Our Ceremonial Calendar

One of the tools which our ancestors have handed down to us is a ceremonial calendar of 260 days. Each of these days is unique, pairing a day-name with a number. There are 20 different day-names and there are 13 different numbers, resulting in 260 unique days. The 20 different day-names refer to energies, which we also call nawals. Each nawal, or energy, works in different ways. Our spiritual guides have studied the meanings of the nawals and can help us understand the energy that comes with each day. This can help us in making plans or understanding the challenges that we might face. For example, today is 10 K’at. K’at is the nawal for “net,” “web,” or “fire”. It symbolizes existence and initiative. It is a day to create a safety net, seek like-minded organizations or people (network), free our thinking (disentangle) or prepare for new activities. The “net” could be a fishing net, a net to hold our harvested corn, our memory, or it could mean a tangle of problems. It is also the essence of fire, so it could be a day to disentangle problems as well. Nowadays not all of us consider our ceremonial calendar in our daily life, but it does offer us a way to think about each day to help us meet its challenges. Below you will see the symbol for K'at.

Our New Industrial Sewing Machine

You might think that going from pedal sewing machines to industrial sewing machines might be hard…well, it is! But we have purchased our first industrial sewing machine, a Juki 5500, to help us consistently sew high quality products. We learned to sew on our pedal machines, and they are quite useful during our frequent power outages, but they really are temperamental when it comes to thread tension and give us lots of headaches. Actually, our Juki is not so very complicated, little by little we are getting used to the speed. We are going to keep practicing on scraps until we feel confident. Our first product with the new machine is going to be machine-quilted baby blankets. With that, we will be masters of our new machine, for sure.

MayaMam Weavers at Bonnaroo – A Really Good Time

With lots of help from our friends from the Pulsera Project , we were at Bonnaroo last weekend. For those of you not in the know, it is a vibrant four-day music festival that takes place each year in Tennessee. (Bonnaroo comes from New Orleans slang meaning “a really good time.”) And, the Pulsera Project brought our headbands with them to sell. They had asked us to weave a new style of headband, much narrower, which we gladly did. Both styles of headbands were a hit at Bonnaroo and they sold out! Thank you, Pulsera Project! We had a really good time!

Introducing Our New Compañera

We are pleased to introduce Trish McLaughlin to you. Trish has joined us – fresh from college as you can see -- to help us develop the market for us in the USA. She studied fashion and costume design in school, and will be helping us design our products. Now we can present a more professional “face” in the US since she will be able to respond to orders and inquiries in a timely way. She has already begun reorganizing our little office. Her first big project is creating a web site for us, but you will begin to see her work as we present new products over the coming months. And we look forward to her visiting us in Cajola in the near future, too. Bienvenida, Trish!