Last month, the weavers of the Centro de Artesania, Huancarani (CAH), the members of the Club de Artesanas (CdA), and Dorinda reviewed 2022 and discussed 2023. All skill-building workshops were possible thanks to those who supported PAZA this year. Any skill learned or strengthened is an irrevocable gift.

PAZA expenses average around $4,500 a year. The biggest expense is the beloved Spinning Week due to the prizes awarded to the 30 spinners in recognition of their spinning ability. This was the first year that the spinners knew that they would win a prize based on individual not team effort. Since, 2020, the 1^st place prize has been a pollera (skirt). The increase in yarn spun this year indicated how coveted a pollera is as a prize. The 2^nd place prizes have been a tank top, vest, and this year a sweater knit on a knitting machine. All prizes are made by members of the Club de Artesanas so that they earn income from skills they have learned or honed through Club activities.

Vilma has a monopoly on sewing the polleras, while Deisy and Arminda have made the knitting machine knit prizes the past 2 years. Next year Vilma will teach a 3-day class to Deisy and Arminda on use of the industrial sewing machine and practice in sewing the stretchy lycra pollera material. The final project will be a chica sized pollera. Arminda has 3 daughters, but only Maria Lis choses to don the traditional pollera, blusa, cardigan, and high heeled sandals the days she doesn’t wear the school’s sweat suit uniform. Vilma and Deisy’s daughters only wear polleras for traditional dance programs.

Doña Beatris and Doña Eulalia travel between their rural farms and town and spend less days at the Club workshop. Vilma will give both classes on the portable sewing machine. Doña Eulalia has learned to crochet and knit sweaters with knitting needles this year. Next year she´ll advance in complexity with patterns on the knitting machine. The Club projects allow members to make clothing for themselves and other family members.

The Club chicas enjoy crocheting, and they´re fast. PAZA supplies them yarn and they find patterns on their phones which they acquired for their studies during Covid. During Dorinda´s visits they attend baking classes to provide the Club snack. Jhoselin and Lineth, the 2 oldest chicas graduated to weaving on the rustic loom this year. A sample will be kept for them to refer to as they progress, the rest they´ll cut with help from their moms to make coin bags which will be for sale next year. Sarahi is anxious to graduate to the loom, which should happen during the school vacation early next year.

PAZA activities with the weavers of Huancarani connect them to a bigger world and provide them opportunities to leave the isolation of their farmsteads to gather. An ongoing problem has been workshop/meeting space. The entire adobe brick back wall of the abandoned classroom where their sewing and knitting equipment was stored and where PAZA held workshops in 2021 collapsed and disintegrated back into the earth earlier this year. They’ve been told by the Organización de Varones (Men) that the abandoned schoolroom where the unharmed equipment was moved is temporary. The room has no electricity, and no light enters through the broken windows covered with cardboard. As the Organización de Mujeres (Women) they’ve owned land where they built a clubhouse and operated a grain mill for decades. They haven´t set foot on it in years due to threats from the previous owner who lives next door and wants the land back. Infrastructure is outside of PAZA´s scope. PAZA does offer opportunities for the women to gather so they are able to discuss options. There is a solution, they just need encouragement to know they´re capable of finding it and taking action.

All 2023 PAZA activities including Spinning Week are dependent on donations. ´Tis the season for giving, please consider clicking on the donation button above to help women and chicas to help themselves. Thank you. Dorinda Dutcher, November 2, 2022, dkdutcher@hotmail.com

Joyous Spinning Week is the celebration of the lifelong spinning skills of the Bolivian weavers working with PAZA. The day after the competition ended, the Huancarani measuring team loaded into Don Julio´s latest SUV. This one featured 2 rows of bench seats for passengers which filled up with Club members Arminda and Vilma with her 2 babes, Maribel who’s been involved with measuring in Huancarani for years, Dorinda, and a stack of plastic chairs. Doña Maxima always rides shotgun. PAZA pays the Bolivian team members for the day, it is tedious tiring work.

Arriving at Huancarani´s center, all headed to the church porch to figure out a measuring set-up. Thick planks stacked on the porch were carried over to align with the porch´s edge. It was serendipity that the 1-meter mark made with a Sharpie was at a comfortable level for measuring out meter after meter while seated in a plastic chair. The person tallying the measurement count sat on a low bench and the 2 positions switched off between spinners. When Doña Cecilia showed up carrying a desk exactly 1 meter in width from the school, Don Julio abandoned his plank set-up for the desk with built in bench.

Some of the 16 spinners came to socialize all day, those having livestock to shepherd were given priority. Many spin every day, although in comparing individual spinner´s results to past years, some were motivated during Spinning Week to increase their output in hopes of winning a pollera (skirt). Doña Narciza arrived with her drop spindle whirling plying yarn she´d dyed dark green with chilka leaves.

There was a lot of joking and laughter as all pitched in to help keep the yarn being measured from tangling as it was wound back into balls by its spinner. Vilma measured the spinners for polleras (1^st place prize) and eyeballed all to write down a S, M, or L sweater (2^nd place prize) size. There was a break for the communal lunch, and the measuring team was back on the road by 3:00pm.

The following day the Sanipaya measuring team included driver Don Julio, Doña Maxima, Deisy, and Dorinda. Vilma and her 2 babes joined the group so they could visit their abuela. The road climbs out of the Palca Valley up onto a ridge atop the world. On the way to Huancarani the clouds had puffed along at eye level. A day later cloud vapor shot out of the steep river valleys on both sides like volcanic plumes sculpting into whimsical shapes at their tops. There was little traffic but a lot of dust on the road during the 1.5-hour drive. On the way down the mountainside to Doña Beatriz´s house Vilma and babes were dropped off at her in-laws. A 2^nd stop was made so that Deisy could hand off groceries to her grandmother who was patiently waiting at a trail.

Doña Beatriz has been a Club de Artesanas member since 2011. She attends when she´s in Independencia where she has a house, and her 15-year-old son lives during the school year. She has organized the Sanipaya spinners since the 1^st Spinning Week competition in 2014. This year 9 of the 30 Spinning Week spinners live in Sanipaya. They have always been more subdued but as sincerely grateful for Spinning Week as the boisterous Huancarani spinners.

A table was carried from the kitchen to the covered porch and a meter marked off on 2 sides. Deisy marked off a bench and the 3 teams began measuring. Vilma arrived and pitched in with tallying results and then measured all the spinners for polleras and sweaters.  A nest was made between the measuring areas at abuela Doña Maxima´s feet and the babes entertained themselves and everyone else.

The Sanipaya spinners have always prepared lunch for the measuring team. Chicken, potatoes, and fava beans had been roasted in the wood burning oven and were served with a salad of lettuce, onion, and tomato. Salad is considered a festive dish. Salads have never been included at the communal lunches in Huancarani where each person contributes a dish typical of what they prepare every morning for family members headed to school, field, or pasture.

Thursday morning the Club members measured their results, and all results were posted after lunch. There were some surprises. Club members Deisy and Arminda who did so well during their 1^st Spinning Week competition last year were in 2^nd place this year. Deisy said it was the quality of the fleece they´d bought at the last minute. In 2021, they´d bought long fibered fleece from a vendor during the 16 de Julio Fiesta. There were no fleece vendors this year at the Fiesta. After the pollera material shopping trip in Cochabamba, Doña Maxima was determined to win a pollera this year, she did. Doña Felicidad was this year’s top spinner a first for her having spun 4,728 meters. The 30 spinners spun 89,887 meters an increase from last year´s 83,960 meters.

Thank you Lyn and Jenny for your continued support of the Bolivian weavers and chicas. Dorinda Dutcher, October 19, 2022

February is the beginning of the Bolivian academic year and has become the opportune time for the Club de Artesanas (CdA) annual registration. The Club was sorry to see Claudia and Marleny leave after bringing their 30-something perspectives and humor to two years of Club activities. Although they´d grown up around weavers in their home community of Sanipaya, they didn’t learn to weave until joining the Club. They were quick learners and within a year were weaving to a quality standard for the foreign market. Doña Maxima commented on the quality of Claudia´s weavings, that combined the fineness of the handspun yarn spun by Claudia´s mother and Claudia´s increasing weaving skill. They spent much of the past year on their family farms in Sanipaya, but participated in PAZA activities including Spinning Week, personal fiber arts projects, PAZA´s 1 weaving order, and earning income by sewing and knitting the Spinning Week prizes. Both women owned knitting machines and shared their skills with the other Club members so all could earn an income knitting the sleeveless tops that were the 2^nd place Spinning Week prizes.

For 2021, Doña Maxima and the 3 remaining Club members have welcomed Maribel, who was the youngest weaver in Huancarani. Maribel and her husband moved to Independencia so that their son Daniel could begin 1^st grade. Maribel´s family lives in Independencia and she´d been a Club member for a few months before moving to Huancarani while she and her husband, still in their teens, tried to figure out life as a couple and as new parents. She´s received a lot of “press” in this blog because of her success story in becoming a weaver over the past 5 years. Maribel is the Secretary for the Centro de Artesanía Huancarani (CAH) fulfilling a much-needed role in writing and maintaining the legal records.

The 2^nd vacant Club membership was filled by Arminda, a friend of Maribel’s and a young mother of four. The members of the Club always have ongoing fiber arts projects and through the years they have knitted, crocheted, and sewn clothing for their children. Arminda comes from a remote mountain community close to Cochabamba, so has no family support in Independencia. She had no knowledge of weaving motifs and learned so quickly from Doña Maxima that she´s already been paid for weaving a strap for the February PAZA weaving order. She was thrilled with the payment which enabled her to buy school supplies for her eldest daughter. Arminda´s husband will not support a child he didn’t father, which unfortunately is all too common in the rural Andes. A PAZA weaving order is always placed in February to ensure the weavers have cash in hand to purchase school supplies.

Because of the Covid quarantine the Club members held only 2 dye days last year, and didn´t dye any skeins for the Huancarani weavers. The new Club members lack natural dyed skeins, but they are dyeing as this blog is being written. Yesterday suyku was collected from the higher elevations for dye pots in gold, bronze, and green. The 2^nd dye pot was with cochineal with alum as the mordant for a hue range from red to pink. At the request of the Huancarani weavers a cochineal dye workshop will be scheduled later this month in that community.

The Bolivian weavings that are in the U.S. inventory are available for purchase during the month of March. Inquiries may be by contacting dkdutcher@hotmail.com. The finished products include 5” x 8” zippered pouches ($17) ($18 with wrist strap) and yoga mat straps ($22 for 1/8” depth mat) ($23 for ¼” depth mat). The lengths of cloth available for weavers who’d like to create their own products are the 70” x 5” fajas ($41) used in Laverne Waddington’s classes and 78” x 1.5” straps ($21).

The weavers of the Centro de Artesanía, Huancarani held their annual meeting in January to approve pricing for 2021. They also feasted and held the Spinning Week prize awarding ceremony. Hopefully, travel is possible this year so that the PAZA orders can be picked-up and more photos taken and tales collected.

PAZA´s bank account reached an alarming low last year. It was difficult to ask for support for Bolivian weavers when the entire world was finding too much need close to home.

Thanks to the support of an old friend, PAZA received a grant for 2021 that ensures the Club and rural activities will continue. Funds will need to be raised for Spinning Week. The grant enables PAZA to purchase new workshop equipment including a 2nd knitting machine and to

replace two failing portable sewing machines. Thank you, Lyn Lucas, for your ongoing support; you were PAZA’s “rock” last year. Thank you to PAZA’s new friends in Anchorage for your interest and support of the Bolivian weavers. Dorinda Dutcher, March 2, 2021