Tay-HE-doe
Tejido—that’s how you say “knit” in Spanish. Or tejido en punto. Despite having great grandparents (on my mother’s side) from the small, Portuguese island of Madeira, and despite proudly self-identifying as Afro-Portuguese, I actually do not speak very much Portuguese at all. (And I don’t know how to knit Portuguese-style either.) In fact, I fell in love with the Spanish language during my freshmen year of high school and continued formally studying it all the way through grad school. I really can’t explain it, but I’ve always been a word nerd for English (I think etymology was always my favorite part of English class), and learning Spanish just ignited another level of my love for language.
Madeira, Portugal (Photo credit: Unsplash)
That love for the language grew into a love for the culture—all aspects of it. I was still in high school when I took my first trip to Spain. I spent two summers studying abroad, once in Spain and another time in Peru (where I even briefly studied Quechua). During undergrad, I lived in a special interest community called the Global Village. My dormmates and I made up the many personalities in a house called La Casa Hispánica (The Spanish House), which gave students who shared a love of the Spanish language and culture an immersive opportunity to integrate learning into daily living. We had class together, went on trips, and held events on campus. It was in La Casa that I began to weave friendships that I still have to this day. Since school has ended, I have had the pleasure of working for a global translation company for more than 11 years. And while I don’t work as a translator, I occasionally get to travel to Spain for work. When I’m there, I always try to soak in what I can. Spain is one of my favorite places (so far) on earth. I have certainly left a piece of my heart there and hope to retire there one day in the future.
In my travels, I’ve had the incredible, sometimes once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to connect with so many people, eat all kinds of foods, and have a wide array of experiences that I could not have had just from cracking open a textbook. Traveling with friends made it that much more special.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (or Latinx Heritage Month), I wanted to take this month’s blog post to share a bit of my connection with the hispanoparlante (Spanish-speaking) community. I also wanted to learn some new things and bring you along with me. To start, check out some of the above photos for links with more information about some of the places I’ve traveled. (Also, there’s a cute baby alpacas…in case you scrolled too quickly 😉).
After you’ve checked out some of the links above, let’s play a game. There is a really great site with extensive knitting & crochet vocabulary, and I’ve used some of the terms in the below word search. This takes me back to Spanish 1 class. You won’t need to bust out note cards for this game, I promise! But hopefully, after playing, you’ll have learned some new words that you may have not known before. All you have to do is select and drag the letters to find the words. See how many you can get! (It may not do well on mobile devices.)
Well, I hope you got all the words! And if not, I hope you had fun! Don’t worry if you didn’t, you still get to find out what they mean.
AGUJAS = needles
ALPACA = South American mammal whose soft hair is used for yarn
BOBO = garter stitch (easiest type of stitch)
COLOR = color!
HILO = yarn
LANA = wool
LINO = linen
PUNTADA = stitches
TEJER = knitting
TRIGO = moss/seed stitch (a beautifully textured stitch)
Because the art of knitting and other fiber arts (such as weaving) are such a deep part of Latin-American culture, it’s important to recognize its roots in places such as South America. In fact, for more than 500 years, it’s been the Andean men who have done the knitting in a small community on Lake Titicaca. And while the men in Peru are busy maintaining the tradition of demonstrating their skill and expressing their status on the dating circuit, others, like Omaira Bastos, are making their mark in the knitting community in their own way.
Omaira, backed by the support of UNICEF, teaches children to knit through the ‘Knitters of Peace’ project. In a world where people are still fighting for basic human rights on a daily basis, Omaira is an instrument for change. If you read last month’s blog post, Knittherapy, you’ll have seen the many benefits of knitting. Like some of those benefits, this project provides a safe environment for migrants experiencing difficulty.
And, there are just so many Latinx makers leaving their maker’s mark via social media, changing the landscape of the modern knitting scene, creating a more diverse, more colorful, more vibrant, more expressive and unique world of creativity. It’s necessary to see representation in all fields, and handmade arts is no exception.
So whether you’re traveling, doing humanitarian work, or supporting makers by buying their art, always take a moment to make a connection and appreciate that maker’s story.
BTW, how cute are these Frida Kahlo stitch markers from La Serena Tejera!?!?