We did it!!!

It was four days of fairly intense effort all around the beautiful Casa de Melgar hotel in Arequipa: the gourd engravers burned holes into their clothes making charcoal, the machine embroidery and tapestry students got acheing hips and sore eyes, and the hand embroiderers had stiff fingers and stitch (from laughing).


But at 5pm on Friday we were finally assembled around the fruits of our labour - including my own little embroidered bag, of which I'm inordinately proud, having never tried my hand at embroidery before.


There was a real sense of celebration as all the teachers and students gathered to view tapestries, gourds and embroidery: I think we were all very aware of just how much we owed to the skilled help and great patience of our teachers, but it seemed everyone had also achieved something they had not felt capable of before, and we all glowed!