Lisa Trujillo·
Apples in Bloom
Irrigating the blossoming apple trees in the orchard. Spring weather in New Mexico is seriously iffy. We get a lot of wind. We get late frosts that kill stuff we have high hopes for, like apricot blossoms and lilacs. Sometimes we even get some precipitation, rain or snow or sleet or hail…whatever it is we’re grateful for it. And once in a while a Chimayo spring day feels magical. Last Saturday morning was one of those days. Or at least a for a couple of hours there was magic on Saturday morning. After these pictures were taken the...
Lisa Trujillo·
Weaving in the Rio Grande Tradition
Okay. Everything here is about this topic. But, since we are talking about other processes we engage in to create our weavings, we need to let you know something about how we actually weave. And I will have to assume that you, my reader, doesn’t already know all about weaving. Fortunately, the weaving that we do isn’t really all that difficult to explain. In fact, what we do is called a plain weave. It sounds simple because it is. It uses only two harnesses to produce, with the weft yarn simply passing over one warp thread and under the next...
Lisa Trujillo·
Spinning
Lisa spinning on her 80’s era Louet spinning wheel. There are probably web sites out there that could tell you a great deal about spinning wool. In case you are unfamiliar with the craft, and, in modern times this is largely the case, I will impart my limited experience here. Although I have spent countless hours at my wheel, I am not formally trained in spinning. I currently spin at a Shacht Ladybug spinning wheel, and never ply my handspun. I am able to spin different thicknesses of wool, although a very thick yarn is difficult for me at...
Lisa Trujillo·
Lisa Trujillo
Marriage is supposed to be a big transition in life. Mine definitely was. I went from being a college student to being a; graduate, wife, entrepreneur, and weaver. All in roughly a week. I was 20 years old and there was enough family drama that the enormity of that transition didn’t really occur to me at the time. But really, my life is easily divided by before and after. And really, it’s because that week, I became a weaver. Since people ask where I grew up all the time, I usually tell them I came from Southern California. I lived...
Lisa Trujillo·
Irvin Trujillo
This is from an interview done with Irvin. The interviewer gave Irvin the chance to correct and add to the original interview. Irvin: “I started when I was 10 years old. My dad showed me how to carry a design. He didn’t draw pictures. He didn’t have sketches when he did his weaving, and he didn’t take pictures of his weavings to document what he had woven. So I had no source of design other than verbal instruction from my father. That led me to look into Navajo books because I could not find any books on Hispanic weaving. There was very little...
Lisa Trujillo·
La Centinela
Describing where we live is a little easier now that I have woven a piece about it. I’ve thought this place was beautiful from the first time Irvin took me to this little valley. And I think it’s important to put some perspective on our location because it seems so ingrained in everything we do. And it seems like a really good place to start this blog from. So we live in a narrow little valley. It looks like this on Google earth. La Centinela is a narrow valley between two ridges. La Centinela means, “the sentinel”, and...