Two Stops Past Siberia

So, as promised, I’ve been hopping from village to village this past week. I have now officially seen countless shyrdaks in all stages of production.

See folks, now is really the shyrdak making time. During the winter these farm folk have a lot of time on their hands. During the summer and fall they prepare thick felt for these shyrdaks, and in the winter they draw out their designs, cut them up, and then stitch them all together. This makes winter a wonderful time to visit their workshops. (for a discussion of production timing out here, check this out)

Shyrdak workshops are all kinds of colorful. From delightfully complimentary schemes to the most garish collections of neon colors, shyrdaks come in all shapes and sizes. There are little 1×2 foot doormats, longer runners, and room sized monsters. The largest one we saw was still in pieces, but the women claimed it would be 10 square meters! Meters! That’s nuts!

The women who work them are damn proud of their skill, and delight in showing it off. They’ll pull out same after sample, and then pull out some string and needles to look busy while I take pictures.

The designs are traditionally symmetrical curly things, and every one is an abstraction of something – from people to parties to mountains to eagles, shyrdaks have everything. My favorites, however, are the designs that update traditional designs, ones that take chances. One of my favorites was round, blue and yellow, about 4 feet in diameter, and featured a snow leopard in the middle with a black and white border of waves. The woman who made it was a shyrdak teacher in the local school, and had never sold a single thing; she just made them ‘cause she loved them.

Our work was to identify needs, and report them to the local university, to inform a course we’ve organized. But along with that, we’re just learning what these communities have to offer, and how we can help them. In one village, we met the only woman in the whole rayon who had a foot powered spinning wheel. Unfortunately, it was twenty years old, and the carpenter who made it long gone. In the next village over, however, we stumbled upon a man trained in wood work who said he’d made them years ago, and without pictures and video, could probably fashion a new one. Along with our expressed work, it is these kind of happenstance developments that can make some of the most valuable improvements.

But it hasn’t been all work and no play here in Sunny Naryn. After fifteen weeks of preparation, the local schools all competed in a fashion show sponsored by some university students. I had agreed to let one of these organizers borrow my camera, but when I arrived to give it to her, she informed me I was going to be a judge. See, the prizes, 3 giant teddy bears, 3 rugs and 1 television, garnered so much interest last year, the judges were bribed and everyone got upset. That meant, along with looking for the incorruptible, in Kyrgy Carl, they found their very own surly, foreign Simon Cowell ready to take the helm.