R is for Red Letters

Lively, assertive, challenging, alluring, frightening, gorgeous, shocking. Red is all that and so much more. So utterly central, this primary of primary colors contradicts and unifies, attracts and repels, radiates and absorbs. It symbolizes life and death, transgressions and sanctity, luck and doom. It’s virtually impossible to feel ambivalent about red. You either love it or you hate it. I love it, and I hope you do, too.


Red letters represent red’s contradictory personae particularly well. On the one hand, they signify providence and joyful anticipation, but on the other, they stand for punishment and shame. “Red letter days” are important days, full of promise. The term derives from the red ink used to mark saints’ days on liturgical calendars. Embellishing a religious text with red letters (notes, marginal symbols, above all, directions to the pious) is rubrication, from the Latin rubricare, which means “to color red.” The term, miniature, did not originally mean small. It simply described illustrations for devotional texts. In fact, it actually meant red picture. The word miniature derives from minium (also Latin), a kind of red lead that was widely used to color ink drawings.

Shift slightly from red letters in a general sense to scarlet letters, and the meaning changes entirely. Hawthorne famously titled his story after the letter A that Puritan magistrates used to punish adulterers in the Massachusetts colony under the strict rule of the Mathers and their ilk. Apparently, they also commanded burglars to wear Bs, drunkards to wear Ds, rogues to wear Rs, thieves to wear Ts (branded into the skin—if you’re really into that stuff, James A. Cox of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has written quite a bit about it). I hope my R doesn’t brand me a rogue (can women be rogues?)! I prefer to think of it as a celebratory portent of some exciting day in the future.

Red Dye
Alizarin, carmine, red ochre, vermilion...we have many natural and chemical reds at our disposal for dyeing, painting, tinting, and basically painting any town red (there’s a nice etymology for that phrase, by the way). But that wasn’t always the case. Although there were many natural elements that could tint fabrics red, most of them produced fugitive colors that faded quickly. The Mayans, however, discovered an excellent source for dye that produced a vivid, durable, red red: cochineal, still the gold standard for natural red dyes. The Spanish stole that state secret, but didn’t realize its full market potential for several decades, and when they did, cochineal husbandry became a Spanish state secret. It was eventually stolen by the French and English, but is still raised successfully using centuries-old traditions in Oaxaca, Mexico. The dye is derived from the Dactylopius coccus bug’s blood. The fussy insect feeds off of particular kinds of cactus that grow particularly well in Mexico, and are susceptible to cold and humidity. Once dried and crushed, the bug becomes a dye pellet.

Cochineal’s vivid red was so remarkable, so sought-after that it drove major global markets, supported economies, and made red the ultimate symbol of power and wealth. The Spanish love of red easily traces back to its national pride in its control of the cochineal market during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Red was expensive and bold, a clear sign of power and panache. It is no accident that Cardinals began wearing red, rather than blue or purple in the fifteenth century (even before cochineal red was known in Europe). It seems incredible to conceive of a color economy, but red really did control financial markets.

Of course cochineal wasn’t the first red dye. In Europe, other natural dyes included madder and kermes, a sort of cousin to cochineal—darker and more purplish. The madder dyers of Strasbourg, alarmed at the sudden popularity of blue, petitioned the builders of Strasburg Cathedral to make the devil’s skin blue in all the stained glass windows, so that church-goers would associate blue with evil, rather than red.

My favorite medieval use of red is in the six unicorn tapestries in Paris’s Musée Cluny. While one represents the whole series, the five others each illuminate one of the senses. The museum has created a special theatrical viewing room so that its visitors can properly take in the sequence and really experience this extraordinary work as the spectacle it was always meant to be. It seems incredible that the six tapestries should have been hidden for so long, only to be re-discovered by Georges Sand in 1844 in an obscure château.

Symbolism
Red has been a major component of most symbolic systems, traditional and theoretical. The great expressionist (theosophist, mystic) artist and theoretician Wassily Kandinsky articulated a theory for most colors, and red is no exception. He thought of red as “alive, restless, confidently striving towards a goal, glowing” and emanating a “manly maturity.” Its auditory equivalent, he proposed, was the “sound of a trumpet, strong, harsh,” as in a fanfare, or both the lower notes of a cello and the high, clear sound of a violin.



In China, red generally stands for luck, but when combined with letters (characters is more correct, I think), can also stand for death. Obituaries, apparently, are usually written in red ink. When a name appears in red, it signifies that the person has either died or that they have been disowned or shunned in some way.

There are countless other symbolic associations with red, and if I started considering political associations, advertising uses, non-verbal signage, etc., I’d never get back to the needles! My knitted red letter R uses Shetland yarn and a modified Fair Isle technique (modified, because the floats are so long). I was trying to mimic the capitals of a manuscript Bâtarde “hand.” A French manuscript style in use from the late 13th to the mid-sixteenth century, Bâtarde hand was bastardized from the more laborious Gothic lettering into a cursive form, which was much faster to write. This particular hand was favored by the Burgundian court, and applied extensively in the creation of manuscript books. One of its distinctive features was that the scribe would change the pen angle several times during the execution of each letter so that the each letter contained both very thick and very thin strokes.

I have longed planned to design a red and gray Fair Isle, in a sort of hommage to a familiar and favorite winter sight. There’s something about the winterberry tree that I find really, really compelling. It’s just now coming into its own. Maybe I love it so much because it is the only bit of color in January? I believe the horticultural name is Crataegus viridis, cultivar Winter King (a type of hawthorn). I find the combination of red and gray really compelling. Bold and muted, outspoken and understated, the two colors (and yes, I’m considering gray a color here) contrast one another beautifully.

Red Bib

Greenfield, Amy Butler. A Perfect Red. NY: HarperCollins, 2005.

Pleij, Herman (translated by Diane Webb). Colors Demonic and Divine: Shades of Meaning in the Middle Ages and After. NY: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Dekanare, François, and Bernard Guineau (translated by Sophie Hawkes). Colors: the Story of Dyes and Pigments. NY: Abrams, 2000.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Complete Writings. NY: DaCapo, 1994.

Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain. La dame à la licorne. Paris: Musée Cluny, 1979.

and for fun: Chevalier, Tracy. The Lady and the Unicorn. NY: Dutton, 2004.

Red Letters

• Bastard Secretary Hand (Crazy Diamnd Fonts). This is a British bastardized hand, rather than French.
• Batarde Hand
• Bâtarde Miniscule
• Bâtarde alphabet (video)
• Discover images: calligraphy

Unicorn Tapestry

• Musée Nationale du Moyen Age (Musée Cluny)
• Unicorn tapestry
• Gift shop
• Other Unicorn products (not official)
  

Q is for Quatrefoil

Not trefoil, not cinquefoil, but quatrefoil, the architectural equivalent of a four-leaf clover. I want to thank Dee D and Carrie K for this most excellent thematic suggestion.

In English, the letter Q rarely appears alone, but the OED has of course tracked down innumerable instances, one of which I find oddly compelling: “Q in the corner. . . a person who or thing which sits in the corner, one who is unnoticed or unimportant; also as a (self-mocking or self-effacing) pseudonym.” Perhaps Q’s queue is always off getting into other people’s business, leaving him to hide in the corner?

The letterpress landscape is littered with Qs: quad (short for quadrat), quoin, quarto, quire, question & quotation marks, even quadrata (Roman inscriptional capitals, of which I am particularly fond). With such a rich field of possibilities, it was difficult to settle on just one, but the quatrefoil is so delectable! Yes, of course I did consider qiviut, (an Inuit term for the wool of the musk ox), and almost indulged in a $60 skein of it, but the economy isn’t quite supporting that kind of research just now (at least not for me).

Quadrille

I am struck by the preponderance of Latin roots for many English q-words that emanate from quad (4), or at least to the concept of dividing into four parts: quatrefoil (in French, quatre–4– and feuille, leaf), quadrille (a card game or square dance...or graph paper), quadrilateral . . . Whether it’s four sides, four parts, or foursome, “quad” words imply a kind of separation just as much as they convey principles of symmetry, mirroring and equality. In other words, they allude to the whole as much as to its four equal parts. The quatrefoil is an excellent example of a whole (in this case, a circle), precisely and geometrically sub-divided and re-combined into a new, four-part shape. Take a look at SkillsTech Australia’s presentation, Guide to Drawing a Quatrefoil, and learn how to use simple geometry to create a perfect quatrefoil (then carve it in stone!).

Sainte Chapelle Quatrefoils

I tend to associate quatrefoils with architecture, and certainly that is their best-known application, but they do also appear in other forms of ornamentation, including in manuscripts. Despite manuscript possibilities, the architectural quatrefoil is what appeals more to my tactile sensibilities. A form of tracery, the stone quatrefoil is not quite free-standing, but usually exists as thin, stone outlines, leading the eye from one zone to the next. Often, quatrefoils enclose stained glass, but the four-leaved plant motif can also appear as part of the stained glass itself.

Stained glass of Sainte Chapelle

The preference in Gothic architecture for quatrefoils has produced a legacy of four-leaved ornaments that enriches architecture of the Late Middle Ages. In Paris, for instance, the gem-like Sainte Chapelle (late 13th century) showcases some of the world’s most celebrated stained glass, much of it outlined by quatrefoils.

Tower, Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral. Gallery of chimeras (grotesques) designed by Viollet-le-Duc, mid-19th century

A few steps away from Sainte Chapelle is the less ethereal, but oh-so-storied Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, an earlier, much more massive structure. On its tower (right), alongside human-sized grotesques in the galerie des chimères, Viollet-le-Duc built a retaining wall of open quatrefoils in the mid-nineteenth century. He meant them to look medieval, and has fooled generations of tourists ever since (including Disney, apparently) into thinking them ancient.

Wynkyn de Worde’s “Sagittarius” Printing Device. Reprinted in Henry Plomer. A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. London, 1900. Source: Project Gutenberg

Wynkyn de Worde, one of my most favorite early printers (and I’ll freely admit it’s mostly because of his beguiling name), printed a poem in a small volume entitled Four Leaves of the Truelove (The .iiii. Leues of the Trueloue) in 1510. It was a piece of religious allegory, sometimes also called the The Quatrefoil of Love. Although there is some debate about the poem’s merits and message, most scholars agree that the central emblem—the quatrefoil, or four-leaved plant—refers literally to Paris quadrifolia (true lover’s knot), a woodland plant that still exists in Europe. A relative of the trillium, it has four equally-sized leaves emanating from a single stem, and one lone, toxic berry. Perhaps the nickname refers to the berry’s seeds, which are (in small doses, one hopes) occasionally used as an aphrodisiac. The poem gives us some insight into why the quatrefoil was such an enduring motif in medieval architecture.

True Love (Paris quadrifolia). Taken June 2008. Source: Flickr. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Naturally shaped like a cross, the plant’s form was useful for explaining Christian virtues, and a perfect vehicle for allegory. 4 gospels, 4 apostles, 4 sides of the cross: Christian iconography was (and is) rife with foursomes. In medieval European philosophical discourse, we also find much pondering of the 4 humors, 4 winds, 4 cardinal directions. So a sort of rule of four was at work. As much a logical division as a logical combination, the symbolic quatrefoil appealed to medieval stonecarvers and poets alike.

I was delighted to learn that there are at least two quatrefoil motifs in knitting: the quatrefoil eyelet and the Walker quatrefoil cable. Since I’m looking at the quatrefoil’s architectural aspect, I took the cable as my inspiration. I wanted to produce a knitted tracery enclosure for a sort of stained glass-like motif in the quinacridone-like colors (thank you, Denise!) of Brown Sheep’s Lamb’s Pride. My plan was that the cables would provide structure and boundaries, while the intarsia & stranded colors would pop out from the black background. I couldn’t quite get the cables to do my bidding, so I resorted to an applied I-cord, twisting around the central Q. It looked like a cartoon, so I just accepted its whimsy (after all, quatrefoils are good enough for Disney), but quickly decided it could be improved through some transformative felting.

As I write this post, my “architectural” quadrilateral is jostling its way around the washing machine, altering itself into a small, felted monument. The finished pictures won’t, I hope, reveal the tinge of regret I’m experiencing. But really, I can’t pretend that I have any real plan for this particular piece, except as a page of my abecedarium. This A-to-Z project is now morphing from a largely digital excursion into a real, knitted book. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to bind it all together (possibly with dpn knitting needles or perhaps simply sew it together, accordion-style), but at this point I have quite a few “pages” that I want to compile into codex form.

The Q has now emerged from its aquatic journey, smaller and fuzzier, but intact and perky—not exactly projecting architectural gravitas, but a happy caricature.

Diversions

Texelia

• Betty Monroe’s Center Motif Pullover (Vogue Knitting Anniversary Issue, Fall 2007). Ravelry info (for members only) and Vogue’s errata page.
• Sarah Hatton’s Alpine Shrug (quatrefoil on back) from Rowan 42 (Fall 2007) (as featured on Ravelry; Rowan’s pattern library is currently unavailable)
• Quatrefoil Shrug by Janine Le Cras (Unique Sheep), featuring the quatrefoil eyelet.
• Girl’s Quatrefoil Sweater, by Laura Rasmussen (K5tog)
• Barbara Walker’s Quatrefoil Cable, from the Walker Treasury Project
• Shedir, by Jenna Wilson (Knitty.com), featuring crisp tracery
• Koolhaas, by Jared Flood (Interweave Knits, Winter 2007). A wonder of spiralling, medieval-esque, cabled tracery, although the designer suggests this hat was inspired by the architectural designs of Rem Koolhaas.
• Cable Net, by Ariel Barton (Knitty.com Fall 2006)
• Felted Stained Glass Fan Bag, by Madeleine Langan (Knitting Dream)
• Stained Glass Hat (with quatrefoils) by Dilys Sutherland (Blossom Knitwear)

Typographica et Architectura

• Yes, it exists: the quatrefoil font! Ann’s Bijous Quatrefoil Font (designed by Dingbat Cave’s Ann Stretton)
• Two-part post on the quatrefoil from Sarah Jennings in her blog, Things that Inspire.
  Part one :: Part two
• Elaine Perlov’s blog entry on quatrefoil grates in New York
• Victoria & Albert Museum (London). “Learn About Style” : Medieval Revivals : Quatrefoils

Owen Jones. Grammar of Ornament. “Medieval Ornament No. 4: Encaustic Tiles of Various Periods.” 1856. Plate LXX (Lithograph). Source: New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Miscellania

• The Quatrefoil is the symbol of San Antonio
• And, you got it: the 4-H is really a quatrefoil!
• Quatrefoil basketweave...from the quatrefoil blog
• Kate Hillard, “A Quatrefoil” The Galaxy. Vol. 19, Issue 2 (February 1875): 244-245.

Even More Quatrefolia!

The remains of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (ca. 634– 687) came to rest in Durham, where a great cathedral was built in his honor. His tomb survived the Reformation, but was unearthed in 1827, when remnants of vestments (dated between 909 and 916, probably made in Winchester, England) were found in it. They are widely considered to be the most famous examples of Anglo-Saxon textiles that survive. Both the stole and maniple feature central quatrefoil motifs embroidered in gold thread and remarkably, red silk, in a Byzantine style (concrete proof of Silk Road trade).

Grivell’s design for a three-piece tea set with quatrefoil ornaments (Wedgewood), ca. 1789. Source: New York Public Library Digital Gallery

More wonders of medieval needlework to be found on the amazing Historical Needlework Resources: “The purpose of this site is to be a resource centre for those interested in the study and practice of pre-16th century (Dark Ages, Medieval and Renaissance) needlework/embroidery and its techniques.”


P.S. One more Q: Queen Anne’s Lace: it’s a carrot! It is also a wonderful dye that produces lime green. I can’t resist adding a few links to the many, many Queen Anne’s Lace patterns:

• by Phoenix Bess (cowl turtleneck with lace insets)
• by Alice Starmore (pullover; link goes to Ravelry)
• by Bad Cat Designs (lacy shawl)
• by MMario (lacy shawl), from Men Who Knit

P is for Peru

Peru is a land of two cultures, where colonial heritage and creole culture thrive by the sea, and where earflaps (as imitated at left), Quechua, camelids, Incan ruins, and textiles thrive in the highlands & mountains. Peruvian knitting owes much to both cultures, as the process was a European import, but it has long since taken on a remarkable, independent life of its own. Although the Spanish brought needles and knitting techniques to Peru, knitting found a ready audience in a culture already rich in textile design and production. Over the succeeding centuries, Quechuan culture appropriated knitting and added its own spectacular innovations. Because national borders don’t control cultural boundaries, I’m focusing this post on Andean knitting in general, so I will touch on Bolivian as well as Peruvian knitting.

I’m convinced that some of the most astonishing, technically brilliant, inspired knitting today is being produced by Andean knitters. Although individual composition and innovation is highly valued, tradition holds strong and allows us to trace a few common elements. First and perhaps most distinctive: although Peruvian and Bolivian knitting is widely practiced by both sexes, Andean men are the primary knitters. In many communities, knitting is much more likely to be done by men than by women. In areas such as Taquile (an island on Lake Titicaca), men knit almost obsessively from a very early age, and often on hats (ch’ullu, ch’ullo, chullo) that are subtly designed to reveal information about the maker or wearer. On Taquile Island, for instance, men wear hats with conical white tops to indicate they are single. Creating an elaborate, well-crafted hat is a signpost in a boy’s life, and young men take great pride in the degree of color and design complexity they can achieve in their “single man’s” chullo. Children learn to spin yarn at four or five, and are quite accomplished at producing fine yarns by the time they are knitting up extraordinary hats at the age of 7 or 8. Women, by the way, are traditionally in charge of dyeing.

The chullo is the most ubiquitous knitted garment, but Andean knitters also make arm bands, leggings, ruffled caps (for young girls), and whimsical bags in the shape of people and animals. Other hallmarks of Peruvian knitting include a very, very fine gauge (somewhere between 9 and 15 stitches to the inch) and tightly-spun yarns, which make the fabric fairly self-confident (i.e., stiff). When resorted to, commercial yarns (including acrylic) are re-spun for a finer, tighter material. Needles are very fine—between 1.35 mm and 2 mm—and the almost mythical story is evidently true: some Andean knitters sharpen bicycle spokes for needles. Knitting in the round on four needles, color work is generally done via purling on the far side of the work with yarn tensioned around the neck (great explanation here, from Avital).

Much of the information about Andean knitting that I am conveying here comes from Cynthia Gravelle LeCount’s book, Andean Folk Knitting: Traditions and Techniques from Peru and Bolivia, 1990. Full of incredibly detailed accounts of individual knitting designs, techniques, and regional traditions, her thorough research is fascinating and meticulously illustrated. Although out of print, it is available at many libraries and through interlibrary loan. When copies of the book come up for sale on Internet auction sites, they go for $100 and up (check the link above for sale prices and the link in the bibliography section, below, for copies available in libraries near you). In addition to the rich content and illustrations (some photographic, some hand-drawn), LeCount includes a nice bibliography of sources on Andean textiles and anthropology.

Alpacas: who can’t love them?
Camelids abound in the high altitudes of the Andes. They contribute their wool to the skilled Andean drop-spinners, as do sheep. Although llamas are shorn, alpacas have softer fiber and are much more likely to be the source for yarn. Recently (as noted earlier), some acrylic yarns are making their way into Andean knitting, especially those that have been dyed in neon colors. But alpaca fiber is the mainstay of Andean yarn and alpacas are constant companions for the alpine spinners and knitters. And who couldn’t adore the alpaca? They are somewhat timid (although not so shy as the ultimate fiber-producing camelid, the vicuña, a wild, endangered inhabitant of the Andean mountains that can only be shorn every three years for its exquisite fur), the alpaca has been domesticated for a very, very long time, and appears in artwork of the Moche people (CE 100 to 800). Its cuteness, I suppose, is because at 36 inches (91 cm.), it looks like a small version of the llama (it is not, actually—unlike llamas, alpacas are not pack animals). Other endearing features include their constant humming, herding tendencies, poodle-like fur, enormous eyes, and mop-top hairdo (alpacas are way cuter than the Beatles ever were). More alpaca facts, courtesy of Cedar Brook Alpacas.

Design
Ah....design. My favorite part! I was completely delighted to learn that written messages regularly appear in Andean chullos and bags. Because they are knit at such a fine gauge, the letters can be (and are) robust (by which I mean that they are not spidery, one-stitch stick figures), several stitches-wide (often including serifs), and messages are long, often running from top to bottom across three or four pattern bands and including poetic sentiments. Initials, dates, general statements of ownership, even the marking of particular celebrations are often recorded in written letters on Andean hats. In particular, writing appears regularly on hats of the Ccatca (Qatqa’a) region of Peru.

Chullos often feature tiered motif bands, stripes, and diagonal or diamond-shaped patterns (even OXOs!) that move up and off the head in a conical shape and usually in very bright colors. Animal and human motifs abound, especially snakes, foxes, felines, eagles and the viscacha (a large rodent, cousin to the chinchilla). Surface decoration is also important, so that shells, beads and buttons are often sewn onto the earflaps, which is the part of the chullo that is most visible (men usually wear felt hats on top of their chullos). Bright, multi-colored tassles appear on top and dangle from earflaps.
With so many distinctive design traditions to choose from, I found it difficult to stick to just one, so I tried to make this chullo a composite of several. I started with the concepts of the earflapped chullo and lettering and expanded from there. In keeping with tradition, I included a message in one of the bands, and designed my own alphabet and message for the recipient. I am trying to write this up into a pattern, but that’s going to take time. I’d like to include a complete alphabet for those interested in writing out their own messages and at this point, it exists on graph paper, not in electronic form. Also, my knitting is unusual in that my vertical gauge is quite compact (more rows per inch than most knitters) and loose (smaller needles), so I’m going to have to figure out how to compensate for that. Very generally, here are the elements: I modeled the ribbing on the checkerboard style found throughout the Andes. There are three colors per row; I stranded the two not in use across the back. The ribbing tension is about 9 stitches to the inch, which makes the band a bit tighter than the rest of the hat (at about 8 stitches per inch). Animal designs are a fox with tail dipped in milk, a griffin, based on models graphed by LeCount from designs of the Potosí department and CalaCala (both in Bolivia), and snakes. Earflap style is modeled on that of the southern Cuzco department (Peru; although I used a variant shaping technique to better foreground the monogram). Each flap features an initial of the hat’s intended wearer. I found the hat shaping somewhat difficult as I tried to work in motifs and shape. It should really be conical, not domed.

Materials: I used the ultra soft, ultra cloud-like, Ultra Alpaca Light from Berroco, which is half super-fine alpaca, half Peruvian highland wool. Each skein is 1.75 oz/50 grams and 144 yds/133 m. Berroco recommends a gauge of 5.75 sts to the inch, although in keeping with Andean tradition, I knit it at a smaller gauge for a firmer fabric. Not quite able to manage the 10+ stitches per inch regularly achieved by Andean knitters, I went for 8 stitches to the inch. Berroco recommends 23 sts & 36 rows to 4 inches (10 cm) on 3.75 mm needles.

Here are the pattern and charts:
P-chullo, pt. 1 (pattern)
P-chullo, pt. 2 (first alphabet chart)
P-chullo, pt. 3 (second alphabet chart, for earflaps; includes ampersand & question mark)

I will have to stop here, because this topic could keep me going for many more moons, and I do need to move on to Q. I’m open to suggestions for Q, by the way!

Diversions
Andean Knitting Bib

• Gravelle Lecount, Cynthia. Andean Folk Knitting: Traditions and Techniques from Peru and Bolivia. Dos Tejedoras, 1990. (See effusive description above)
• Lewandowski, Marcia. Andean Folk Knits: Great Designs from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador & Bolivia. Lark Books, 2006.
  This is a delightful book by a knitter who lived for many years in the Andes and brings a wonderful sensibility to her designs for Andean-style bags and hats. The photography is stunning.
• Heckman, Andrea M. Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals. University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
  
• Callañaupa, Nilda and Rowe, Ann P. “Men’s knitted caps from Chinchero (Cuzco)” Textile Museum Journal, vol. 38 and 39, p. 69-83.
• There is evidently a film of Andean folk knitters:
  Willoughby, Janet. Peruvian Knitted Hats. Ends of the Earth, 2003.
  Description: This film shows men and women knitting hats in the villages of Accha Alta, Chinchero, Pitumarca and Chahuaytiri in the Cusco area and on the islands of Amantini and Taquile on Lake Titicaca.

Museums & Cultural Institutions

• Center for Traditional Textiles of Cuzco
• Textile Museum of Canada’s “Cloth & Clay: Communicating Culture” (online exhibition).
• “The Colonial Andes: Tapestries & Silverwork, 1530-1830”
  Metropolitan Museum of Art (2004). Featured images available online.

Fiber

• Abby’s Yarns. Blog post about Andean spinning.
• A history of Llama husbandry, from the Great Northern Ranch in Montana
• American Alpaca Owners & Breeders Association
• Angel Tree Farm Alpacas (some of their herd featured above)

Knitting in the Andes

• Lolly (Lauren Weinhold)’s fabulous blog post about traveling to Peru in search of knitting (Aug. 2007)
• Margaret Brown’s travel log with great pictures of Andean men knitting (July 2007):
• Very informative article by Catherine Vardy, originally published in Knitters’ Forum (Summer 1996), the newsletter of The Knitting Guild of Canada.

Patterns

• Andean Earflap Hat by Mary Jane Mucklestone, originally published in Interweave Knits, Winter 2005. Now available free via pdf. The document includes seven different earflapped hats!

A discussion of Peruvian chullo hats is underway in Ravelry’s “Stranded” Group, where various members have made reference to the following chullo patterns:

• Shirley Scott’s Blossoms Chullo, Déjà Vu Knits & as kit
• Tradewind Knitwear Designs, Andean Vest by Lucy Neatby
• Ch’ullu Hat by Kim Brody Salazar on WiseNeedle.com

Other stuff

• The Billie Jean Isbell Andean Collection: Images from the Andes (Cornell University)
  Billie Jean Isbell is an anthropologist who has been active in the southern Andes since the late 60s.
  Also see Isbell’s Vicos: A Virtual Tour.

• “Knitting and Weaving in the Andes” by Cynthia LeCount Samake of Behind The Scenes Adventures (This the same Cynthia LeCount Gravelle who wrote the definitive book on Andean knitting) for the Cultured Traveler online newsletter. Cynthia LeCount Samake now leads textile tours to Peru with Nancy Thomas, former editor of Vogue Knitting and of Knitter’s Magazine. Samake is a textiles and costumes curator at the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum and Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, and is apparently “working on a book for Random House, of contemporary knits with Andean motifs.” One upcoming tour is “Textiles & Treasures of Peru, Carnival & Crafts in Bolivia & Peru” with Nancy Thomas.

If you don’t have time to knit one

• Chullos for sale from Alpaca Nation, a “marketplace for the alpaca industry — alpaca breeders, alpaca products and services.”

Flickr pictures of Andean knitting & knitters in action
(since I’ve never been to Latin America, I have none of my own to offer, but here are some wonderful examples from Flickr; use links below to see details and creators)
1. Retrato_de_hombre_con_chullo, 2. Handknit Chullo, 3. Peru, 4. CUSCO, un niño de los Andes, 5. Knitting, 6. Knitting at the Gate, 7. Knitter of Taquile, 8. Peru Knitting 1, 9. Man knitting hat on Taquile Island


Pictures of alpacas from Flickr
(Alpaca Mosaic—none of them, alas, mine, but follow the links below to see more from the individual photographers)
1. Quechua Woman & Alpaca, 2. ALPACA / MACHU PICCHU / PERÚ, 3. Baby Alpaca, 4. ALPACA - Ollantaytambo, Peru (II), 5. P4162139, 6. tina? (Peru), 7. The Alpaca Emperor, 8. Andean Women and Alpacas, 9. Baby cholita e baby alpaca