Last week I went on my first solo adventure in more than 17 years!!! I’ll admit to being a little bit scared walking out my front door since I wasn’t sure I still remembered how to travel alone, plus 1500 miles is a long road trip. I went on a fiber tour of the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico and then spent a good chunk of one day at the Taos Wool Festival.
I arrived at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico early so I had a little time to look around before I met up with my group. I thought maybe I’d found the subject of this 1927 O’Keeffe painting titled “My Back Yard” while I was looking around. But there were so many beautiful landscapes on the ranch that I’m no longer sure.
I arranged this trip through Wonderlust Expeditions. And I’m really glad I did! This was their Fiber Trails of the Upper Rio Grande. They provided all of the big camping items like a nice tent, warm sleeping bag, sturdy cot, camp chair and so on. Plus, they prepared all our meals for us and set our daily schedule. The food was excellent and it was a great way to spend the week! We were a party of 7. The two guides were a Naturalist/Artist and an Almost Ship’s Captain/Chef, and the other 5 of us were hikers, photographers, travelers and lifelong learners. I really enjoyed getting to know this group. We kept busy with fiber-y things all week.
One day we gathered local rabbit brush. And Wonderlust provided cochineal bugs, necessary tools, and knowledge for the natural dying.
We walked over to visit the ranch’s native Churro sheep.
We visited Tierra Wools in a nearby tiny town of Los Ojos. At Tierra Wools one of the co-owners, Tony, demonstrated spinning on the monster wheel and their dying processes. We even got to watch a skein slowly change colors as it oxidized after being dipped in the indigo vat (the super, super stinky indigo vat). The number of different colors they manage from natural dyes is amazing. And their big floor looms fill an entire back room that is ready and waiting for weavers and classes. The main fiber they use is from their own herd of Churro/Rambioullet sheep famous to the area.
We had a felting workshop. And learned to make traditional Andean flores (pom-poms). I was supposed to try to needle felt cute creatures but instead ended up with a landscape attempt. Can you see my desert hills and the winding trail around them?
We had a great hike up to Chimney Rock!
We visited the Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Center to learn about the area and the traditional fiber art of colcha. The center had some really great local art on display including samples of local colcha artists and a wonderful video about colcha.
Then we attended a colcha workshop led by two of the ladies we’d just seen in the video. The workshop was hosted at the EVFAC (Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center). The center offered a huge array of weaving supplies, lots of looms, a great library of textile books available to borrow and a nice classroom space.
And finally we spent a day in Taos for the Taos Wool Festival. I was careful to budget plenty of yarn money for this trip (starting months ahead of time not purchasing so I could be sure to support local vendors). So I came home with some pretty great new-to-me yarns and I’m thrilled to share what I found in my next blog post.
This was a great trip and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the vibrant world of northern New Mexico’s textile arts! I’ve never been to the Ghost Ranch area before. It was so beautiful that I definitely understand how more than 30 movies have been filmed there and why Georgia O’Keeffe ended up staying in the area for most of her life instead of just passing through as she’d originally intended. Wonderlust Expeditions did a great job introducing us to the area and its rich history of textile arts.
That first step out the door and then turning west and south out of my tiny town away from family and friends was harder than I’d imagined. I know I’m a brave soul based on past life choices. But as I hesitated in the driveway I realized that maybe it doesn’t matter so much that I was brave when I was younger, but instead that I am still brave today. So I went. And I am so very glad I did. It was a great trip!
