Running, eating, shooting, knitting, crocheting – work it!

You might think I’m a bit mental but this morning I woke up at 7AM to go jogging in downtown Ayacucho. Normally Griet was going to join, we even went to the local market to buy some fake Nike’s, but after a couple of nightmares of a jog session with LN| she decided to just sleep a little more. Hihi. So off I went, but not alone… I bumped into a huge group of teenagers who had ‘gym’ class the first hour of school. They were running around the ‘main square’ too, so I just squeezed right in! Hilarious! No more than 5km though, running at an altitude of 2700m…

After a cold shower we went for the biggest breakfast ever, in the sun! A huge portion of Smacks with yoghurt, a juice of 1l and a fruit bowl of 1kg later, we were ready for the day! Off to DIA for a meeting with the‘tejadoras’, the knitting and crocheting teachers. They teach the other girls and ladies how to make the items. New next winter are LN|Andes vests. They will be made in Peru as well. ‘Piece of cake’, they said. They are such pros…!

That’s the thing… In Peru knitting & crocheting is a big part of their local life style. On every street corner you see ladies knitting, it’s the most normal thing in the world. When I was knitting beanies on the bus, in bars, at school, a couple of years ago, people thought I was mental (yes again!). Knitting is just cool! The Peruvians know it! As said before me and Griet would like to focus more on the product, the baby alpaca yarn, and on the importance of the knitting and crocheting itself. That’s why today we went to 5 ladies & girls their homes to see what the importance is of their knit- & crochet work. Beautiful to see.

In between the work at DIA and the home visits me and Griet took a first shot at shooting some ofnew collection LN|Andes winter 2013-2014 items. With hardly any styling, make-up, or what so ever, we managed to make some very very nice shots! We went to the local market for juices (again, yes), strolled around, sign talked to locals (no habla espagnol…), … The result of all the shoots will be for the final blog post. We still plan to shoot at the Alpaca farmers tomorrow, on the street on motorcycles, … Stay tuned!

Tomorrow we’re heading to the farmers and we will also spent the night there, so no blog post tomorrow! But one killer of a post on Monday morning, when you are all still a little bit in a weekend vibe…

Have a lovely cold winter weekend; hopefully your LN|Beanies or LN|Andes will keep you warm!

Love,

LN