A riot of color greeted us as we entered the adobe courtyard of a remote village near Cuzco, Peru. Shy children in bright knit caps peeked out from behind their mothers’ skirts. Looms warped with dazzling red and white stripes were staked into the ground and at each one sat a smiling weaver in a brilliant blue or red jacket.

Men wearing dark vests decorated with rows of white buttons sat on a low adobe wall, knitting complex patterns with very fine needles. Roberto, head of the textile artists’ group, came forward grinning, to shake hands and to give Nancy Thomas and me very untraditional hugs. He spoke to us in Spanish, then turned to our friend, Nilda Callanaupa, and launched into a long speech in his native language, Quechua. Nilda then translated his welcome to the rest of the group, the Behind the Scenes Adventures textile lovers who had joined us in Peru to learn first-hand about Andean knitting, spinning and weaving.

Every Easter, Nancy and I come to Peru and Bolivia to see new textiles and old friends, to re-visit magical Machu Picchu and to witness the spectacular Easter procession of the “Lord of the Earthquakes.” We also have a knitting workshop in our hotel, teaching several knit techniques specific to Peru and Bolivia.

That day in Roberto’s village, Nancy and I were in one of our favorite places – high in the mountains above Cuzco at 13,000 feet elevation. Nilda’s husband, Paulino, had driven our van out of town and into the countryside, winding up and up, past grey-green eucalyptus groves and herds of furry brown, black and tan alpacas. We had gone past barren hills dotted with little complexes of adobe houses with straw roofs, llama corrals and dry potato patches. Smoke curled out of the roofs of several houses and I remembered that villagers living at this altitude burn llama dung for fuel, since wood is scarce here above treeline. Getting to school often requires a two-hour walk, which many of the younger children avoid; that explained all the school-age kids hanging around watching us.

We in turn were marveling at the weaving techniques used by the women making patterned poncho sections on low looms. These devices are a version of a backstrap loom that has the far end staked into the ground and the other end attached around their waists, so that the tension of the warp can be adjusted by the body’s movement back and forth. Like all weavers in highland Peru, these women were using a sharpened llama bone to pick their pattern threads from the warp, pushing the shuttle through to form the weft, and then beating it hard into place with every row.

Some of the women held nursing babies above the loom as they wove; many had wriggling toddlers nestled in their skirts, and generally getting in the way. One cute toddler played with a strand of white yarn, winding it around a stake. Then he picked up a rock, pounded the stake in more solidly, and re-wound the yarn, mimicking exactly what his mother did daily to stabilize her loom!  Off to the side of the courtyard, several men sat at the same type of loom, working on thick brown, black and white pieces destined to be costales, striped potato sacks. They all waved and greeted us in Quechua, recognizing us from previous visits.

Other women stood around a steaming pot balanced over a fire, dipping out hot skeins of cochineal red dyed yarn. Nearby, two heavy cast iron dye pots had become wedged inside one another and there was much consternation as several men tried to get them apart by force and much pounding. Eventually a woman put cold water in the inner pot and put both on the fire and they popped apart, to much applause; it seems that competition between the sexes is the same all over the world!

The textile artists we were having fun with in Roberto’s village are participants in Nilda’s program at the “Center for Traditional Textiles” which she founded several years ago to help the weavers and knitters in the Cuzco area. Nilda, who is an expert weaver and a native of another village, Chinchero, became concerned when she realized that ancient and traditional textile techniques were being forgotten. Around the same time Nilda was being invited to speak at various museums in the United States to share her knowledge of Andean textiles, she realized more and more young people were leaving their villages to live and work in town, anxious to lose their village ties and to wear jeans and sneakers.

Nilda understood that if the village standard of living were better and if the villagers creating the fabulous textiles could earn a good wage selling their work, more people would be encouraged to learn or continue weaving and even to revive certain techniques. So she set about finding ways to market their products and to introduce new items that would appeal to travelers interested in textiles. She began working in one village at a time, asking the weavers and knitters to select a head person to oversee fiber processing, production and sales. She helped them find a central site to work and village men eventually built the adobe walls for outdoor courtyard workshops in five places.

At first, villagers sold their beautiful woven cloths and knitted caps only to visitors such as the Behind the Scenes Adventures group who came to see them at work. Since visitors in these highland villages were few, Nilda decided to find money to buy a building in downtown Cuzco to use as a retail store and also as a demonstration workshop. Through generous donations, she was able to buy a spacious structure on a main street near one of the most important Inca cultural sites in Cuzco.

Back in Cuzco, after visiting Roberto’s village and several others, we marveled at the Inca stonework at Koricancha, then walked a block downhill to the Center for Traditional Textiles. The building has been beautifully renovated and Nilda explained to us that weavers from each of the five project villages come into town to weave together, alternating villages weekly, and living in the Center for that week.

We were delighted to see that a thick upright pole had been installed in the central section of the big room so that the backstrap weavers could attach the far ends of their portable looms to it. Nilda also mentioned that each knitter or weaver is paid directly for his or her work and that there is much competitive banter among them. While we were there, several other tourists also came into the Center to observe how traditional textiles are made. We all admired the careful craftsmanship and we bought many finely woven and intricately patterned items like woolen pillow covers and traditional square carrying cloths, called awayos.

Village leaders like Roberto hope that eventually profits from the textile arts sold at the Center for Traditional Textiles will provide friends and family with running water, medicine for their children and nutritious food for everyone.