Our Tours

Demetrio Lazo displays a wool rug dyed with cochineal in Teotitlan del Valle

Natural Dyes of the Oaxacan Highlands Workshop - offered in partnership with Abundant Yarns of Portland, Oregon

January 24 - February 2, 2009
(For tour price and other information, please see the Trip Details sidebar on this page)

Get your hands in the dye pot working with master dyers to learn their methods of dyeing wool with cochineal, indigo and other dyes in the Oaxaca highlands.

We’ll take a field trip into the Sierra and collect barks, mosses, oak gals, wild chamomile and other plants that we’ll then bring back to the workshop and play with. Oaxaca was once a large producer of indigo and we’ll also dabble in the blues, learning how it is used by the weavers of Teotitlan.

Our journey will also take us into the Sierra Madre to visit one of the last two silk cultivating villages in Mexico. We’ll see how the villagers cultivate, hand spin, dye and weave their silk. There will also be opportunities to visit some of the ruined Zapotec palaces and temples in the Oaxaca valley, meet weavers in Teotitlan, visit a village of support spindle wool spinners and explore the fabulous new National Textile Museum in Oaxaca. 

This tour is similar to the “Murex, Cochineal, and Indigo! Oaxaca Natural Dye Workshop” but does not head to the Coast of Oaxaca for the Murex dyeing portion of this workshop.

About Stevanie: She has a passion for color that has turned experimental skeins with friend and Abundant Yarn owner, Heather Saal, into an exclusive line of naturally dyed fibers. With an adventurous spirit she has worked to create communities of fiber artists who share her sense of fun and creativity.  Stevanie has crafted many a perceived knitting disaster into a fruitful learning experience through her knowledge and wit.

Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks has offered fibers, natural dyes and mordant, yarns, notions, books, patterns and community in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland for the last 3 years.  Featuring an indoor natural dyeworks, more than 33,000 skeins of yarn and the Busy Bee Café, it is the perfect place to meet up with friends or relax and knit.

Itinerary
(B, L, D) = breakfast, lunch, dinner included)

Stone tools are still used to process the cochineal dye

Day 1, Saturday (D).  Our first group meeting will be at 6 pm today at our hotel, where we will introduce ourselves, talk about the upcoming trip and then head out to dinner. Oaxaca (OAX) international airport is your port of entry.

Day 2, Sunday (B,L,D).  We dive in! First stop is the swirling Sunday market of Tlacolula where we begin our journey, a perfect place to get a quick infusion of the smells, tastes and sights of Zapotec Oaxaca. Then we head into the backcountry, traveling to a small village where most of the women spin wool on support spindles as a sideline occupation. We will visit with one of these women to see her amazing proficiency with the spindle. Here you will have the opportunity to buy handspun wool to dye if you choose.  Then we travel to the mega weaving village of Teotitlan del Valle and to the home and hostel of our host and dye teacher, Demetrio Bautista Lazo (http://www.teotitlan.com/). We will settle into our simple and clean rooms with shared bath, built around the patio of this Zapotec weaver’s home and begin to get to know our bilingual, charismatic and extremely skilled dye master.

Day 3, Monday (BLD). This morning we travel into the Sierra Madre which rises directly behind Teotitlan and spend the morning learning about and collecting different kinds of dye plants such as wild chamomile, mosses, etc. We’ll have lunch in a mountain village eatery before returning the valley and preparing our wool for dyeing. Evening in Teotitlan.

Days 4-5, Tuesday-Wed (B,L,D).  These 2 days will be spent working with cochineal, indigo and additional dyes. Demetrio will lead us through and explain processes for different dyes and variants. We will dye small batches, working with a variety of ingredients and combinations with the goal of giving you a solid foundation in the basics of dyeing, or expanding on your existing knowledge with these ingredients that you can then take home and build upon. We recommend bringing a variety of yarns from home to see how different yarns take the dye. Time and energy allowing we may spend a couple of afternoons visiting a couple of the wonderful nearby archaeological sites.  We will be eating good Zapotec home cooking prepared by Demetrio’s wife and meet other members of his family as we enjoy the special opportunity of being part of a Zapotec household. Evenings in Teotitlan.

A variety of plants are used as dye sources

Day 6, Thursday  (B, L, D). We’ll let the dye pots rest this morning and travel up into the 9,000 foot high Sierra Madre and through the pine, oak and agave forests to the ridge top Zapotec village of San Miguel Cajonos where we’ll meet a collective of silk cultivators, spinners and dyers. In 1530 silk was king in Southern Mexico, but the boom died out by 1600 and today there are only two remote regions where silk is still cultivated. This is one of them. We’ll learn the story and see how these artisans work with this fine thread. There will be an opportunity to purchase gorgeous, hand spun silk shawls. But be prepared, a tremendous amount of work goes into creating these shawls and they are not cheap! In the afternoon we’ll return to Oaxaca valley and our lodge. Evening in Teotitlan.

Day 7, Friday (B, L).  This is our final day of dyeing and we’ll make the best of it, finishing off our dyeing and putting together our sample books with notes of what we’ve done and the rainbow of colors of what we’ve achieved  with our hard work. In the afternoon we’ll bid farewell to Demetrio and head to Oaxaca city where we’ll settle in for the rest of the trip. Evening in Oaxaca city.

Day 8, Saturday (L).  Enjoy an open morning to explore this beautiful, ancient city. We will meet up for lunch and visit two textile museums. The first is the brand new National Textile Museum housed in a restored colonial house. And then, mouths watering at all the fine weaving we’ve seen, we’ll go to a second textile “museum,” Los Baules de Juana Cata, which is in fact a retail shop, but the place where museums and collectors from around the world come to buy the best of Oaxacan textiles for their collections. There is no better place, indeed there is no other place, to see the range of high quality indigenous textiles currently being woven in the state. Evening in Oaxaca.

Day 9, Sunday (B,L,D). This morning we head back to Teotitlan to visit the weavers we didn’t get to meet while we were so busy dyeing. We’ll visit a couple of households to see some of the variety that is being woven here. We’ll also visit a place where cochineal is being cultivated and learn about the process behind this fabulous red dye. A family in Teotitlan will prepare us a tasty, homemade meal and perhaps coerce you into making the tortillas. Time allowing we’ll also visit a house where ceremonial beeswax candles are made and we’ll take a peek at the whitewashed colonial church in the center of town (sitting on top of what were once the Zapotec temples of this village!). In the afternoon we return to Oaxaca, wash up and head out on the town for our final dinner together.  Evening in Oaxaca.