled hot and wet once softened by boiling. Once you find the end of the silk thread the larva spun you can simple unravel the cocoon to produce fine silk filament yarn. The dried, degummed cocoons need to be stretched and fluffed before spinning. You will have a chance to try spinning the silk fluff with a supported spindle and/or a spinning wheel.
You will then return to the OLL by 6 pm.
Arteseda does have a shop on the premisses en Teotilan del Valle and a booth a the Pochote market on Calle Marcos Perez in Oaxaca de Juarez on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Limit 12 participants
Cost person: MX$900 (includes transportation,materials, lunch and bottled water)
To register contact Pablo González Marsch at marsch@prodigy.net.mx or call
(52 1) 951 134 7391 or WhatsApp.
For tour questions contact Pablo, for technical questions about silk you can leave a comment here and I will get back to you.
How to grind chocolate
29 October 2017
In Oaxaca chocolate is second only to corn in the traditional cuisine. A friend told me that the gods gave corn for daily substance and chocolate for fiestas.
Traditionally one can buys cocoa beans in the market and prepares them to your own taste. (Do you know what cacao beans look like?) First they are toasted over a wood fire on a round ceramic griddle (comel) also used to prepare tortillas, the substance of every meal here.
Here, in the center you can see the place to toast beans. The brush like thing, made from local plants, is used to push the beans around on the hot griddle. How you proceed next depends on what resources you have.
If you are just one woman, you grind your beans on the gridstones, tejates, that you see to the right and left of the griddle in the photo above. You mix in sugar, cinnamon, almonds according to your recipe and taste. Different communities add in different things. The ground chocolate, a moist grainy paste falls into the tray at the bottom. This paste is then mixed with either hot water or milk and frothed to be served as hot chocolate. Grinding on these stones takes experience and strong arms, it looks simple but requires a technique and experience.
Now if you have a few more resources, like and old bicycle and young men, you can grind your toasted beans like this:
Note it takes two young men to do what one housewife can do:
If you have even more resources such as four strong men you can then use an electric mill to grind your chocolate.
These mills are common here in the city, in some markets and stores selling chocolate, that is the ground moist paste used for making hot chocolate. In some markets you can take your own toasted beans and ingredients, and have them grind it for you.
A traditional drink to warm up in chilly moments here in Oaxaca is hot chocolate served with a individual bread, pan y chocolate. The chocolate is served in a bowl, a generous about, with the very important froth on the top. The bread is dunked in the hot chocolate.
Wishing you “pan y chocolate” for all your chilly moments!
Many Ways to Weave
27 March 2017
When I have started people weaving on a backstrap looms, I start them with a narrow warp that doesn’t require any sticks. Once they can do plain weave, warp-faced, I show them how to make a pick-up design with paired floats. Laverne Waddington has a good description of this process on her blog. Mostly we use our fingers and maybe a popsicle stick to beat the weft in place. There is just a shed loop and heddles and the pick up is done either with fingers or a large needle. Here in Oaxaca a large needle is a common tool for pick up.
Here in Oaxaca de Juárez, the capital of Oaxaca state, a group meets weekly to weave. This year every one has been working on narrow warps and either plain weave or paired float designs.
This technique is used here in Oaxaca by the indigenous people who live on the northern coast of Oaxaca. Here I have not seen many narrow bands woven in this technique but wider cloths with multiple design bands are common.
photo by Karen Elwell. I think these are natural dyes.
photo by Karen Elwell
We went to the Museo Textil de Oaxaca on Saturday to register for a backstrap weaving brocade class in April given by a woman coming up from Carranza, Chiapas. Bonfilia Bautista Tapia from Pinotepa de Don Luis, was finishing a workshop on this paired float technique and she and her students were weaving away. Here is a picture of her loom:
It is very interesting that she has a second set of heddles and a second shed rod behind the usual ones used to do plain weave. Both of these extra shedding devices deal only with the red warps in the design band; the shed rod has all of the odd numbered pairs over it and the second set of heddles raises the even numbered pairs. Here is a close up so that you can see the pairs of red warps going over the second shed rod and the sparse green string heddles are around the other pairs of red warps within the design band. One usually uses a second weaving sword when using the second set of heddles/rod, but I don’t see one in the photo maybe because she doing plain weave at this moment.
Here on this student loom you can see the second smaller sword. It is right behind the plain weave string heddles. It looks like it still has the warp pairs he picked up to make the bar design he just wove.
two sets of heddles/shed rods and two swords are visible here
All of these lovely woven critters are made on 25 pairs. Here is some more student work with enough detail that you could make the same designs.
And one more photo of a fragment of an interesting critter woven in this technique, the brown is hand spun brown cotton, coyuche, that has been grown here since pre-hispanic times.
And yes, there are 5 pick floats in the bars between designs.
So there you have another way to weave paired float designs using pattern heddles and shed rod. Might be especially useful when doing multiples of the same design.
entwinements 
