Estoy mojado de la lluvia

Ok. yoga was interesting. I went for the first time monday night, and the room was completely packed and the instructor spoke English. Tonight there was only three of us, and the instructor spoke spanish. I had a little bit of trouble, but it's not hard to figure it out by watching.

Tuesday Hilda couldn't go with me to Cantel, so Hugh and I had to ride the busses by ourselves. I knew the way there well, but on the way back there's a change from the chicken bus to a short ride on a van to near the house. I didn't know which van to get on, so we just walked. It ended up being a longer walk than I thought, but it wasn't terrible. Later that day, hugh was supposed to go back to Cantel with Christina, the intern, without Hilda again so he could do his work taking surveys. Apparently they waited for an hour for the bus to the specific part of Cantel they needed to get to, and it never came, so they took a different one, went the wrong way, and walked a couple miles to Juana's house where they were supposed to meet.. and Juana wasn't there. No one was. So they went back to the bus stop where we catch the bus back every tuesday, and Juana actually got off the bus there, and told them she wasn't aware they were meeting today. She waited with them for the bus, and then Hugh got off at the same place, had to walk all the way back to the house in a thunderstorm. He was in a surprisingly good mood. He likes physical activity anyway, but he also told me while he was out there that he just kept thinking "well I could be washing piss out of rugs right now" (his former job was cleaning oriental rugs.) Plus he was with Christine, who apparently knew her way around more or less, and has that beautiful Guatemalan patience.

Wednesday I just wrote about, with my class in Xela making glue monsters for 3 hours. Then we said goodbye to Patrick, one of the friends we've made down here who left for Ohio.

Today in Xeavaj was pretty good. We had a long class, and I was a little annoyed through most of it. My students don't concentrate! They keep making mistakes that they know better than. They kept over and over making sealed loops and forgetting to insert the chain to attach it. They would make the same mistake over and over, and I'd have to keep giving out new wires. It was only because they were talking, not because they didn't know better. And then there was another woman there who hasn't been to more than one or two classes, when Marta and Pascuala and others have come to 8 or more, and she wanted to work with silver. I made her practice for a long time, and stupidly gave her the package of earring parts after I saw an improvement, and not after I saw consistency. She screwed up her first attachment, so I had to take it away from her and get her to practice more. It annoyed me, obviously. I felt bad later though when she was too nervous to cut the wire because I had criticized how she did it earlier. It's hard to tell what's too harsh. And she didn't speak a word of spanish, which I don't always know at first since they all nod like they understand whether they do or not. So I guess she was just learning from me showing her and body language and tone of voice, which probably just emitted annoyance. I'm sorry, Maria. The happy ending is that she got it after a few more tries and made a couple pairs of perfect earrings. Everyone did today. I'm out of materials though. Officially. I have 2 more necklaces to make, which take about 30 min. each, and which my students in Xela will probably do. I don't know what I'm going to do until Ben gets here with the new materials (if Lupe remembers to order them.) The new ideas aren't solid enough to mass produce. I need to wait another week to see how the girls from Xela did with their embroidery projects, too. I think in Xeavaj their going to have a class on how to make soap next week, so I don't suppose I need to worry about having earrings for them to make if they're going to be learning something else. The Xela class has the new earrings to play with, it's Cantel I'm concerned about. I don't want to bring tons of glue into Juana's house to get all over her floor and have her 5 little kids playing in. That's not going to work. Maybe I can do what I did in Xela last week and just bring lots of stuff and have them play, though I'm afraid it's not in some of their natures. I'll talk to Hilda about it.

Otherwise, I haven't had anymore trouble with Xeavaj trying to sell me things. Marta is constantly begging me to print the pictures of her so she can send them to her boyfriend in the states, but I keep avoiding it or forgetting it because I have to take my camera to a photoshop to see if they can access my memory card, etc. It's not easy and I don't particularly want to go through the pain of trying to talk technology in Spanish. It's bad enough in English. I feel for her though. She said her boyfriend's been living there for 4 months, and is coming back in November because there will be work for him here by then. She and her mother in law keep asking Hugh and I when we're getting married, and I turned it around on her today, but all she said was "when he gets back we have to go to the municipal building, and have a ceremony in the church." It was a little more exact than our answer. I'd still like to know why she lives with her boyfriend's mom and not her parents. One day I'll be able to ask.

Well that's it for now. Buenas noches.

Joyeria con tela

Things are becoming more and more routine now, so I'm finding less and less reasons to start writing.

Sunday we hiked to the top of the mountain behind our house which has a grand overlook of Xela as well as a pretty cute park. I thought I was real smart and put sunscreen on, but I did after I put on a headband. As I walked, the headband apparently slid back an 8th of an inch, so now I have a dark line (used to be red line) between my pale scalp and the lighter tan on my forehead. It's cute. Soon everyone will be sporting the line-forehead.

Monday I cut and glued and sewed and attached and constructed until I finally FINALLY made something that I liked. After 4 weeks of trying! I've lost my touch. Necesito mas practica. Necesito debujar mas. Necesito hacer mas!

I feel like there are three grand problems working together here to keep me from making these things that I'm trying so hard to make. First is that Lupe may have given me an impossible task. Making jewelry out of fabric is extremely hard! It's floppy and light, doesn't hold it's shape well, unravels, is fragile, stains, snags etc etc. It also is really hard to work with in small form! It's possible, but it either takes more time than I have or more advanced techniques than I'm able to teach. I have to fix the edges so they don't unravel, I have to hide ends so you can't see the knots, I have to make it keep it's shape and hang straight even though it's too light to want to. Problem number two is that I can't figure out where to buy the materials I need. I can't figure out what the spanish words for the materials i need are (como se dice FUSIBLE WEBBING in espanol?!?) ! The tiendas here are not like stores in the US. You can't just walk through an aisle, pick something up, and take it to the register. The places that are like that have lockers to put your purse in and an armed guard or two at the door. When I go to the craft store I have to ask the attendant for what I want, then she brings it to me, and I decide if I want it. Now if I want a particular color, it means they have to bust out 25 jars of beads on the counter for me to search through, all the while the attendant is helping 3 other people, and there's not enough room for all of us to stand there, and there's not enough room to see all my options, and the attendant is looking really annoyed the whole time. And I have problems making decisions (which is an understatement.) And once again, I hardly know what the word for "dog" is, much less the word for "embroidery floss." Problem number three is that this is outside my comfort zone and outside my expertise. I'm good at making art with fabric. I'll give myself that. I'm good at figuring out how to fix the edges, where to hide the knots, and how to make it keep its shape. When it's related to me. When it's my piece, when it's something that I'm making to express myself. When it's something I'm making to impress other people, to make other people happy, to be attractive to the world and not myself, I'm completely lost. I like fashion, I kind of keep up with fashion (more in the past) and I have a good eye for aesthetics. However, I want to make something that's going to sell to the general public and make these people money, not something that's going to change the fashion world, or art world for that matter. I like to push boundaries, take things out of their every day context, give the world something different and new to look at. And I'd like to be able to keep up with that for this jewelry, but it's just so hard when I have to take so many things into consideration. I can make cool jewelry all day with strange materials and deep context, but will people buy it? Then, if I decide they would, can I teach it? Will my students understand the concept? Will my students physically be able to make it? That's been a big problem lately. Beading is easy. Learn this all encompassing technique and you can do anything, the only question is what goes where. With this, there are a hundred variables.

So anyway, I made these fabric earrings (the picture at the top of the page) and taught my class in Xela how to make them. I'm kind of upset with myself. How many times has Susan Iverson told me to never use glue on fabric? Sorry Susan. It's necessary. I'm securing the edges of the fabric with glue, then gluing the fabric to a piece of leather, then embroidering around the edges so that the glue is covered up as well as the fabric has an extra thing to secure it. It's a lot of glue. So I taught that, and it's really important that the glue only gets where it's supposed to go, and then it's very important for the embroidery to be perfectly even all the way around. Mistakes are so obvious, and who wants earrings that obviously look like they've been glued together?? Gross, not me. Then the shapes have to be perfectly formed, no lopsided circles, please. And one earring has to match the other, obviously. Then the problems with making them, like the time it takes for the glue to dry, so irritating. The girls ended up taking their earrings home with embroidery floss to work in front of the t.v. I'm anxious to see how they turn out. Lourdes made big friggin heart earrings. I guess there are a lot of people in the world that buy shit with hearts on it. So she can go with it if she wants. Another thing my other professor, Susie Ganch told me: No hearts, stars, or unicorns. Oh well. Fashion is clearly different from art. I'm wrestling with it. One good thing is that they seemed to have fun with it. It's a little more freedom, they can choose their fabric, embroidery colors, shapes, although I think some of that's about to change. If this works, I need to make templates for cutting. There were a lot of lopsided teardrops coming out of that room.

More later. I'm going to yoga!

mas fotos!

I've put up pictures of the weavers in Espumpuja, as well as our trek up the mountain behind our house. Enjoy!