Field Study in Guatemala City

June 5, 2018June 5, 2018 | Verónica

The capstone assignment for the MBA program was a team-based global business project. For our project, our client was a private equity firm that invests in companies with growth potential primarily in Latin America. Our charge was to develop a country expansion strategy for one of the companies in their portfolio. To accomplish this, we spent a week in Guatemala conducting a field study. We interviewed key stakeholders – the CEO, CFO, clients, partners, third-party administrators, vendors and others in their supply chain. It was an immersive week where we learned a tremendous amount and were able to apply the concepts learned in our MBA courses.

My husband accompanied me on the trip and we arrived in Guatemala City a day early so that we could take in some of the sights before my busy week began. Here are my impressions of Guatemala City.

First, there’s the foliage. The city is lush and green, and the leaves are huge!

These are the very large leaves of a monstera deliciosa (otherwise known as the swiss cheese plant).

My husband and I stayed at a lovely boutique hotel called La Inmaculada. The ambience, service and food were wonderful. I took these photos in the inner hotel courtyard where we had most of our meals. The rooms were not as fancy as some of the big-name hotels, but they were clean and had everything we could possibly need.

Guatemala is renowned for its coffee – and it was delicious. We drank freshly ground coffee in the courtyard every day. Here, a late-night craving for sweets – a warm latte paired with fried plantain covered with cinnamon and a dab of fresh cream.

We took an excursion to the Mercado de Artesanias La Aurora, a beautiful arts and crafts market next to a rose garden. We practically had the place to ourselves.

Coffee beans growing in the garden.

At the market, we were overwhelmed with colors and textures from all the hand-woven textiles and crafts.

We bought this little hacky-sack turtle for our puppy. It didn’t last long. I managed to get it away from him before he destroyed it. Now the turtle is missing one leg.

We brought home several textiles including these cloths to place in a basket with bread or tortillas.

This queen size textile will serve as a light, cool bedspread during the summer.

One of my favorite parts of travelling is street food, and Guatemala did not disappoint. There were snow cone vendors all over the main plaza in the historic district. I had one with tamarindo and pineapple – yum!

The smell of freshly baked bread permeated the air.

As we walked through the historic district, families outside a church were selling these handmade tamales. I did not resist.

This gentleman was leading his goats through the downtown area. For a few quetzales, you could have a fresh cup of warm goat’s milk.

Dinner consisted of a chicken breast covered in an exquisite cream sauce with loroco – a wild vine of edible flowers. Restaurant: Café Kacao. My husband’s meal was smothered with an anacate cream sauce. Anacates, or chanterelle mushrooms, were in season. One night, I had a traditional mole dish.

You can’t visit a country in Latin America without visiting churches. The baroque Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint James dominates the city center.

That particular Sunday was the feast day of Santo Domingo. My husband and I joined the jubilant procession through the streets.

A few blocks over we passed Rectoria Santa Clara, a Catholic Church in the historic district. Construction of the church was completed in 1734.

The streets had so much character.

During the week, while I was busy with the field study, my husband took a side trip to Santiago Atitlán, one of several Mayan villages surrounding beautiful Lake Atitlán. Lake Atitlán is in the Guatemalan Highlands at an elevation of 5,105 feet (1,556 meters). Three volcanoes are situated around the lake.

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Part of the reason my husband selected Santiago Atitlán was to visit Cojolya for me. Cojolya is a cooperative of 30 artisans, 25 of whom are women, who weave beautiful and intricate textiles using the traditional back-strap loom. My husband took a photograph of one of the women, descendants of the Mayans, weaving a vibrant textile.

While the women weave on the back-strap loom, the men weave on large foot looms.

My husband said he had a great time talking with the weavers. He also enjoyed the serenity of the town by the lake surrounded by mountains. Being the amazing husband that he is, he brought me back these items he personally selected – a gorgeous scarf hand embroidered with local birds, an intricately woven catch-all bag, and an exquisite blue woven scarf. He bought them straight from the women who created them – what a treat!

I had scheduled this post before I heard the news of the volcano erupting near Guatemala City. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones.

Tracking my Stash

May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 | Verónica

For a long time, I used an app to keep track of my needles, my yarn, and works in progress. But twice now, the apps I’ve used – and paid for – stopped being supported. Any time I tried to add a new yarn or needle, the apps would crash. I needed an alternative and preferred a digital solution that I could access anytime, anywhere.

Many knitters and crocheters use Ravelry – I too have an account – but I found their desktop interface too convoluted and their app even more so. I searched for other knitting apps in the App Store but mostly found online counters and not the comprehensive digital tool I was looking for. Then, it hit me. I’ve been using Evernote for some time now. I use it to track information that I need to have handy but may not need every day, such as my mom’s prescription list. I use it to jot down blog ideas, which is what it was intended for – to take quick notes, write drafts, capture thoughts. If I see or read something that interests me that I want to explore further, I can take a screen capture, upload a photo, or copy a link into a note and add my own commentary. I can then go back through my notes and decide which ideas I want to pursue. So, it occurred to me that I could use Evernote to track my yarn stash and needle inventory. It has all the basic fields I need and much more functionality than any knitting app. There is the added benefit that Evernote is available in a desktop version for when I want a large screen and has phone and iPad apps. Even better, all my notes are automatically synchronized across all platforms.

In Evernote, you can take and track notes on anything. You can create notebooks to keep all your related notes together if you like. I created a “stack” for notes having to do with my blog. I have eight notebooks in my stack. This organization works for me, but you don’t have to make notebooks or stacks if you don’t want to.

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In my Yarn Stash notebook, I uploaded a photo of every gorgeous yarn in my possession.

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I entered basic data about each yarn – name, brand, weight, fiber type, yardage, color, and where it was purchased. This is all the same information I entered into the Vogue Knitting app which I lost when the app kept crashing. It did require a one-time manual effort to type up all my notes, but now that they’re entered, I can copy or export my data anytime. I couldn’t do that with the app. Here’s what a full-page note looks like.

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You can also add tags that allow you to filter your notes. You define the tags that make the most sense for your notes. For example, I used a filter to find all the self-striping yarn in my stash. Apparently, I have six kinds of self-striping yarn.

You can run a regular “Search” for any words in your notes without having to create a tag. A search for “Bulky” found 15 notes.

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I didn’t stop there. I entered notes on my Fiber Stash as well. Now I can search for specific fibers, like merino, yak and alpaca, or search by color.

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I also created a Fabric Stash …

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… and started a listing of all the Yarn Shops I’ve visited.

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And, since I did not want to risk losing all my information on needle sizes and kinds (dpn, circular, straight), I entered them into an Excel spreadsheet and uploaded it into a note. Now, if I don’t have the size needles I need and purchase a new set, I simply update the Excel spreadsheet and all my information is automatically synchronized on my Evernote apps and on the desktop version.

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Now I have all the information I need about my needles, yarn, fibers and fabrics. Evernote is a free app which gives you 60MB of data per month. I have Evernote Premium ($69.99/year) because I thought I would need more space when I started my MBA program. You may not need the extra space.

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FO Friday: Born Trippy Scarf

May 11, 2018May 11, 2018 | Verónica

Mostly to release tension during my MBA program, I started knitting a scarf. It took a long time because I only worked on it in short spurts. But the motion of the needles and the fusion of the colors gave me something to focus on besides case studies on Starbucks and Amazon.

I found this amazing free pattern called Born Trippy on the Hedgehog Fibres site. I liked that the samples used all sorts of funky color combinations and it had cool uneven edges. I started with a lovely skein I had gotten at Homespun Boutique during one of my MBA residencies in Ithaca. This is Serenity Silk Single, a fingering weight yarn from Zen Yarn Garden: 430 yards, 75% Superwash Merino / 15% Cashmere / 10% Silk in Fr. Vanilla Blurple (bottom ball).

Then I went through my stash and looked for complementary and contrasting colors. This is what I came up with:

Leftover yarn from Copenhagen (the shimmery solid blue and gray): Duo Silk/Merino from Design Club DK, 65% Merino Wool / 35% Silk.
A partial skein of Fine Sock yarn (the minty blue-green): Spud & Chloe, 80% Superwash Wool / 20% Silk in Color 7806 / Calypso.
Another purchase from Homespun Boutique (yellow/green variegated): Ty-Dy Socks from KNIT ONE, Crochet Too, 436 yards, 80% Superwash Wool / 20% Nylon.

Here’s a close-up of the Ty-Dy ball.

As I made progress on the scarf, I introduced the variegated yellows and greens, the solid blue and gray, and the minty blue-green. It all flowed nicely and those uneven ends were easy to make.

It’s important to block this piece so that the ends are nice and sharp.

Here is the FO (finished object) with its refreshing colors in the sun.

Someone wanted to hang out with me while I took the photos.

I am very pleased with the fusion of the colors.

The combination of wool, cashmere and silk give the scarf a lovely drape.

This is a great pattern to use when you have a single skein and leftover yarns in the same weight. You can repurpose those bits and pieces and make something beautiful.

Goal Accomplished!

May 9, 2018May 9, 2018 | Verónica

If you follow my blog, you may recall that I started an Executive MBA program in the Summer of 2016. I am happy to report that this past February, I submitted my final assignment and graduate this May! It took me almost 20 years, but I finally accomplished a goal I’ve had for a long time. It’s never too late to refresh and sharpen your skills. If you are interested, I was interviewed for an article on why I chose to do an MBA at this stage of my career. A student currently in their first year of the program was also interviewed.

Here I am with my cohort.

As you might imagine, the MBA curriculum left little to no time for blogging or knitting. Nonetheless, I did sneak in a few skeins here and there. On a trip to Austin to see my son (who is an undergraduate there), I went in search of my fave LYS (local yarn store) which had moved to a new location. Hill Country Weavers was formerly housed in a quaint Victorian on a hip strip on South Congress. After visiting my boy, my husband drove me to their new location at 4102 Manchaca Road, Austin, Texas 78704. It’s a much larger space than what they had previously and with the same incredible selection of gorgeous yarns.

I had seen enticing photos of FOs (that’s finished objects for the uninitiated) using yarns from Hedgehog Fibers, but I had never purchased any. After walking around their new digs, I headed over to the Hedgehog Fibers section and ogled all the color combinations. Even though I would not have time to do anything with it, I purchased this lovely skein. It’s called Boombox and it’s 437 yards of fingering weight yarn made of 90% Superwash Merino Wool and 10% Nylon for a bit of stretch.

I also could not resist this Sock Mini in Banana Legs yellow. It’s 87 yards of the same soft 90% Superwash Merino / 10% Nylon and perfect for adding a splash of color.

I haven’t decided what these beauties will become but I’m looking forward to wrapping my fingers in this yarn and going at it with my needles.

Spurts of Knitting

July 4, 2017 | Verónica

Somehow between running multivariate regressions, drawing supply and demand curves, case studies and five forces analyses, I found time to knit.

The projects took longer to complete as I fit in spurts of knitting between exams and assignments. These socks started out at Mom’s house so it was fitting that they be for her.

This is the first time I used a Schoppel Crazy Zauberball and what a joy it was to knit. The colorway is Papagei (parrot). The colors flowed into each other languorously. Row by row, the transitions morphed into rich textured colors.

Knitting these socks was like a process of discovery wondering what the next color combination would look like.

These were a labor of love knitted in small spurts. The time out from school was like a special treat, like smoking cigarettes behind the gym between classes.

Mom loved them. She called to tell me she put them on as soon as she opened the package. Her feet were cold and she was trying to get comfortable. From my hands to her feet. Feet that paced the floor while she held me in her arms, scurried around the kitchen while she prepared dinner and which stayed firmly planted while she scolded me for some childhood transgression.

I didn’t tell her they were in the mail. I could almost see her ripping the package open wondering what was in it. I hope she wears huge holes in them.