Textiles

Our group has been fortunate enough to see a few different textile demonstrations. As Valencia mentioned earlier, many of these towns use alpaca wool to create different products. There were also high quality sheep wool products such as blankets and bags that we found in the town of Chincheros. Many of the textiles that are sold in the cities are not made of pure alpaca and often have sheep wool blends. The people who gave us demonstrations taught us how to tell the difference between real alpaca products and synthetic mixes. We also learned what each color yarn was made with. The most interesting, in my opinion, was the color red which was made from a parasitic insect that lives on cacti. When you smeared the bug, the color red would be vibrant. To tone down the color, textile workers would add lime.