Greetings from the Mountains of Bogotá!

Name: Kaitlyn

Date: May 20

Current Location: Bogotá, Colombia

Hello from Bogotá, Colombia!

It’s been a quiet month here in the mountains. Bogotá is a lovely city, and this is a beautiful time of year to be here. Cool, breezy, and sunny, I’ve been taking long walks around the neighborhood and exploring all the local shops and restaurants. Admittedly, that is a larger ask that expected, as this city is at ~8000 ft, so the altitude is much thinner than I’m used to. Hopefully my lungs come out of this experience stronger!

The street names tend to reflect the amount of suffering you’ll feel walking up it.

There are a large number of mercerías, which sell all sorts of sewing, textile, and crafting supplies. Most of them have their yarn and threads behind glass, so there’s no wandering around a store petting all the soft skeins of yarn, unfortunately. It’s good practice for my Spanish, though, as I have to indicate the exact number of the color of embroidery thread, which has been quite the mental exercise.

I did find one yarn store that is set up in a style more akin to LYS in North America and Europe. It’s called Entrelanas (not to be confused with a large number of other yarn shops also called ‘Entrelanas’), on Calle 53, north of Centro. The store is small, but beautifully arranged, and has a number of comfy couches where they regularly host all sorts of crafting classes – knitting, crochet, amigurumi, a dozen different styles of embroidery, cross stitch, and more! If you’re passing through Bogotá, definitely look them up!

I bought some beautiful yarn while I was there: some delightfully squishy 75% merino which will be turned into a sweater, and some 100% cotton which will be perfect for a shawl pattern that’s been sitting around waiting for me to get to it.

Finished Projects

Snowflakes (ongoing)

Snowflakes continue apace!

Current WIPs:

Jaunty Skirt

Folks, we have reached the second color! Proof that I’m actually making progress! It’s weird how, the moment I stopped knitting with black yarn and used a lighter color, I felt like I was going faster…

Otomi Sampler

I splurged on a bunch of colorful threads at a local mercería, and have traced a couple of typical Otomi bird patterns. Two are done, and I’m working on a third. I’m planning to add flowers and animals into the border sections once this last bird is complete.

Up Next:

My next update will be from Rio de Janeiro, where I will be spending TWO GLORIOUS months right on the beach!

❤