Four Good Corners » adventure

Caccaccollo Crafts

Kirsty — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:49:32 +0000

Wending our way through the Sacred Valley from Cusco to Ollantaytambo, our guide made a stop at a local mountain community that was working with GAP – the men went off to carry crazy amounts of supplies along the Inca Trail, while the women stayed in the village to produce textiles, which GAP would bring their hikers to marvel over and possibly buy. The village of Caccaccollo is halfway up a mountain, connected to the world by a winding dirt track (that has become a road since GAP’s involvement). The women here raise the alpacas, spin and dye their wool and then make fabulous clothes, wall hangings, and toys, which are displayed in the village’s square. When I say ‘village square’, don’t be getting quaint notions of an English village green with a clock tower in the middle and well-kept herbaceous borders. This village square was a dirt area onto which several shacks faced, with alpacas tethered at various points and pre-school age children making mud pies. The women stood and sat at one end, spinning the yarn and exhibiting their wares.

The women of Caccaccollo spin the shorn alpaca wool into yarn using traditional drop spindles, making their work both portable and social. Noticing a child wandering out of eye range, one of the women handed her spindle to her neighbour and went to retrieve the little boy, plonking him down by the wool and taking up her spinning again. They chatted with our guide in Quechuan about their work.

There was a little hut to the side of the square for dying the yarns. The Caccaccollons (I’m not sure if this is the term, but it works for now!) use all natural dyes – plants gathered from the surrounding area and the cochineal beetle provide a whole range of colours; greens, yellows, reds, and purply greys. On its first use, the dye creates a rich, deep colour; the dye water is used repeatedly to achieve various shades. Ever conscious of water shortage, once the dye water can dye no longer, the water is recycled for cooking, washing, and feeding the animals.

The quality of the textiles was amazing and each piece was a little bit different. I really regret not having enough Sol on me to buy a wall hanging, especially as my husband, who hates wall hangings (”Rugs go on the floor, Kirsty, not on the wall” – silly boy!), was impressed enough to want one. It’s not like this is somewhere I can just pop back to, either…

Crafting

Sonja — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:57:38 +0000

I’ve not been a regular poster for a while because I haven’t done much crafting recently. Or that’s what I thought. But after a few emails with the other Good Corners I realised that, actually, I have been crafting – crafting little songs in my notebook (above) and humming them on street corners and honing them on the bus and chirping them out to my boyfriend by the canal. Also I’ve been crafting new hula hooping tricks, re-learning the fine craft of ironing shirts, crafting new curry recipes after going vegan, crafting two catalogues at work on InDesign and a million billion other little making-and-learning adventures. Otherwise what would be the point in living?

So in the spirit of sharing you can go and listen to my highly embarassing and seriously-not-my-best and not-what-all–my-other-songs-are-like-at-all and if-anyone-I-know-finds-this-I’ll-die song on myspace. Go on, have a crafty listen.

Of course

Sonja — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:46:24 +0000

I didn’t make any resolutions this New Year, but I would like to do one of the courses run by Low Impact. They’re all held at interesting places like city farms all around the country. There’s plumbing, papermaking, mushroom growing, open source computing, and making natural cleaning products for the home. They’re not crazy expensive either. And they put a lot of their information online – their topics page is full of How To’s, so I’ll be going there next time I need to know how to build a house out of straw bales or install a compost toilet! Well, maybe just the natural cleaning products page for now…

Refill, not landfill

Sonja — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:45:00 +0000

Did you know that you can walk into any cafe, bar, pub, nightclub, in fact anywhere with a tap, and ask them to refill your bottle with tap water?

The first time I did this was in a Costa Coffee in Paddington Station – “please could you just fill this with tap water for me?” – and a lovely man did so and said something like “every little thing helps save the planet”. And he smiled.

I just used one bottle for a whole week in Amsterdam, getting it refilled at the bar on the ferry, at the sweetie counter in the cinema, in a cafe and lots of other places.

Nobody has ever refused to refill a bottle for me. Only once has someone done it grumpily (woman in Sheffield train station – shame on you!).

I haven’t yet crafted my own sandals from used bottles – maybe next summer… In the meantime I’ll carry on getting my bottle refilled wherever I go, for free, no extra packaging involved.

Farewell summer

Joelle — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:45:06 +0000

So, the nights are beginning to draw in, autumn fruits appearing, and the stupidly early arrival of chocolate advent calendars in the shops has startled me as it does every year. September has given us some lovely late summer weather, and London has been bustling with public events, farmers markets and fun. Here’s one of my favourite images of this English summer – Brighton Men’s Morris, jumping for joy on the South Bank.

For any readers overseas who haven’t come across this lovably silly English folk dance with its hankie waving and stick bashing, here’s a closer look at their jigging feet.

Living my dream

Joelle — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:55:30 +0000

I hold no desire to run away and join the circus. No, my secret escape plan would have to be to buy an old ice cream van. I’d paint it up pretty, fill it with fairy lights, soundtrack it with showtunes chimes, and travel far and wide, charming people with sweet stuff.

And it just so turns out that this summer Petra Barran is living my dream. With Jimmy the Choc Star van, she is touring the UK, trading chocolate desserts for dinner and a bed for the night with all sorts of friendly, foodie people. What a joyful way to spend the summer! She’s a proper chocolate expert too, producing ooooh the most perfect brownies, chocolate milkshakes, cupcakes, cookies and hot chocolates. This is heaven on wheels.

I caught up with her last weekend at London’s Slow Food Festival and enjoyed a strong shot of Venezualan hot chocolate and a devilishly good chocolate fudge brownie sundae. Oh yum!She’s coming to the end of her tour soon, and looking for invitations in London. Oh, I’m so sad that I lack a spare room and an ice cream van parking / charging space. Maybe you do?

www.chocstar.co.uk

Art day

Kirsty — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:13:05 +0000

Here I go, chatting on about my holiday again! It seems that our pretty surroundings got us all inspired and art occurred en masse. Well, I gave painting a go, but this picture proves that my strengths lie in yarn and words.

I had fun with my mini canvasses, but I think I had more fun with the plates that we mixed our acrylics on.

We decided that these plates were art in themselves – it’s a shame that we had to wash them.

Art or adventure playground?

Kirsty — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:00:10 +0000

Although more of the grounds of Sudeley Castle are open to the public than the actual house, I think that the gardens are far more interesting than yet another stuffy old castle. Sculptures and tactile art are dotted around the gardens, all of which warrant a closer look…

Not all of the installations are as scary as this lady, fortunately. These stairs are pretty creepy, though.

The most fun piece of ‘art’ that we encountered was definitely these mirrored half-spheres. There’s such a thrill in trampling all over something that you’re conditioned from childhood into not touching under any circumstances.

These are the two arty shots that I took; the rest of my pictures involve eight twenty-somethings jumping up and down and falling over. Then we ran down to the fort adventure playground complete with zip line. Ahem.

Jealous?

Kirsty — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:13:00 +0000

I’m back from my holiday in the Cotswolds and I’ve got lots of adventures and discoveries to share, but for now I just thought that I’d make you all jealous with some piccies of the idyllic log cabin on a lake that I stayed in with my hubby and six other friends.

The coin toss obviously liked us, as we got the bedroom with en-suite.

There were two other cabins on the lake, but they were situated so that you couldn’t see anybody else’s cabin from your own and it felt like you were the only person for miles around. It was so amazingly tranquil and wholesome – well, apart from the vast amounts of alcohol that we drank…

Art and about

Joelle — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:54:56 +0000

A couple of weekends ago, the husband and I set out to visit an art show with a difference. This was the fantastic street artist Slinkachu, who leaves tiny people getting on with their tiny lives around the city. There’s an exhibition at Cosh gallery in Soho, but on launch weekend the real excitement was in getting out and finding four tiny scenes set up on a treasure hunt around London.

These fellows above were protesting at the pagoda in China Town. Here’s the long shot that shows their tiny size.

Other tiny people that day were making tiny roadworks, having tiny picnics and cordoning off a tiny crime scene around a severed fingertip. There’s something real and human about these little people, I find them so arresting. I love the fact that this is street art that could be so easily missed. I think my favourites have to be his inner city snails. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find one by chance, slithering across the pavement?

It’s your last chance to catch the show at Cosh this week as it finishes on Saturday. (Cosh is at 69 Berwick Street, Soho, London, W1F 8SZ T. 020 7287 7758).

You could also check out Slinkachu’s brand new book or see more pics on his blog.