It is early February, and I am writing from Simpson Bay Lagoon on St. Martin in the Caribbean. We are later this year in slipping our moorings in New England and moving aboard Pandora. Lots of things contributed to the delay, but we are here now, anchored near some dear sailing friends who are introducing us to others who will become friends as the months and years pass.
After entering this harbor on the first bridge opening this morning, we anchored near the ketch Kalunamoo, whose owners are friends who took us under their wings five years ago to lead us through the Bahamas on our first trip down there. Now they will surely be our tour guides though the Windward and Leeward Islands. We see each other each summer when our boats are back in north Atlantic waters, but this is our first winter rendevous in three years. It’s so comfortable being together again by water.
Before I left home another dear friend, one I’ve known as a weaver and land-based friend, sent me her map of St. Martin. She and her family spent a couple of weeks here only a month ago, and she wanted to share with me a map highlighted with the things they enjoyed doing, the restaurants they visited, the boat excursions they took.
Now that I’m here and am beginning to get my bearings, it’s wonderful to see the places she visited and know that I will follow in her footsteps. It’s going to be a fun part of this trip, finally visiting places that some of my friends have been before, even if they traveled very differently than Bob and I are doing. It should help me feel less isolated this year than I have in the past–especially last year, in Cuba. That was a wonderful trip in many ways, but it was also the most isolated place I have ever been, since at the time, the US allowed no communications with Cuba.
We left home a week ago, and already I get daily photos of my new granddaughter, the Tiny Super Moon named Tori. She is such a joy to both Bob and me. He still gets teary every time he sees a new photo of her. I get the lightest feeling in my chest….such happiness! Here she is beginning to celebrate her 2nd month birthday, although she won’t actually be 2 months old for another week! I guess it was a great photo op for her parents. Before I left I tried my hand at a bit of embroidery that I found on Facebook. It’s astounding to me what I stumble on perusing fb. I’m glad to know this technique–I think it will come in handy for all kinds of projects. I embroidered this little onesie as a practice, and clearly I need more practice. But I’ll get it eventually. I’ll do some spring colored onesies in this technique soon. Hmmm….no photo. Where did it go?
I have started a little sailor sweater for Tori. It is one I made a few years back for my niece. It’s a design by Debbie Bliss and uses her soft eco cotton. This time I am using a soft green/blue color that I call faded robin’s egg, with cream. I love it. I’m still stumped by what I feel is a bad design for the collar. Sorry Ms. Bliss, especially since I love your designs! It’s the focal point of the sweater and I still cannot make peace with wrong side of striped garter stitch showing. For my niece I knitted the collar in a single color. I am debating what to do for this version. I have time to decide.
After 4 days in the BVI, making very quick visits to West End, Jost Van Dyke, and Bitter End on Virgin Gorda, we have made the long, 100-mile passage to St. Martin. The weather has been challenging for the past month (since before I got here), and our weather router suggested that it is quite UNlikely that there will be a good time to head east for the next several weeks. So we took the lesser of bad weather days to slog eastward yesterday. It took us 15 hours to travel 100 miles, in fairly rough conditions. They were very rough for me, but nothing like what Bob and his crew endured getting down to the BVI. I was very sick for the full 15 hours. We anchored out in Grand Case Bay on St. Martin, which I understand can be very lovely in calmer weather. Last night there was quite a swell rolling in there that kept us rolling side to side. We entered Simpson Bay Lagoon on the first bridge opening this morning….not a moment too soon.
We have reconnected with our good friends and will join them for dinner tonight at a Middle Eastern restaurant called Little Jerusalem, where we will start to meet people we’ve heard of many times through various groups, and whom we’ve spoken to on the radio. The beginning of new friendships. I wonder if I’ll meet a knitter or a weaver. You never know.
It’s sad for me to report that my looms are in the same condition as when I arrived home. Life has gotten in the way of my plans…
While I was determining the most pleasing way to thread the pattern for the JOY (Just Our Yarn) yardage project, I had my semi-annual visit to the dermatologist and discovered that a worrisome spot on my arm had become melanoma. I noticed this spot had changed to something of concern back in January, but I could not get to a doctor then since we had already sailed away to tropical waters.
Still, the news was a bit shocking to me. I was already beyond Stage 1, so removal of lymph nodes was mandatory on top of removal of the offending spot which ended up being much bigger than what shows on the skin. It’s all behind me now. I got a consultation with a surgeon at Smilow Hospital at Yale, and the surgery was only a week later. Whew! Two weeks later I got the news that my lymph nodes are clear and that the surgeon got clear borders around the malignant cells.
Yet I’m still not weaving…. The long cut on my arm and the smaller incision in my underarm severed quite a few nerves, and regaining use of my arm is going to take longer than I imagined. That’s a small price to pay for getting rid of the melanoma, and I can certainly knit and also do bobbin lace. And every day I am doing arm motions to improve my dexterity. Very strangely, I have all kinds of odd sensations in my arm all the way down to my hand: burning, stinging, numbness. It’s very strange.
Meanwhile, back to talking about weaving. Diane and Cathy from Just Our Yarns gave a program to the Connecticut weaving guild last November, in which they demonstrated using two completely different handpainted yarns for warp and weft. One of the slides showed a scarf woven with a warp of one of their skeins painted from the cool side of the color wheel–mostly blues and purples. The weft was a brilliant contrast of oranges, yellows and peaches. You cannot always purchase colorways that you see and like in JOY yarns since they do not repeat any of their handpainted designs exactly. But I found two contrasting handpainted that should give a similar effect.
I chose a twill weave structure called “Raku” by Carol Bodin from the book Sixy Scarves for Sixty Years from the Weavers’ Guild of Greater Baltimore. Here is a partial view of my plan.
The long warp and weft floats should show off the color contrast of the warp and weft nicely. My warp is mostly muted greys, purples and blues, while my weft is a blend of peaches and creams. The sett will be 35 epi so those floats won’t be too long.
Now, the BIG question: Should I flip the threading at the center of the warp and have the second half of the threading lean the opposite way? Should I flip every other repeat of the sequence?? Should I just thread the whole thing in one direction and cut the fabric and turn it as needed for whatever I end up making?
I’ve favored each of these ideas at different times, and at the moment I’ve come full circle back to leaving the threading alone. It would certainly help if I already knew what I will make with the finished fabric. Typical of me, I have focused on the intrigue of working with this yarn rather than what I might do with fabric. The warp is 17″ wide on the loom and I plan to weave 5 yards.
Meanwhile, as I ponder what to do about that threading, I’ve been knitting and doing some Idrija lace on a bolster pillow. I don’t even have to prop up my right arm on pillows anymore in order to knit, so I’m definitely improving. This baby blanket is moving along nicely. Interestingly, after looking at innumerable lace patterns, I ended up choosing a Eugen Buegler pattern. He has designed lace patterns for many years and you can see many of his designs at the link above and on ravelry, as well as in numerous books by XRX. He designed the first lace shawl I ever knitted, over 20 years ago. I actually went to the local knitting store as I felt myself coming down with the flu in order to make sure that I had something to knit while I would be stuck in bed. I still have that shawl…. in butterscotch colored, fine merino yarn from Grignasco.
But back to knitting for little baby Ozzie. Here is the baby blanket as shown on Ravlery. It is called “Lace Plumes Baby Blanket” and is available as a downloadable pattern from Fiber Trends. Thank you, Eugen! I’m using “Sublime Baby Cashmere” which I ordered from Jimmy Bean’s Wool.
I’m now further along than this photo shows because I work on it almost every evening, and then I realize that evening is not a good time for getting a photo.
Next up will be this adorable sweater from Little French Knits on Etsy. It’s a bit feminine, but, since I am so smitten with this little gem, I am clinging to the fact that, should our little bundle of joy be a boy, they have traditionally dressed in rather delicate clothes as newborns. This is just too lovely to pass on. Oui?
I have not yet shown a photo of the first sweater I made for our future little one. The pattern is a design by Sephanie Pearl McPhee called Nouveau-ne. It is delicate and fun to knit without being overly feminine. I used Plymouth Yarns “Perlina” which is 100% merino which I bought at my LYS, Saybrook Yarns. The pattern has a matching bonnet style hat that I have finished but did not photograph yet. There are also booties which I have not yet started.
I have little limpet shells from the Bahamas that I will use as buttons instead of what I’ve shown here. I lent my stash of limpets to a friend, and as soon as I get them back I’ll pick out the tiniest ones for buttons on this sweater. I think it will be wonderful to have a little embellishment from our travels on our grandchild’s first sweater. Aren’t I clever??
And I turned my attention back to the little Idrija lace ‘doodah’ that I started at the lace retreat back in May. This little organic shape reminds me of a fiddle head fern or some kind of sea creature. I’ve decided to make this two more times in a combination of blue and green.
Second fiddlehead doodah in progress. As you can see, the piece is woven upside down. On the next version I will make the central ‘squiggle’ in green and the side ‘squiggles’ in blue. Then I plan to attach them to one of my summer tops. Hopefully soon!
So the past month has been taken up with the excitement of a first grandchild and the fears of having cancer–cancer that managed to progress past stage 1 before I got diagnosed. It’s been an emotional roller coaster, and as usual, handwork– mostly knitting– has saved the day. It took a full month to get diagnosed, have an initial consult with a surgeon, have the surgery, and get the pathology reports. Waiting may not be the hardest part of being sick, but it’s certainly not easy. Making these little projects and dreaming about future projects is what kept me sane during those long weeks.
Today I stumbled on this book of animal themed pom-poms made by a Japanese woman. She has captured the essence of each animal. After making each pom-pom with a mix of colors to imitate the animal’s fur, she adds details with needle felting. I looked for the book online, hoping to order it, but so far I only found it on Japanese Amazon with no ability to order from the US. I shall try harder.
And here’s a video of the author making a bear and teaching others the technique.
Just another little idea for Baby Ozzie to tuck away. I hope I can find the book!
Yesterday may have been our last day to visit Old Havana, and I’m so glad I didn’t know it then because I would have felt a need to rush about more. Luckily we had a relaxing day and enjoyed some kind of holiday celebration that was happening.
We are trying to figure out the best ‘weather window’ for leaving Cuba. We knew we’d get the window some time this week, and now it looks like tomorrow is the day. So, here is our loose game plan. The winds are opposing the gulf stream a good deal of the time right now, but for the next couple of days those winds are pretty mild from pre-dawn until midday. So we will leave early in the morning, and sail in the gulf stream until the afternoon, when hopefully we will be near Key Largo. At that point we’ll head toward shore, out of the stream, and sail near the Florida coast until early the next morning when the winds die down again. We’ll head back into the Gulf Stream to Ft. Lauderdale, where we hope to clear in. By doing this we get a boost of speed from the northbound currents in the Gulf Stream while the opposing winds are mild, and when those opposing winds are stronger during the afternoon and evenings, we’ll slip out of the stream into the calmer waters outside the stream. I’m sure I’ll be sick, but hopefully less so than during some of our passages this winter.
The US Coast Guard sent us an email the other day (right after Bob had just composed a message to them) to ask if we were still on schedule for returning to the US by May 1. Bob responded, and we are hoping to hear back on whether we can clear in to Ft. Lauderdale. I have my fingers crossed about this because it will be more convenient for us to arrive in Ft. Lauderdale than in Miami. My flight home is Tuesday morning, out of Ft. Lauderdale.
Bob has just heard that the no-anchoring bill in Florida will indeed go into effect on May 1, so our plans for arriving in Ft. Lauderdale have to be adjusted. We will go to Miami instead, not a first choice for either of us. I guess we will rent a car to get to my Ft. Lauderdale flight. That’s boat life for you….you can make all the plans you want, even at the last minute, when you think you’ve got everything in hand, but the powers that be just laugh and laugh.
Yesterday we went back into Old Havana to look for the headquarters of the Women’s Federation for Handwork. Over the weekend we found the retail shop where the garments are sold, but the workshop where women take courses and make things for the shop is closed on the weekends. Yesterday we had a bit of a run around trying to find the workshop. When we did find it, we learned that all the ‘professores’ were gone since classes only take place in the mornings, while we arrived in the early afternoon. Maybe it’s just my imagination, and a leftover feeling from my visit to the workshop in Santiago, but I got the distinct impression that there would be complications trying to get anyone to see me. Yesterday I got to speak to a custodian and a language teacher, but when I asked for a ‘manager’ they both responded that ‘this was not possible.’ After meeting the open and generous women on the Paseo del Prada, and sharing such an excitement for handwork in spite of our communication barriers, I just couldn’t muster enough energy at this point to care if I met the administrators of this federation. I don’t think their goals are quite the same as mine. Admittedly I do not have the ‘whole picture,’ but from my limited perspective I believe their goal is to promote traditional clothing and make a successful business training women to keep these techniques alive and make the garments ‘saleable.’ It is a business venture that needs to succeed, and I hope it does succeed because that just makes handwork more valuable to everyone. But my mission is to meet women who love handwork and want to share what they do. I found that in spades with the group of women who surround Adriana Martinez.
It was some kind of holiday yesterday, but I never understood what! Several people wished us a ‘happy holiday,’ and museums were open in Old Havana that had been closed during our previous visits. While we were in the ceramic museum, I asked our guide what holiday was being celebrated, and she replied that it was the national holiday for ceramics. Bob and I are not at all sure we understood this properly. All kinds of museums were open that have been closed during our previous visits…maybe the holiday was really about Cuban heritage. Anyway, our guide still maintained that it was a ceramics holiday.
The ceramic museum was in the home of an historic ceramic artist who had a workshop and shop on the ground floor and living quarters for his family on the upper floor. The building was from the late 19th century with a central courtyard, and it made a wonderful museum for a history of Cuban ceramic artists. Each room featured a different time period of artists’ works. The courtyard was devoted to vessels and large figures.
Our guide understood enough English for me to tell her that one of my good friends is a ceramics artist who does large figures in terracotta. I took these photos for her.
Somehow in our conversation it came about that our guide loves to knit. She took us to the entrance of the employees lounge and asked us to be very quiet since her boss was in there. She went in and came back moments later with a little bag of her knitting. It was the same ecru cotton floss type thread that the women on Paseo del Prada were using to crochet and make lace. I wonder where they get this material. Our guide told us she’d like to knit all day long, but can only find a few minutes here and there during her breaks at work. She said she never gets any time to knit at home because she has to cook and take care of her family. Sound familiar?
There were so many places open for touring or for business that had not been open all weekend long. It was a festive day, and there women dressed in traditional costumes on many street corners. You could take a photo of there for $5 CUC, which seemed a bit dear to us. Near the end of the day, Bob managed a discreet photo from a distance.
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One of the places that had been closed over the weekend was a perfumerie. We had looked through the windows of this museum/shop and admired the antique brass containers used for distilling fragrances, the wonderful colonial furniture and display cabinets, and the glass apothercary jars that held the fragrances. I was thrilled to get into this shop to see things at close range! Bob took some photos while I smelled the fragrances and bought a ceramic jar of violetta for myself and lavender for my sister.
Every store has a beautiful courtyard since they are housed in historic buildings. This is the courtyard of the perfumeria. Bob and I had been admiring the stained glass every time we walked by this building over the weekend.
In the late afternoon yesterday, Bob and I happened upon a young man making baskets from palm fronds. In his large basket he had a number of exquisite, small items made from the fronds….birds, and a little house with a cricket on top.
He was easy to talk to and knew enough English that we could communicate quite well. As Bob and I were marveling at the fineness of these tiny basket creations, he offered me one of his ‘birds.’ It appeard that he was giving me a gift, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Here again was someone offering a gift and letting fate take his generosity where it would. I put the bird back in his large basket and asked him for the little house with a cricket on top. Buying that took a bit more time and frustration than we’d anticipated! First, Bob could not find his money, and as he searched we had the sickening feeling that maybe we’d lost all our money. After a few heartstopping minutes he did find his stash of money, but then we did not have exact change to buy the little cricket. The basket maker could not make change for us. So Bob went in to the local bar to ask for change, but they did not have it either. Then the basket maker left his spot to go buy a beer which would give him change. (You can walk about the streets in Havana with alcohol). He came back smiling, and yet he still did not have the necessary change! In the end, laughing, he accepted somewhat less than his price, and he still handed me the little bird as a gift.
Bob and I went to dinner with my little house with cricket and my birdie sitting on the table before us as a quirky centerpiece. We kept admiring both these baskets, and I decided I had to have another little house with cricket as a present. I hoped we’d still find our basket maker on the street where we left him by the time we left the restaurant—which was a beautiful courtyard that had once been a print shop.
Restaurant Imprenta:
When we got back to the spot where we’d seen the basket maker, the other street artists had just finished packing up their wares and were headed home. Likely the basket maker would soon be doing the same. But we’d gotten there just in time to ask if we could watch him make a little house with cricket on top, and he seemed happy to oblige even though he still had one already made. It took about 20 minutes for him to make, and we had a wonderful conversation with him as he worked.
He started with two long palm fronds and crossed the fronds (north/south/east/west) over each other in the middle of the frond lengths. Starting with the ends that taper down to points, he began to fold each frond over the other in a consecutive direction. Since the fronds were tapering down to their outer ends the little box he was making got smaller and smaller, tapering like the fronds themselves. This made the roof of the house.
Then he went back to the other half of the fronds that led to the base of where they’d been cut from the tree, and he made the same consecutive folds for making a square. This made the house itself. Very clever. He cut some frond strips to insert into the box for doors and windows.
The exquisite litte cricket!
As he worked we talked…. He loves to make baskets and these little figures are things he ‘invents’ himself. He is always thinking of ways to make some kind of little structure or animal out of the traditional basket making techniques that he uses to make regular baskets. He took out his phone and showed us photos of his baskets. If he’d had any of these with him I would have bought some too! He does careful work that results in beautiful baskets!
I told him that I sometimes make baskets too, but not from palm fronds since there are no palm trees where I live. Bob took my phone and began showing photos of my weaving and bobbin lace since he could not find any photos of my baskets. When Bob showed a photo of my tatting the basketmaker’s face lit up and he said his wife does this! I asked if his wife also does crochet and ‘tejer,’ and of course he said yes! He said she loves these techniques and loves to work with her hands. We had a little discussion of how it feels to let our hands work the repetitive motions of these crafts while our minds are free to ponder. Making things with our hands allows our brains time to contemplate many things. He also told me he plays the piano and the violin. Someday he’d like to have a cello. He loves the cello most of all.
After giving me the little house with cricket he’d just made, he asked if I’d like him to make a snake. Naturally I said yes. I was curious to see what other techniques might be used to make these little figures, and the snake involved a different kind of manipulation of the fronds. When he finished he gave me that too. He really was most generous!
The only downside of our visit with him happened when a woman stopped for a moment to watch while he was making little cricket on top of the house for me. He offered her the one that was already completed. When he told her the price ($3 CUC) she said, “Big city prices….no thank you!” and walked away. We were all stunned. Yes, there are vendors who have high prices for things and who expect you to bargain, but these are mostly vendors who sell things that they have bought to sell. The artists we’ve encountered sell their work for very little, and I cannot imagine haggling with them. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but how can you expect to pay even less for such an exquisite concoction of creativity? $3 Cuc for 20 minutes of work? Also, as a craftsman myself, I have stood in my own booths over the years and overheard people say that handwoven items are too expensive—that you can buy something just like it in a store for far less.
Well, you cannot buy a little basket woven house with a tiny cricket on top in any store that I know of. I was disappointed in this exchange. It would have been better for her to acknowledge what a little gem he’d just handed her, but that she could not spare the money at this time. It’s such a sad commentary that she felt she had to devalue his work in order to get away.
During all our cab trips to and from Old Havana we drive through modern Havana, including Embassy Row. The US Embassy is newly opened and has never been on the avenue where all the other embassies are. Most of the embassies are in historic colonial buildings and are quite a sight. The Russian Embassy is the exception, although it too is quite a sight! It is an wonderful example of Soviet architecture.
Tonight we’ll have drinks around the pool here in Marina Hemingway with some of the other cruisers we’ve met in the last few weeks, along with Lars whom we met as we arrived in Cuba two months ago. Some of us will walk to a local Spanish restaruant in the nearby town (Jaimentio?–something like that) to have a final dinner together. Then is farewell to Havana and to Cuba. It’s been great, but home is beckoning. Bienvenidos Florida by this time on Friday!
Does that sound like a bureaucratic department in a communist state? Bingo. I am sorry to report that my visit to the Women’s Federation was a bit different than I expected. Yes, it was exciting…but it was also heavily overshadowed by some restraint on the part of the women I met. They had a reserve that was a bit unnerving to me, and none of them showed the enthusiasm for the handwork we had in common that I expected.
I met Noelis at the shop where the traditional clothing is for sale. Maria Estar was again on ‘display’ in a window making a small crocheted embellishment that would be attached to some item of clothing when finished. Noelis was happy to see me and led Bob and me on a walk for several blocks to the building of the Women’s Federation.
The building was a lovely old thing—I’d guess it was once a 19th century residence, one storey with a lovely front porchl. From the street entrance we cold barely see into a large, dark front room with a hallway running back. Beyond this was a wonderful view of the inner courtyard that had a lathwork ceiling draped in a bounty of magenta bougainvillea blooms.
Noelis took us in to the first room where about a dozen women were sitting in a circle practicing their crochet. There was a man who was monitoring who came and went from a desk at the entrance. Noelis asked us to sit down near the desk while she got the ‘manager’ to come out to meet us.
Some of the women looked up from their work and smiled at me. I was very excited at the prospect of getting to see what they were doing! I was right near them, but I already had the sense that I needed to stay in my seat as Noelis had instructed.
The manager was a woman about my age. She looked very approachable, and I think we could have had a great conversation if we had not needed a translator. Noelis was our translator, and I trusted her, but she had such a deference for the manager that I think she translated my words very formally. Certainly what she told me the manager was saying was also very formal. I was not speaking formally to these women, and I have a feeling from the friendliness in the manager’s eyes that she was not speaking formally to me either. I think a LOT was lost in translation.
They told me the purpose of the federation was to keep the techniques used in traditional textiles alive and make sure the traditional garments of Cuba continued to be valued and worn, if not for everyday use, at least for use in life’s traditional ceremonies, such as weddings and other religious events. The women pay to go to this school (60 pesos for 3 months of study and including a hot lunch), and then have the opportunity to make money with their handcrafts after reaching a certain level of proficiency.
There was a class going on in the lush courtyard and there was a large studio with sewing machines where women were sewing various items of clothing. The machines were all Jukis. The only clothing being made that I recognized with certainly was the men’s wedding shirt, called a guayabera. Noelis told me there are many traditional women’s costumes that have the same details as the guayabera.
The manager’s office was a cramped space with no window. The four of us—Noelis, the manager, Bob and I—were quite challenged in the space. At one point another woman came in and joined us. I know that Bob and I created some curiosity, but it seemed that most of the women did not feel comfortable showing it.
While I could see that all the sewing was being done with commercial white fabric (and I had felt the shirts in the shop, and they were not traditional 100% cotton, but some kind of cotton/polyester blend), I still felt compelled to ask if anyone in Cuba was weaving traditional fabric. Noelis did not recognize words ‘weaving’ and ‘loom’ so while we chatted Bob searched the photos on my phone for images of my looms and some of my handwoven fabrics. Once he found these both the manager and Noelis confirmed that no one is weaving in Cuba. They do not have the equipment, but they said some women ‘do this with a needle.’ Hmmm…. I wonder if they meant some kind of needle lace. They saw some photos of my tapestries (tapisaria) and said that is not done in Cuba either.
We talked for a while about bobbin lace, tatting, knitting and crochet. Bob asked if we could take some pictures, and this is when things got noticeably awkward for the women. The manager said (through Noelis) that we would have to go to the Federation headquarters in Havana to ask for permission to photograph. Hmmm… They seemed a bit leery of us from that point on. I tried to explain that women in the US who do handcrafts are very interested in knowing what women in other parts of the world do. That did not go well either. The manager gave me a brochure about the Federation and told me to visit Havana for permission. Bob attempted to tell them that we are living on a boat ….that this method of travel means we will not get to Havana until mid April and we will not get back to Santiago de Cuba, but they said they could not do anything without permission from their headquarters. So, very sadly, that photo at the beginning of this post is all I have to show.
Noelis took me on the rest of the short tour. It was afternoon at this point and almost all the women were sitting together in the courtyard, all eating the exact same lunch on plastic trays with molded dividers to separate the food items—very 1950s. Lunch was white rice, some kind of meat, and some vegetables. As I looked to the side of the courtyard, along the hallway we were walking down, I saw there was a large kitchen where lunches were prepared. So some women work at the Federation as kitchen staff.
Noelis took me to a group of women at a small table just at the back of the large front room we had entered first from the street. Behind a room divider separating them from the space where the crocheters had sat in a circle for their class was a large Spanish carved colonial dining table (and large, ornately carved Spanish china cabinets along that back wall) where women were sitting practicing their tatting…or frivolite. Noelis introduced me to the teacher and then asked me to show her my tatting. I was a bit horrified because of all the textile techniques I do this is the one I am most UNproficient at doing! I did not want the teacher to think that my work represented the quality of work done by women in the US! I asked Noelis to explain to her that I am very much a beginner, that I only started doing this when we left on our trip a couple of months ago, and that this was my second attempt at a trim of rings and chains for the neckline of a blouse.
Naturally, the teacher found all my mistakes in a moment! She had Noelis tell me that I didn’t always have the same number of stitches between my picots, and I must strive to always have the same number. Well, yeah… I do know that even though I haven’t managed it yet. Wish I could have explained that I did this work while bouncing about on a sailboat, usually sailing in gale force and near gale force winds…but I realize that would have been just looking for reasons to explain my faults! Then she said my picots were rather good but there were still tiny differences in sizes, and I needed to get more consistent with that as well. At the end she said that if I was a beginner I was doing very well. Still, I left feeling pretty mortified that of all the things I could have shown a teacher in this school, wouldn’t you know it would be the one thing I barely know!
Noelis escorted us out of the building, and as she left us to return to the shop where we met her (in the historic district) once again she said that she hoped we’d come back with permission from Havana, and that she ‘would be waiting for me.’
This incident put a quite a damper on my enjoyment of the rest of the day, I must say. I always get so excited to meet other textile makers, and I usually feel that it is a language we all share and a place where we can all have the same enthusiasm and ability to teach and to learn from each other. The whole proletariat attitude really took the wind out of my sails–sorry for the dumb pun–but I really felt deflated. Here were a group of women I would love to communicate with about subjects near and dear to all of us, and there was this terrible pall over the whole thing. There was a definite sense of propriety that these women exuded, and they seemed to be weighing their interest in talking to me against the rules of what was expected of them in representing this federation.
After a short walk back to the historic district, we were standing in the main parque when we were approached by someone who said he knew we were staying at the marina… I did not recognize him, although he said he works for the customs department at the marina. He remembered us from when we checked in, but I knew I had not seen him. He offered to show us some sights and find a place for us for lunch. In my newly deflated state I wondered if there was some agenda to his offer….
Well, there was, of course, but also he was generous with his knowledge. He took us to a local restaurant that I’m sure was owned by his family or friends. That was okay because it was a great place, and we would have no idea of how to find such a good local place on our own. ‘Paladares’ are family owned restaurants that the Cuban government has now sanctioned. There are many rules for running one of these: a limited number of customers may be served (I think it is 12), and they cannot serve foods that are reserved for gov’t run hotels and restaurants which includes lobster and the better cuts of chicken. Paladares may serve pork, some chicken, and local fish. We let the waiter choose our meal for us, and it was excellent! This particular place was on the 3rd floor balcony of a small residential building (typical Soviet block cement structure), and up on the balcony was an amazing view of the decayed apartment buildings all around that could have been anywhere from Kabul to Cairo with a backdrop of the stunning harbor.
Some of the surrounding buildings had no roofs, or had makeshift roofs of corrugated tin with many holes and many repairs. All the buildings had windows with no glazing. On one rooftop balcony near us there was a dog that looked very much like our son’s dog Bobi. This gave me a little tinge of homesickness on the very day I was missing my son’s birthday. Well, I was certainly thinking of him.
Our customs official cum tour guide offered to get us things—cigars, rum…from places that tourists cannot visit and therefore much less expensive. He admitted that he had some ‘relationships’ with these places that would give him a commission for what he sold. It was all a bit overwhelming for me. He said he got his very good job working for the state because of who he knew. He used the phrase “Who you do, who you know,” which sounded like everything was based on what you do for someone and who you know that can improve your own situation. I got that, but he must have wanted to make certain I understood because he added, “one hand washes the other.” –he could not possibly know that I learned this phrase in Latin in high school, about a million years ago! I guess I was too hot and too disappointed in my visit to the handcraft school to enjoy this information. Now, a day later Bob and I have discovered that he does not work for customs at the marina. He’s not the first person to recognize downtown in Santiago de Cuba—every seems to know who we are. I think we were had, but it was kind of fun anyway. Boy, these people know how to turn a trick.
The day was hotter than the previous day, and when we returned to Pandora we had a very cold gin and tonic and a simple dinner of cheeses from France and Italy, and crackers from the UK , that we bought in Nassau. After washing a local mango in a basin full of water mixed with hydrogren peroxide, we ate it. No ill effects today. I might also add that I had a mojito at the paladar and a lemonade at the Casa Granda Hotel, both with ice cubes, and I am still alive. Whew!
Our first trip into downtown Santiago de Cuba happened to be a national holiday for women so the city was hopping. Men and women clogged the streets, children were not in school, street vendors were selling flowers and candy, and there was such an air of festivity all around us.
The streets are old and narrow, and the sidewalks even narrower! It’s a given that pedestrians do NOT have the right of way, so you step into the street at your own risk. Very few intersections had traffic lights and even fewer had the little walk/don’t walk signal. The sidewalks were so narrow that many times you had to step out into the street just to move through the crowds of pedestrians. It was a great day to see this city in full swing!
We had been advised to change our money at a Cadeca (a money changing facility) because the lines at any bank would be frightfully long. As it turns out there were lines at the Cadecas as well, but they were somewhat shorter. It was all very 3rd world and communist. The lines form outside these establishments, on the hot and narrow sidewalks. There is a guard who lets someone into the building each time someone leaves the building. Inside there is a shorter line, and another guard signals the person at the head of the line to move to next free teller. It took us about 20 minutes to get to a teller, and when I saw a couple of banks later in the day I can see that we made the right choice.
Now here is the funny thing about money—the exchange rate seems to be whatever the Cuban government wants it to be. The US dollar is .87 to a Cuban CUC, and I feel quite certain this not supportable in the world market. We had read in two guide books that there was an extra ‘tax’ on US dollars and it is better to have either Euros or Canadian dollars to exchange. We opted to bring CAD with us. Well 1 CAD is .55 a Cuban CUC, so we have only half the money we thought we had to spend here. Yikes! We should have brought Euros, which have an even exchange rate. Because we are from the US we cannot get any funds from our banks, and we cannot use our US credit cards, even the one that we got for use outside the US. When we returned to our boat last night, we took a hard look at what we have and made a budget. I think we can just get by!
Like many old cities Santiago de Cuba has a public park every few blocks running up Aguilera Boulevard from the harbor up the steep hill that eventually leads into the rural Sierra Maestro range. This is the oldest part of the city, crowded but beautiful, with old colonial architecture. Santiago de Cuba is known for having the unspoiled colonial architecture, along with the oldest surviving building in all of Cuba, the house of Diego Valazquez, built in 1522.
And it is also known for having the most motorcycles in Cuba, and this is what pedestrians must take care to avoid when walking about the streets. It is amazing how many motorcycles there are, most with no mufflers. They dart in and out of traffic, so that you can never be sure when you step off the curb that one might not suddenly cross your path. The streets were full of interesting vehicles and all seemed to love honking, all day… old American and European cars that had been repainted many times. We’ve heard that the engines are most likely no longer original, but a mixture of whatever can be found and refurbished. Many of these cars have Russian or Eastern European engines. There were plenty of small Russian Lados on the streets, and our driver, Noel, shuttled us about in a car with an unrecognizable name from Czech Republic that was 30 years old . Many of the American cars, being so much larger, had been converted into ‘buses’ by removing the back seat of the car and adding on something like a pickup truck bed on a larger scale. There were benches back there that could hold 10 or 12 people, and these vehicles seemed to be getting a lot of business. I was very glad to have a driver with a car! He’d been recommended to us by a Canadian couple who were just leaving this port when we arrived.
This Carmen Ghia is now a taxi. Tempting…but quite small for taxi, don’t you think? We had planned to spend our day walking through the historic district, having lunch at the Casa Granda Hotel, then touring the Casa de Diego Valazquez. But just walking around took longer than we expected, and by the time we got to lunch—roughly 3-ish—which also took longer than we expected, we decided to relax on the balcony of this stately old hotel at a table overlooking the square with a delightful breeze blowing straight up from the harbor. So we never made it to Valazquez’s house. We will definitely get there before we leave.
Earlier in the morning we stopped at a café and had a wonderful Cuban coffee with steamed milk. After that we walked along the Jose A Saco Boulevard, which is for pedestrians only (thank heaven!) and has many shops and street vendors selling crafts from woodworking to leather work (very little textile handwork). It was fascinating to us that so many shops sold exotic birds. I wonder if Cubans keep birds for pets the way we keep dogs and cats. I’ve never seen so many colorful parrots and lots of other beautiful birds that looked like variations on quail or guinea hens.
The shop entrances are a bit high off the street, maybe just above knee height, and there are the tiniest little cement block steps to enter these shops. There are no railings to hold on to, but sometimes a metal bar in the wall that you can grab if you are feeling unsteady on your feet. I am always feeling unsteady on my feet! Only one person at a time can go up or down these tiny steps so that seems to manage the flow of who is coming out or going into the shops.
The highlight of my day—and probably the biggest reason why we did not have enough time to see the Valazquez museum—was that I saw a woman sitting in a large unglazed window doing some very fine crochet work. Her window was next to a shop full of men’s wedding shirts. I went into the shop thinking I could access the room she was working in from there….but no. There was a door that probably led to where she was, but it was closed. So I went back out on the street and talked to her from there.
First I should say that I had already questioned a few people, and then tried to confirm my knowledge with Noel, about the Spanish words for various types of handwork. Crochet is crochet, ‘tejer’ is knitting, ‘bolillo’ is bobbin lace. Noel, our driver, said that many women do handwork but that he is not familiar with names of all the things they do. He said his grandmother had been doing ‘tejer’ for about 75 years, and he confirmed that it is knitting by saying it has two needles rather than one. I said that I had been doing ‘tejer’ for over 50 years, and he found this amazing. It made me think that his grandmother is probably only a bit older than 75, and that he did not realize how young many women are when we learn these techniques.
So I tried to have a conversation with the woman doing crochet in the shop window. I asked her if ‘muy mujeres’ did crochet in Cuba, and she said yes! Most women do lots of ‘projects’ in their homes. I was quite enthralled to learn this. I took out my tatting-in-progress and asked her if this called ‘frivolite.’ Yes, it is.
After a few more minutes of struggling to communicate, the crocheter called another woman over who spoke English very well. Her name is Noelise, and the crocheter’s name is Maria Estar, and they both work at a local school for textile handwork. I immediately thought of the lace school in Via de Conde, Portugal, and thought that I may have hit pay dirt here in Santiago de Cuba.
Noelis asked to see my tatting and said something like many women in Cuba want to learn this. I was not certain if that meant that no one knew how to do but want to learn, or if it is a popular thing to do. She said the handwork school was closed for the national holiday celebrating women, but that it would be open today. She has invited to come to see it this morning , so that is the focus of my day! She said she will wait for me at the location where I met her yesterday, and she’ll take me to the school. Her last words to me were, “I will wait for you tomorrow!” So charming!
So I don’t plan to dawdle this morning! I have a lot to learn!
Before I left I tried my hand at a bit of embroidery that I found on Facebook. It’s astounding to me what I stumble on perusing fb. I’m glad to know this technique–I think it will come in handy for all kinds of projects. I embroidered this little onesie as a practice, and clearly I need more practice. But I’ll get it eventually. I’ll do some spring colored onesies in this technique soon. Hmmm….no photo. Where did it go?
