Susan's travels and more Peruvian textiles

I am lucky to know  three people (on two different trips) who have hiked the Inca trail to Machu Pichu  in the last two months...as you might know, I myself merely took the train and the bus...

AND my friend Susan who I stayed with last weekend on a quick trip to Massachusetts has also been to Peru as well. Susan shared some of her handknit and backstrap woven purchases.  I only had my camera to photograph with so the photos are not great...

I love the brilliant green and black hat and the motif of the second woven strip.  Both hats are alpaca.

I did some internet searching and came upon this great thing

Apparently this was the garb of the Peruvian downhill ski team during the 2010 Winter Olympics.  How grand!  Wonder what the fiber was?  Here's a link with more:


http://blog.oregonlive.com/knitting/2010/02/knitting_in_the_actual_olympic.html

While visiting Susan and Son R, R and I went to the MFA, one of my favorite places.  I hadn't been there in years.  The highlight of the visit was this

These are REAL taxidermied hummingbirds turned in to a brooch and earrings, done in the 1870's in England....The link to an MFA site with more discussion is here.  You can't see from the photo, but the beaks are gold and the eyes, rubies.  They look a little like scared hummingbirds with Buckwheat haircuts, don't they?

Ironically, after arriving back home, I was watching my feeders on the porch the other night.  It was early dusk and I could see the red rim around the humingbird feeder but not the small thing flitting around it.  (It's almost the end of hummingbird season here although I have an acquaintance who had one at her feeder all winter last year.) At first I thought it was a dark little skipper, but after a bit I realized that it was a juvenile hummingbird.  Magic!

Machu Picchu: A Near Fiber Free Post

While all of Peru was amazing, everyone knows and asks about Machu Picchu. Our group actually visited there towards the end of our trip. No, it was not the highest point that we visited: that was Picotani at 17,000 feet. Machu Picchu is about 8,000 feet, and I was no longer taking altitude medication by the time we got there. The air was a bit thin, however, and there was a little shortness of breath with lotsa walking or climbing stairs, of which there were many.

We took the train from Cusco (11,000 feet) to Aguas Calientes.

Much of the track had been rebuilt since the floods in spring of this year (2010) and discarded tracks were seen along the Urubamba River, which ran along the train line. Above right photo is of our train on a curve; the white area on the mountain is actually a landslide. Aguas Calientes was notable for our incredible hotel, Inka Terra, and for a huge tourist target market ("mercado"). The following day we boarded a bus at 7:30 am which took the switchback laden Hiram Bingham Highway up to Machu Picchu.

Stepping through the entry gate to see the city was pretty thrilling. The Incas built this facing the morning sun in winter. Somehow, archeologists have confirmed the uses of many of the buildings and spaces. Of course, there are terraces on which the Incas farmed, exploiting different elevations for variations in temperature, water, and soil nutrients. Bromeliads seen in the photo at right.

Below is a photo of me next to the Sacred Rock, the outline of which mirrors the outline of the mountains behind it.

OK, so it's not an entirely fiber free post; there were a number of llamas roaming and grazing. No, I was not one of the dopey tourists feeding them crackers.

Llama is not as soft as alpaca and is not bred

for color as alpaca is. But the fibers are soft and lofty for spinning. Llamas are friendlier and larger than alpacas, and look cute in hand knit chullos if one has a mind to dress one up. The lady at left did. She was at a scenic spot where our bus stopped for a photo op. She had her llamas at the ready for a photo in return for a couple of solas.