Free art in Santa Fe.

I'm writing this on Friday because this weekend is the Spring Festival at El Rancho de las Golondrinas and I'll be volunteering in the dye shed all day Sunday. Here's hoping I don't have to amend this post with comments about some crazy thing or other out of Washington.

***

I feel fortunate that my last couple of jobs have been in virtual art galleries -- and by "virtual", I don't mean iPads or something, I mean actual art on the walls. At the New Mexico State Capitol, aka the Roundhouse, where I work now, the art is open to the public, plus there are a couple of spots that feature rotating exhibitions. And it's all free, which you can't say about the other museums in town (ahem).

When you first come in the east side visitor's entrance (which is all torn up right now due to construction, but if you go around the fencing, you can get in through the ADA-accessible door on the left), if you go straight ahead, you'll see a cool textile exhibit by local artists. 

This first piece fascinates me; it's called Patches of Blue, and it's by Michelle Jackson. She must have stitched the squares together on tear-away interfacing. Presumably someone could wear the jacket. I mean, it wouldn't fit me, but someone could wear it. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Then there's this piece. It's called Frisky, and it's by Stephanie Lerma. I saw them bringing it in when the exhibit first opened; it's at least four feet wide by four feet tall, and I thought then that it wouldn't be out of place at Meow Wolf across town. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

That's just a taste -- there are a bunch more cool pieces. This exhibit will be up through December.

If you go back to the entrance and take the elevator up to the fourth floor, you'll be at the governor's office. There's a little rotating gallery behind the reception desk. A couple of years ago, I posted about an exhibit there of sci-fi-related stuff from the New Mexico Museum of Space History. The current exhibit features pieces from the collection of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, some of which have never been on display. I love this one: it's by Frank Buffalo Hyde (Onondaga/Nez Perce), and it's called Buffalo Fields Forever: To Infinity and Beyond. It just strikes me as quintessentially New Mexico.

Lynne Cantwell 2026

One more: This bronze statue is by Estella Loretto (Jemez Pueblo), and it's called Morning Prayer. (She's the same artist who created Earth Mother, the statue outside the Roundhouse that I use for my Facebook avatar when the legislature is in session.)

Lynne Cantwell 2026

This exhibit moves out sometime mid to late next month, so if you're interested, you'd best get a move on. But even if you miss it, you can tour all the art hanging on the walls in the public areas. And did I mention it's free?

***

My summer reading challenge is moving right along. I'll have an update on that next weekend.

***

These moments of artistic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay cool!

Historically witchy New Mexico.

Samhain, the Pagan New Year (for some Pagans, at least) -- aka Halloween -- is coming up at the end of this week. And like clockwork, intrepid local journalists around the country will interview some witch or another. It's all pretty harmless these days -- or it should be, unless somebody takes it upon themselves to declare witches brides of the Devil and try to have them executed, or at least shamed out of the community.

It has happened in the past, as you know if you've ever heard of the Inquisition in Europe, or the Salem witch trials here in the US. And New Mexico had a brush with the Inquisition in the 1760s. It happened in Abiquiú, a village better known now as the site of one of painter Georgia O'Keeffe's homes.

 A peaceful fall picture in Santa Fe.
Heatherms27 | Deposit Photos

And it started with a Franciscan priest named Fray Juan José Toledo, who came to Abiquiú from Mexico City with a manual of ways to spot witchcraft and sorcery -- brujería y hechizería -- and root them out, as missionaries were wont to do, to save the natives from their savagery and bring them to Christ.

I've just begun looking into this; I had a brainstorm yesterday while at Spirit Halloween to offer to portray a bruja during next year's Spirits of New Mexico event at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. The offer's been accepted, so I have a year to study up. But here's what I know so far. 

I talked about Abiquiú here on the blog a couple of weeks back -- about how it was created as a land grant to several families of genízaros. You may recall that genízaros were Native Americans of various tribes who were enslaved by Spanish settlers and eventually set free, after they'd been Hispanized and had lost most of their own tribal traditions. Genízaro communities acted as a buffer between communities of settlers and Native Americans looking to attack them. But the genízaros themselves were different -- and feared by some settlers because of those differences.

Enter Fray Toledo. He accused the local men running the town of being sorcerors (in Spanish, hechicero or brujo) and some of the women of being brujas and causing a horrible illness. The illness was real enough -- it caused a fever and a powerful thirst, blackened teeth, and, in some cases, death. There was also a rumor that the stomachs of some of the dead burst open and insects crawled out.

Fray Toledo made enough noise about it that eventually the territorial governor, Tomas Vélez Cachupin, arrested a group of the accused Abiquiú witches and sent to the office of the Inquisition in Mexico City to see what should be done.

By this point in time, the Catholic Church was winding down the Inquisition, and eventually accused Fray Toledo himself of stirring the pot, saying he should stop with the accusations, learn the natives' languages, and work harder on converting them to Catholicism.

So nobody was burned at the stake here in New Mexico. However, some of those suspected of witchcraft were sentenced to servitude in local Hispanic families. Imagine being a member one of these fine, upstanding Catholic families and being forced to take in someone suspected of being a witch! Not a prescription for sleeping soundly at night.

***

As I said, I've just begun researching this. I'll let you know how it goes. For this post, I've relied heavily on this article written by Rob Martinez, the state historian of New Mexico.

***

This weekend was the 2025 Spirits event at the ranch, our last of the season. It was, as always, a lot of fun. The ranch buildings are especially spooky at night, with the kiva fireplaces lit and candles everywhere. (These days we use LED candles, but the fires are the real thing. I was stationed in the Cuarto de la Familia -- the ranch owner's family's quarters -- and as the night got chillier, a whole lot of guests were happy to just come in and sit by the fire, warm up, and maybe dream a little.

***

These moments of historically witchy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy Halloween! Blessed Samhain!

I was dyeing today.

As in dyeing yarn. Don't get any weird ideas.

This weekend was the annual Harvest Festival at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, and I volunteered today at the dye shed. It's only the third or fourth time I've worked out there, and every time I do it, I don't know why I don't do it more often because it's a ton of fun.

Anyway, here are some photos from the day.

Lynne Cantwell | October 2025

My usual volunteer spot is in the weaving rooms, which are pretty close to the entrance. The dye shed is requires a longer walk. 

Lynne Cantwell | October 2025

But it's a pretty walk, so it's hard to complain.

Lynne Cantwell | October 2025

The shed is a sort of lean-to constructed mostly of wood with a stone hearth on one side. I took this photo from inside the dye shed. We had five pots of all-natural dyes going today, the first four in enameled or stainless steel pots: 

• cochineal, a tiny bug that grows on prickly pear cacti. It takes 70,000 bugs, ground up, to make a pound of dye. It makes a brilliant red color -- but it was pricey and had to be imported from Mexico, so it was used sparingly. Today we added lime juice and got some pretty pinks out of it.
• indigo, made from the fermented leaves of the indigo plant. It makes a deep blue. We learned today that several plants around the world can be used to make indigo dye. Alas, none of them grow locally, so this dye also had to be imported.
• madder root, which does grow locally and gave us a lovely orange today. Depending on the mordant (dye fixer) used, you can also get a decent red; it was used for military uniforms for the troops who weren't officers and couldn't afford cochineal red.
• chamisa, a bush that's blooming right now around here. The flowers make a yellow dye. In fact, most growing things make yellow. You'd think they'd make green, but no -- once the chlorophyll is boiled off, only the yellow remains. We get green typically by dyeing the yarn first with chamisa or something else that makes yellow, then overdyeing it with indigo.
• a second pot of chamisa, this one in the cast iron cauldron on the right side of the photo just above. The iron in the pot interacts with the chamisa; today it gave us a very pretty moss green. So that's another way to get a green dye.

I mentioned overdyeing. That's where you dye the yarn (or fabric) with one color, then dye it again with another color. We made purple yarn today by overdyeing some of our pink with indigo. 

Lynne Cantwell | October 2025

We hang the dyed yarn over the fence to dry. As you can see, the runoff from the yarn dyes the fence, too.

Lynne Cantwell | October 2025

With the fires going all day to keep the dye baths hot, my clothes were redolent of smoke -- which Tigs thoroughly appreciated after I got home. 

***

These moments of colorful blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Slaves in New Spain.

There's a room in the 17th century placita at El Rancho de las Golondrinas called "el cuarto de cautivos" -- the captives' room. It's a small room that contains a fireplace, a couple of wooden bins, and a Navajo loom. It's meant to depict the sort of accommodations that Spanish settlers would have provided for their captives at the ranch in the 1600s.

The room is usually gated -- that is, you can look in, but there's typically no one inside to explain what it's about. Slavery is difficult to discuss. But here's one fact: the captives held by settlers here, in the northernmost outpost of New Spain, were not Black. They were Native American.

How is it that 17th century Spanish settlers held Native Americans in bondage, but in much of the rest of America, slaves were imported from Africa? 

Tinnakom | Deposit Photos

During volunteer training for our upcoming season, we heard a presentation from Jon Ghahate (Laguna Pueblo/Zuni Pueblo), an educator for the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, CO. Ghahate explained that slavery was not unknown in the Americas before the coming of the Europeans; after all, people are people everywhere, with the same urges to be both bad and good to one another. What was different among the Europeans was the Catholic Church. Christianity teaches us to be kind to other people -- with the emphasis on people. If the creature in front of you isn't a person, then no matter how you treat that creature, it won't keep you from getting into heaven. In essence, the church indemnified those who held slaves. And just as the church allowed Christians to see Africans as less than human, it also gave them the same excuse when it came to Native Americans. (Not-so-fun fact: The United States didn't grant citizenship to Native Americans until 1924.)

The year 1492 was a big one in the history of what was to become Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella married and combined their kingdoms into one, Castile and Aragon. Pretty much immediately, they set about kicking the Moors out of Andalucia in southern Spain and taking the land for themselves. And in that same year, they gave their okay to Christopher Columbus to sail west in search of a more direct, and less fraught, trade route to Asia. But Ferdinand and Isabella didn't grant the funds to Columbus outright -- they gave him a loan that he was supposed to pay back with the spoils he gained from his adventuring. (The later conquistadors got the same deal, which explains why they were so hot to find gold here.)

Columbus never made it to continental North America. His ships landed on the island of Hispaniola, which today is split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. People were living there when Columbus arrived, but very little of their DNA survives today, for a very good reason: Columbus and his men basically slaughtered them. We know this because among the Spaniards who traveled to the New World with Columbus was Bartolomé de las Casas, who chronicled the treatment of the Natives at the hands of the explorers. De las Casas petitioned Charles V of Spain to grant the Natives some rights. 

But all this meant that there weren't enough workers for the plantations that were beginning to be set up in the West Indies. So de las Casas got a bright idea: why not bring in Africans?

Eventually he realized what a bad idea that was, in terms of human rights, but by then the damage had been done. And that's how the idea was planted to bring Africans to the New World ... by any means necessary.

By the time the Spanish made their way north to New Mexico, they had "perfected" their system of dealing with the Natives. In 1510, the church approved a document that was to be read to any Indians the conquistadors met, advising them that they were now subjects of the Spanish crown and of the Pope, and they had better behave as set forth herein or they could be forced to behave. Of course, this document, the Requeremiento, was in Spanish, which the Natives had no way of understanding. (The text at the link is in English.) 

One begins to understand why the Pueblo Indians rose up and drove the Spaniards out of New Mexico in 1680. It didn't last -- the Spanish returned in 1692 -- but the Pueblo Revolt remains, as stated on the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center's website, "the only successful Native uprising against colonizers in North America."

In practice, Ghahate told us, the Spaniards didn't so much take slaves as they impressed Natives to work for them. But they required tribute -- food and supplies, as well as a guide to show them where that gold was -- and forced the Natives to convert to Christianity. In that sense, the system of slavery here in the Southwest was different than that practiced by plantation owners in the Deep South. Also here, some slaves were more like indentured servants and could eventually buy their freedom. They and other outcast people -- Jews and poor Spaniards who came to the New World to find their fortune but never did -- were known as genizaros and lived apart, in their own villages. Intermarriage with Mexican settlers was common, though. Eventually the Mexican government declared all citizens equal, including the genizaros and others of mixed race -- but in society, as you might expect, prejudice lingered. Even today, Hispanic folks here will say they're Spanish, even if their DNA tells a different story. 

DNA is causing a lot of trouble everywhere, am I right?

***

On a completely different topic: The Social Security Administration this week that it's making big changes in the way it claws back overpayments from recipients. This comes after news reports indicated that the existing draconian system was impoverishing some people -- even causing them to lose their homes. The two biggest changes: 1) Instead of taking 100% of a recipient's benefit until the overpayment is satisfied, the reduction will now be capped at 10% per month -- and the SSA is instituting a longer time frame for people to pay the overpayment back; and 2) instead of forcing recipients looking for relief to prove why they need it by providing a boatload of financial information, the burden is now going to be on the government to prove why the recipient needs to make reimbursement.

The changes are coming too late to help me -- I finished my penance this month -- but I'm very glad to see that others won't have to go through the same thing I did.

***

One more update, and then I swear I'm done: Surprising absolutely no one, Congress took the latest budget brouhaha down to the wire, approving the final six continuing resolutions yesterday. The approval technically came after the Friday night deadline, but the several-hour delay created no damage (other than to Americans' faith in government working for us and our reputation overseas and all the rest). Immediately after the vote, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GQP-Georgia) moved to remove Speaker Mike Johnson because he, y'know, had to get help from the Democrats to keep the government running through the end of September. It's unclear whether her motion will go anywhere when the House comes back from yet another freaking recess -- but Johnson, apparently having decided that Greene has done her worst, reportedly plans for the House to take up funding for Ukraine when it returns to work after Easter.

That sound you hear is tens of thousands of pairs of eyes owned by rational Americans rolling so far back into their heads that they can see their brains.

***

These moments of indentured blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

The ruana saga.

Lynne Cantwell 2023

Time for a less controversial/uncomfortable post. I can now relate the entirety of the saga of the ruana.

A ruana is similar to a poncho. But while a poncho has a hole for your head, a ruana is basically two long rectangles that are sewn together along the long edges about halfway. You drape the unsewn-together ends over your shoulders and hang the sewn-together part down your back. There are other ways to wear one, I guess, but the point is that their construction is stupid easy: make two long rectangles and sew two long ends together halfway up.

So of course I had to make it complicated. I found a weaving draft in a pattern book for a couple of interesting twill patterns. Never mind the little boxes that look kind of like guitar chords; the crucial point here is that with this threading of a four-shaft loom, you can do either the chevrons or the diamonds. 

From The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon.

I desperately wanted to do the diamond pattern because it looked so cool. The treadling was a lot more complicated -- 16 steps in the repeat instead of four -- but I had plenty of time to get it right. So I found a pattern online that gave me the dimensions for each rectangle (I did not do her double weaving) and warped the loom for the first one. 

This is actually the warping for the second rectangle. I can tell because of the wall color behind the loom. 
Lynne Cantwell 2023

That was Memorial Day weekend. I was in no rush -- I didn't need the ruana 'til mid October for Spirits of New Mexico at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. This annual event is a lot of fun -- it's at night, with the placita rooms lit by candles and fires in the fireplaces, and we volunteers wear ghostly face paint and pretend to be the ghosts of local folks long dead. Last year, I wasn't dressed warmly enough and nearly froze. So I knew I had a hard stop on October 21st to get this done. Five months! Plenty of time!

In June, I spent my free time creating my tote bag for the ranch. I still had plenty of time for the ruana, though -- almost four months!

In the first week of July, my upstairs neighbor's plumbing sprang a leak, and all of the water ran down into my apartment. The worst hit was my office/craft room. The loom itself wasn't damaged, nor was the warp on the loom (phew!), but the mitigation took more than a month, during which time the room was all torn up and the loom was under a plastic tarp. (Part of the mitigation was to repaint both the craft room and my bedroom. I blogged about the new and old wall colors -- you can see them here.)

It was now very late in August, and I had just about two months to go. So I started weaving the diamond pattern -- and I kept getting lost in the treadling, which messed up the design. I asked Mokosh (the Slavic goddess of weaving and spinning, among other things) for advice, and immediately understood that I needed to give up on the diamonds and do the chevrons, or I'd never get the thing done. I resisted for another couple of weeks, which was dumb -- when a goddess gives you advice, you really ought to take it -- but I finally admitted defeat and switched to the chevrons, which had a much less complicated treadling. And it worked. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

I finished the ruana with about a week to spare, and I was able to wear it last night, as you can see in my selfie up top. Although I kind of didn't need it. It only dropped to about 60 degrees by the end of the evening -- which figures, right? But it's done, and I can wear it for this event from now on.

Next up on the loom will be a runner for the bathroom. Luckily, I have no deadline for that project.

***

These moments of bloggy snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

It's spring in Santa Fe, or: how I spent my weekend.

You know summer's nearly here when El Rancho de las Golondrinas opens for the season. Alert hearth/myth readers know that the ranch is a living history museum at a historic site that was the final stop on the Camino Real before Spanish settlers got to Santa Fe -- and also that I started volunteering with the weaving program there last year.

The first thing I wanted to do this season was to make a tote bag that looked more or less historically correct. My costume doesn't have any pockets because it's historically correct. But as a modern person, I need a place to stash my phone, car keys, lip balm, tissues, and so on. I've been wearing a pair of shorts under my skirt, but it looks awkward at best when I hike up my skirt to fish something out of a pocket. So yesterday (with permission, of course), I spent the day on one of our looms to weave cloth for my bag.

We have four walking looms (plus a Navajo loom that's just for display). The term "walking loom" means you stand up to operate it, shifting your weight back and forth on the treadles to get the heddles to rise in the proper sequence for your project. The loom I used for my bag was donated to the ranch by the Barela family of Chimayó -- and if you know anything about weaving in northern New Mexico, you know that the weavers in Chimayó know what they're doing. Here's a link to one of the rug shops there, so you can see what I mean. 

Anyway, I picked a very simple design for my bag -- stripes up the sides and a wide field of turquoise (which I dyed myself at the dye shed last fall) for the middle. And I managed to get the weaving finished yesterday while chatting with guests. Here it is before we cut off the loom. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

For this festival this year, we had some folks from San Ildefonso Pueblo come to help out. They fed us with samples of food they made in an horno and entertained us with traditional dances. I hope they come back, because the food was excellent.

San Ildefonso Pueblo dancers,
from the door of the Barela loom room.
Lynne Cantwell 2023 

Posole and calabacitas with bread and
cookies, all made in an horno by the
San Ildefonso Tewa Women's Club. Mmm!
Lynne Cantwell 2023

(An horno is a beehive-shaped oven made of adobe. The ranch has two outside the cocina.)

The weather mostly cooperated, but this afternoon we had a thunderstorm. And see those little white pellets on the ground in front of the gate? Yup, that's hail. Luckily the storm cleared out within about a half hour.

Lynne Cantwell 2023

So that was my weekend. The tote bag isn't finished yet; it needs a strap. I'm going to try making one on an inkle loom. I'll let you know how that goes.

***

These moments of springlike blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Weaving and reweaving.

I was going to do a serious post this week, but I'm a day late and anyway I'm not feeling sufficiently lugubrious today. So you get a crafty post instead.

Alert hearth/myth readers are probably sick of hearing that I've been volunteering this summer at El Rancho de los Golondrinas, a living history museum here in Santa Fe. I've talked about how I wove a rebozo and a sash for my volunteer costume. 

That sash has been a problem all season. I didn't make it long enough. I could just barely get it tied in a square knot, but it took a lot of pulling and tugging. So I decided to make a new one. And make it in a different weave pattern and at a different sett. All of that required more weft yarn than I had left, so I had to dismantle the old sash to finish the new one. But I think it turned out pretty well. Here's what the new sash looks like: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Here's a close-up so you can see the weave structure. The stripe on the end is a 1/3 twill; the rest is a 2/2 twill that's supposed to look like a zigzag, but owing to technical details, it's more like a chevron. The fabric ended up very dense -- stiffer than the old sash -- which to be honest is probably a good thing. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Also, I decided to go with twisted fringe this time. How does one make twisted fringe, you ask? Well, it so happens that I made a short video to show you the process. 

So there you have it. Now I have a brand-new sash that is not going to drive me crazy. I only have two more volunteer gigs this year, but that's okay -- it'll work fine next year, too.

***

These moments of twisty fringed blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Yarn to dye for.

"So what have you been up to lately, Lynne, since you haven't been writing?"

Welp, y'all know about the cataract surgery. Then a few weeks ago, I racked up my knee by stepping up onto a curb (urgent care took an x-ray and said it wasn't broken -- yeah, thanks, I could have told you that); I have an MRI scheduled for the end of this week, but my money's on a sprained ligament, given that it's much better now.

And the element of Water keeps springing up. It's still monsoon season and we're getting a lot of rain -- yesterday was an all-day soaker. Then a couple of nights ago, I walked into the office/craft room and discovered water gushing from the ceiling in two places. Something had gone wonky in the bathroom of the unit upstairs. The plumbers had to cut a big hole in my ceiling to find the leak and fix it; they'll be back later this week to patch the drywall.

Today, though, I spent the day playing with water of a different, and way more fun, sort: yarn dyes. I was part of a class being trained at the dye shed at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, the living history museum here in Santa Fe where I've been volunteering this summer. 

The yarn I got to take home. Lynne Cantwell | 2022

The museum doesn't run the dye shed all the time -- only for certain festivals -- so it was a treat to get to work out there today. Just like the rest of the ranch, it's pretty rustic. 

Lynne Cantwell | 2022

We have a number of big pots for the dye, a hearth that fits maybe three big pots, and a cast iron cauldron for a fourth color. Today, we worked with indigo, which makes a deep blue; osage orange, which makes a bright yellow; cochineal, which usually makes a brilliant red, but today we turned out pretty pinks; and in the iron pot, snakeweed, which usually makes yellow, but it reacted with the iron to make a sage green.

How did we get the other colors in my photo above? Overdyeing. You put your yarn in one pot of color, then in one of a different color. For example, the turquoise on the left was dyed yellow first, then overdyed with indigo. The terra cotta colored skeins in the middle were dyed yellow first, then overdyed with our pink cochineal. The teal on the right was a gray heathered yarn (the rest were all white to start with); I put it in the green, then overdyed it with indigo.

Basically, you don't know what you're going to get until to give it a try, which is what makes it so much fun. And if you hate the color you get, you can overdye it and make it a different color. 

After the yarn is dyed, it's hung up to dry. Then it's rinsed to get any excess dye out and hung up to dry again. There was a class yesterday, too (in the rain, those hardy souls). Here's what our two classes combined did this weekend: 

Lynne Cantwell | 2022

We'll use the lighter weight yarn for colcha embroidery and the heavier weight for weaving rugs and things.

There's a lot more to the process, of course, and you can fall down quite the rabbit hole while learning all this stuff. Why, just now, I thought I might add some info here about mordants; I quickly realized the subject could be a reference book, and one I'm not yet qualified to write. So for now, I'm going to wrap up this post. Then I'm going to sit back, relax, and think about something less complicated -- like what I'll do with my new hand-dyed yarn.

***

These moments of colorful blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed and boosted!

Carding and spinning and weaving, oh my.

It's Sunday night, which means I owe y'all a blog post. But I'm tired and my feet hurt, so I'm going to try to keep it short.

The reason I'm tired, etc., is that I've just completed my first weekend as a volunteer with El Rancho de las Golondrinas here in Santa Fe. Yesterday, I sat out in the placita (the little plaza in the part of the museum depicting 17th century life in northern New Mexico) in the shade and learned how to card wool and use a Navajo spindle. I even got my picture in the Santa Fe New Mexican, the local paper -- click here for the article, then click through to the third picture. (There's a typo in the caption, by the way. We were carding the wool, not carting it.)

Carding involves taking the washed, dried, and matted wool fibers that have been shorn from the sheep and combing them to get the tangles (and other junk -- sheep live outdoors, you know) out and to get the fibers to lay straight so that they can be spun. The carding combs sitting next to me on the bench are adult-sized; we also have some smaller combs for the kids. And yes, kids carded wool back in the day -- even toddlers were taught how. After all, it's not like you could have popped down to Target to buy a new shirt; if you wanted one, you had to weave your own. And it's labor intensive work, so everybody had to contribute.

The wool comes off the cards in a little roll. Here it's called a lamb's tail; I've also heard it called a rolag. A spindle is then used to make the rolags into yarn.

There are a bunch of different types of spindles, but the one everybody used in 17th century New Mexico was called a malacate (pronounced mah-lah-CAH-tay). It's also known as a Navajo spindle. Now, just like a lot of other terms, there's some question about whether "Navajo spindle" is politically correct, but I'll link to a video in a minute that was shot in 2020 and features a Navajo woman calling it a Navajo spindle. So there you go. 

Here's what a Navajo spindle looks like:

 Photo shamelessly stolen from woolery.com

It's a supported spindle -- that is, the tip of the spindle rests on the ground (or in a bowl), so the yarn you're spinning doesn't have to support the weight of the spindle the way it does when you use a drop spindle. It's hard to tell from this photo, but a Navajo spindle is about a yard long, which is two or three times longer than a typical drop spindle. You spin the yarn by rolling the top of the shaft against your thigh. (Video of that Navajo woman demonstrating it is coming up in a sec.) 

I am not proficient either at carding or at spinning on this kind of spindle, so here's that video I've been talking about. First you get to see some Navajo churro sheep, which are the kind we have at Las Golondrinas; then come the demonstrations on carding and spinning. The whole video is about 20 minutes long. She starts carding the wool at about 37 seconds in, then she picks up the spindle at about 9:10 and talks about the technique and what weaving means to the Navajo. If you want to skip over that and just watch her use the spindle, start the video at about 12:26.

So that was yesterday. Today I was in the demonstration loom room, letting guests try their hand at weaving. Of course I didn't get a photo of the demo loom because pockets are anachronistic, so my phone was in my shorts underneath my skirt. But going back to the article in the New Mexican, if you click to the fourth photo, you can see a couple of the other looms we have: the jerga (YEHR-gah) loom takes up a good bit of the front of the photo, and behind the guy in the red shirt you can kind of see the loom used to weave sabanilla (sah-bah-NEE-yah), the cloth that's used for colcha embroidery (which is a whole 'nother craft that I have yet to try).

I was commiserating today with a guest who both knits and weaves that while knitters have a big online home in Ravelry, there's no comparable website for weavers. So I'm happy that I've landed here in New Mexico, where weaving is part of the culture. I met so many experienced weavers this weekend -- more than I ever have in the years since I started learning the craft. I'm happy to keep learning, and to keep sharing what I learn.

And now I think I'll go and put my feet up.

***

So much for keeping it short...

***

These moments of fiber-crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The pandemic's not over, guys -- get vaxxed and boosted!

Spanish Colonial me.

I promised y'all last week that I would post a photo of my rebozo when I was finished weaving it. Alert hearth/myth readers will recall that the rebozo is part of my costume as an interpreter at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a living history museum here in Santa Fe. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Well, it's done. This week, I fixed a few blips in the weaving and washed it. I realized y'all would probably want to see the whole costume, though, as it's a whole lot more interesting than just seeing a long, rectangular piece of cloth. So here you go, and please excuse the unmade bed in the background that I only kinda sorta managed to crop out. 

Under the rebozo, I'm wearing a peasant top. It's from Lands End, and drapier than it should be -- I thought it was mostly cotton when I ordered it, but it turns out it's a blend of cotton, modal, and -- whoopsy! -- spandex. The skirt is all cotton. There's a sash that's hard to see in the photo -- I'll get to that in a minute -- and you almost can't see the shoes at all, which is a good thing because they're brown suede flats and they are not historically appropriate. The shoes we're supposed to be wearing are called tewa boots. Don't bother googling the term; Mama Google will think you mean boots made by Teva, the shoe manufacturer. I'm a big fan of Tevas, but they don't make anything like the boots that everybody in Northern New Mexico wore in Spanish Colonial times. You can click here to see what the footwear looked like in those days.

Anyway, I'm hoping the rest of the outfit will be sufficiently convincing that nobody will notice that I'm not wearing the right kind of shoes.

Now, about that sash: Surprise! I wove that, too. The yarn is a cotton/linen blend that a friend gave me last year. I decided to attempt to weave a twill pattern for the first time ever. Here's what it looked like on the loom (yes, that's Tigs on the floor, and you don't want to know what he was doing when I took the photo): 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

To make plain weave like the rebozo, you go under one warp thread and over the next, all across the fabric, and then reverse it on the next pass, so that you go over the thread you went under the last time, and under the one you went over. But for 2/2 twill, you kind of think of your warp threads in groups of four. You go under the first two warp threads and over the next two on the first pass; then on the next pass you move over one warp thread, so that you go over one, under the next two, and over the last one, and so on. That's what gives you the diagonal slant. With any luck, you end up with fabrick that looks like this: 

Stolen from https://www.gistyarn.com/blogs/how-to-weave/basic-weave-structures-twill

If the pattern looks familiar, it's because you've seen it on your favorite pair of jeans. Denim fabric is a 2/2 twill.

Anyway, it was an interesting experiment. The end result looks a little rough in some places, but I think it will pass for the costume. Next weekend is my first volunteer gig. I'll let you know how it works out.

***

I had intended to do a split post this week and address the recent rash of mass shootings, particularly the one in Uvalde, Texas, that put the lie to so many of the NRA's talking points. For example, the army of "good guys with guns" in the school parking lot didn't stop 21 people, most of them kids, from being shot to death.

Rather than keeping you, however, I'll point you to an interview I read in Politico earlier today. A couple of researchers have studied a whole bunch of people who committed mass shootings over the past several decades. These researchers have identified a profile that fits such individuals -- one that would make it easier to stop such incidents before they start. The question is whether the political will is there to implement their suggestions, which, for one thing, would require a huge investment in mental health screenings and treatment. So far, the will has not been there; for all the bleating conservatives do about how troubled these individuals are, they are also quick to scuttle any actual funding for mental health treatment. Still, I found it an interesting and balanced read, and I recommend it to you.

***

These moments of balanced blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The pandemic's not over yet, folks -- get vaxxed and boosted!

Weaving a rebozo.

Even though there are plenty of hot social topics in the news this week, I decided to take a break from that sort of thing and post about my new weaving project: a rebozo for my costume as a volunteer at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. But wouldn't you know it -- the use of rebozos is in the midst of a cultural-appropriation brouhaha. 

I'll explain all that in a sec. First, I want to tell you what the heck a rebozo is. 

Dama con rebozo - Juan Rodríguez Juárez
Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City

The striped wrap that the woman in this painting is wearing around her shoulders is a rebozo (one that's a lot fancier than the one I'm making). Basically, a rebozo (it's pronounced reh-BOH-zoh) is a long rectangular piece of cloth. Wikipedia describes it as looking like "a cross between a scarf and a shawl." It originated in Mexico, but it's unclear when; a number of indigenous cultures use similar woven articles. The earliest description by a European was written by Friar Diego Duran in 1572. Other influences on rebozo design were probably the Spanish mantilla (you might have seen pictures of these lacy shawls -- Spanish women would stick a tall comb in their hair and drape the mantilla over it); a Moorish garment called a rebociño that's similar to a mantilla but shorter; and, much later, the Filipino mantón de Manila (flamenco dancers wear these).

Anyway, back to Mexico. Women used the rebozo as sort of an all-purpose garment: over the head, for protection from the sun; around the shoulders for warmth; and as a carrier for all sorts of things, including babies.

In fact, the rebozo has experienced a resurgence over the past several years, both as a baby carrier and as an aid to women in labor. Here's where the cultural appropriation thing comes in. There's a movement among some doulas against White women using rebozos to aid women giving birth. One blogger calls the rebozo a "sacred garment" and says there have been cases where inexperienced White doulas have actually harmed their clients by using a rebozo in techniques they haven't been properly trained in.

I don't know anything about rebozo-related birthing techniques, so I can't speak to that part of the critique. But a rebozo -- a utilitarian piece of cloth -- is a sacred garment? Where did that come from?

The only thing I can think of is this: During the Mexican Revolution, women called Adelitas used their rebozos to carry both babies and weapons past checkpoints. Because of this, the rebozo became a symbol of women's strength and feminity. Frida Kahlo wore them. Mexico's then-First Lady, Margarita Zavala, wore one when she met with our then-First Lady, Michelle Obama, in 2010. 

Today, rebozos come in all sorts of patterns and colors, often with intricately-woven fringe.

Mine isn't going to be anything like that.

The rebozo came to New Mexico with Spanish settlers in the 17th century -- back when it was a simple rectangular shawl, used both as shade from the sun and as a carry-all. This is the historical period I'm going to be representing, so there won't be anything fancy about my rebozo. Here I have it started on the table loom: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

It's going to be light blue with very basic fringe. With any luck, it'll be about 21 inches wide and about six feet long when it's done. The yarn is 5/2 cotton -- if you're a knitter, that translates to laceweight -- and I'm making it very drapey, to make sure I have enough yarn to finish the thing.

I'm hoping that no one reading this accuses me of cultural appropriation. Granted, I'm not Hispanic. But my rebozo's intended use is as part of a historical reenactment. I won't be using it to carry a baby, and I certainly won't be employing it to help any pregnant women give birth.

I'll post a photo when it's done, hopefully next week.

***

These moments of weaving blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed and stay safe!

Pretty blankets.

I may have mentioned that I'm going to be volunteering at El Rancho de las Golondrinas here in Santa Fe this summer. It's a living history museum situated on the Camino Real, the royal road that led from Mexico City to Santa Fe, back when the Spanish were intent on conquering what's now the Southwestern United States. 

The museum covers a couple of hundred years of northern New Mexico history, from the Mexican settlement of the area in the 1700s to the turn of the 20th century. The building showing the earliest years is the placita, the little plaza, which depicts what life was like when the ranch was a paraje, or an official stop, on the Camino Real. Settlers had to make almost everything themselves, of course, being far from civilization as they were, and among the things they did was weave their own cloth. As you might imagine, that caught my interest. So that's the part of the museum where I'm planning to volunteer.

To prepare, I've been reading some stuff about the history of weaving in New Mexico. Churro sheep first came up from Mexico with Coronado in 1540, but the conquistadores weren't interested in making clothing from their flock -- instead, they ate them. It wasn't until Don Juan de Oñate arrived in 1598 that sheep were used for anything but food. That's when weaving began to take off. 

The Pueblo Indians were already weaving when Oñate showed up, but they grew and wove cotton, not wool, and their looms were different from the kind the Spanish brought with them to the New World. Weaving became a big part of the local economy, with tens of thousands of blankets being sent south to Mexico as trade items by 1840. 

I won't get too far into the weeds here. But as I was reading one of the handouts, some of the terms stood out for me. Saltillo-style weaving, for instance. I'd heard of saltillo tile -- the large terracotta tiles used in flooring across the Southwest -- but Saltillo weaving? What did it look like?

Dear Reader, I have googled and found photos, and now I will share them with you.

So the earliest weaving patterns were horizontal stripes. (I've stolen most of these photos from this webpage, and I hope Centinela Traditional Arts doesn't come after me for using them.) 

A striped blanket.

Horizontal stripes are stupid easy to weave. Even I can do them. You just go back and forth across the loom with one color 'til you decide to switch, and then you go back and forth with the new color, and so on. The earliest blankets were made with undyed yarn -- churro sheep come in shades of black, brown, and white -- although sometimes the yarn was dyed with natural materials. Chamisa, for example, makes a yellow dye. But not all natural dyes were local. Indigo blue had to be imported from Mexico. Cochineal red is made from little bugs collected from cacti -- no, really -- and it was also imported.

So the early blankets went south, and Saltillo blankets came north in trade. Those often had stripes at either end and a triangular motif in the middle. New Mexican weavers began to adopt and modify the style. 

Blanket with Saltillo elements, including the central medallion.

When the Santa Fe Trail was established in the 1820s, trade in New Mexico turned away from Mexico and toward the eastern United States. That's when commercial dyes became popular. By the mid 19th century, local weavers -- including many Navajo -- had moved away from natural dyes and began developing their own designs. One non-Indian style of weaving developed in New Mexico during this period is the Vallero. I found this example here. Isn't it dazzling?

A Vallero-style blanket.

As amazing as these later blankets and rugs are, I expect I'll stick with stupid easy designs for my own weaving projects. But I'm hoping to learn how to dye yarn at Las Golondrinas this summer. I'll let you know how it goes.

***

These moments of dazzling blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Ah, festival season.

Probably the thing I've missed the most over the past year and a half of this pandemic is outdoor festivals. Yarn festivals in particular, of course, but really any gathering in the fresh air where participating crafters offer their items for sale in booths. It's fun to walk around and see everything.

I hit the jackpot this weekend: the annual harvest festival at El Rancho de los Golondrinas in Santa Fe and the Taos Wool Festival in Taos. If I'd been paying attention, I would have gone to one yesterday and the other one today. Alas, I wasn't paying attention, so I ended up doing both today. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

El Rancho de los Golondrinas (which means "the ranch of the swallows") used to be a stop on the Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Now it's a living history museum. This was their 40th annual harvest festival, and it featured all kinds of craft demonstrations. But mostly, I took pictures of the animals.

At the sorghum mill, the interpreter mentioned that they had planned to make sorghum syrup but they'd run into several issues -- among them, recalcitrant burros for running the press. By the time I saw the critters later, they were okay with posing for photos.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

The burros live at the ranch, and so do these Churro sheep. The breed is descended from Churra sheep brought to the New World from Spain by the conquistadores. It's a popular breed around here -- the Navajo raise them, among others. They're prized these days for their soft woolly undercoat, which museum volunteers spin, dye, and weave into blankets and other items.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

Not far from the burros was a portable corral for a few alpacas. Some kids were trying to pet them, but the alpacas seemed more interested in their feed bags. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

If there are sheep and alpacas, there must be yarn. And there was some yarn for sale from vendors at the museum, but I didn't pull out my magic plastic card 'til I got to Taos. The wool festival there is nothing like Maryland Sheep and Wool, which takes up a huge county fairground, but I managed to put a dent in my bank account anyway. No photos from Taos -- I was too busy petting the yarn. But I wish I'd gotten a shot of the gentleman who was leading around a yak on a leash. He -- the yak, not his owner -- was about five months old and looked a lot like a cow.

What was a yak doing at a fiber festival? Like sheep and alpacas, yak fur can be made into yarn. Their undercoat feels like cashmere, or so Mama Google tells me. It's pricey, of course, so I'm not in a hurry to buy any. Maybe next year. Or not.

***

These moments of bloggy critter stories have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!