HONDURAS THREADS: A LOOM OVER THE HORIZON

A LOOM OVER THE HORIZON BILL BANCROFT, Honduras Threads

It was picked up by an Intercargo Express truck. Placed in a container. Trucked to Houston. Put on board a ship. Unloaded in Honduras at the Puerto Cortez docks. Passed through customs without a hitch (gracias a Dios). Trucked to Tegucigalpa. Delivered to Reva. Patty Reyes de Fajardo who will hold on to it until the COVID-19 virus subsides, and the women of Honduras Threads can leave their houses to take it to rural El Cruce outside Tegucigalpa where they will set it up.

The “it” is a loom. A used handweaver’s loom Honduras Threads acquired so its Honduran artisan members can weave fabric to turn into embroidered shawls. Like those that sold like hotcakes a year and a half ago until fabric the women were using was all gone.

It would seem to be easy to acquire fabric to make Honduras Threads shawls. But bear with me for a minute. A couple of years ago, Honduras Threads leader M’Lou Bancroft decided to augment the Threads product line with the shawls and went in search of fabric made in Honduras. The indigenous Lenca, like the Maya, had a tradition of handweaving. That tradition died out until some years ago when the Honduran government started a program to revive it.

Perhaps a dozen men and women in rural areas high up in the Department of Intibuca about four hours west of Tegucigalpa via dusty, dirt roads took the government up on training. They acquired primitive looms and both cotton and wool thread. They turned out fabric perfect for shawls and at a reasonable price. Intibuca (pronounced in-tee-book-a) weavers,

however, were “discovered” by the Honduran First Lady Ana Garcia de Hernandez. So the weavers, knowing a good thing when they saw it, quadrupled their prices and held on to their finished goods for Sra. Ana. Repeated pleading with the weavers did no help. And Threads needed more shawls to sell. So over dinner on the Threads mission trip last fall in a Tegucigalpa restaurant, the crazy idea was born that Threads artisan members could weave the fabric themselves. As it turns out the largest group of Lenca in Central America, more than 100,000, are Hondurans. Several Honduras Threads embroiderers are Lenca. And to a person, they were enthusiastic about learning how to weave.

Back in Dallas, Threads contacted the Dallas Handweavers and Spinners Guild. Two of their leaders, Christine Miller and Cate Buchanan, jumped in to help acquire the used loom, repair it, test thread and patterns on it, dress it and get it ready for shipping. Cate would join the April mission trip to Honduras to deliver three days of training.

And then COVID-19 hit. And the loom, still in its crate, is now a significant piece of décor in Reva. Patty’s house.

The plan is to pick up where we left off with a mission trip in the early Fall of 2020. It is also to continue

DID YOU KNOW?

LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE LITURGY

THE PRINCIPAL KINDS OF PRAYER

The principal kinds of prayer include adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition. (see BCP, pp. 856-857, and individual entries for each of the principal kinds of prayer).