We usually pass through Mora, New Mexico, very early in the morning on our way home from the Taos Wool Festival. For the first time this year, I drove through Mora at exactly the right time to visit the tantalizing Tapetes de Lana (Carpets of Wool) gallery.
The walls of this large gallery are lined with hand-woven rugs, looms stand along one of the room, and the center is filled with hanks of yarn and handcrafts made by people who live around Mora.
Most of the rugs are woven in the subtle colors of natural wools and naturally-dyed wools. They looked timeless and elegant, but I was drawn to a rug in stripes of bright red, forest green, and yellow. The lady who was minding the gallery said with a smile, “That rug is made of acrylic yarn. Some of our ladies still prefer to shop at Walmart for their supplies.” I didn’t mind–sometimes I buy yarn at Walmart, too. And the colors–wow!
The gallery lady was Carla (she didn’t give me her last name), the founder of this non-profit organization. Tapetes de Lana and its associated mill help small ranches to bring their wool, mohair, and alpaca to the market. In addition, local craftsmen can sell their work in the gallery.
Carla offered to show me and two other customers around the mill. It was built within the last few years, from the ground up, with funding from a grant. The mill sometimes buys fiber from small ranches, but it also does custom millwork.
Our tour started just outside the door, where employees skirt the fleeces, picking away the badly soiled or felted areas. Inside we saw mechanical pickers which separate and loosen the fleeces, washing vats, and a tumble dryer that takes its own sweet time, spinning at one half revolution per minute (1/2 rpm).
The carder was at least 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, with multiple drums ranging from very coarse to very fine. It produced ropes of roving, which were fed into the spinning machine. The industrial plying machine was mesmerizing. I could have stood there watching it for a long time.
I think all the equipment in the mill was second-hand. The carder came from the bankruptcy sale of a well-known mill in North Carolina. Some other equipment was handed down from Brown Sheep Company, after they upgraded their mill in Nebraska. Go to the Tapetes web site to see pictures of this amazing collection.
“You must be very proud to know that you are responsible for all this,” I said to Carla when the tour was over.
“It was exciting at first, but then it turned into a lot of work,” said Carla. She looks forward to a day when it isn’t quite so intense, when everyone doesn’t have to multitask so much.
That day may come soon. Carla and her colleagues are developing a yarn that they hope yarn stores will want to stock. In the meantime, they sell small runs of yarn in the gallery, including special blends like alpaca/merino.
The lure of the shop’s soft alpaca blend yarns was strong, but the natural sheen of this indigo-dyed and natural Cotswold wool yarn was too much for me to resist.
If you’re driving on Highway 518 in New Mexico, I hope you’ll stop by Tapetes de Lana and the Mora Valley Spinning Mill. Or if you would like to buy or retail some unique yarns from fiber produced by small-business ranchers, please contact the Mill at:
Tapetes de Lana and the Mora Valley Spinning Mill
Highway 518, Junction 434
P O Box 1135
Mora, NM 87732