Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

First things first: Lexi is here! Her plane got in safely this afternoon, and she hit the hay early after getting hydrated, napping, making a trip to the grocery store, hydrating some more and eating dinner. Meanwhile, a little update on who's in the workshop...

At our weekly Wednesday meeting, more old faces were present, along with some new:

Andrea, the head knitter, is in the workshop every day, rain or shine...

... and is usually joined by Victoria (and Frida and Sebastiana who were in the cuy post).

Maria José has returned after finishing work at another site,

and Marleni is back after some time out sick.

Epifania and Graciela are hardly ever seen without their knitting needles...

...while Uldárica, Amelia and Toribia are always ready for a good time.

After being away for several months, dear Señora María, the weaver who includes her initials in every item she creates, finally showed up on Wednesday sporting new glasses.

Newer faces include Hilaria (here studying a new English phrase)...

Valvina, who has started teaching me Aymara (Kamisaraki? Waliki. -- How are you? I'm fine.)...

Antonia...

...and her daugher -- and future Ñaña -- Jessica, shown here modeling one of the chullos for Richard's order:

Others continued to trickle in after the camera had been put away, but, knowing that Lexi would be here in a couple days, I was getting a little nervous that I still hadn't seen many of the knitters who work on the hand-powered machines in the workshop, since that will be a large chunk of the work for the Chiri collection.

So Friday, after Richard's order was finished, we started going down the list of old names to start reassembling our team. It felt like one of those montage scenes from a caper movie where all of the old accomplices are tracked down at their current gigs then brought in for another big job.

Frida and I hiked up the hill to pay a visit to Rocío, who has been working for another business in town and runs a small corner store on the side, and she was excited to begin working on new designs and promised to come by the workshop on Monday. I ran into Meri at a sponsorship meeting on Saturday, and she had, as Andrea suspected, been traveling this past month but was also ready to get started again on Monday. Rocío called Betsi, who came up to the workshop later Friday afternoon and will be on call, and the two of them often see Juana, Verónica and Karmela, so they will try to send them our way as well.

Our team more or less assembled, now comes the next step: samples of all the new designs, which will be followed -- we hope! -- by enough orders to keep everyone busy this spring and summer.