From The Archives: 10.21.2019

An article salvaged from the archives of my previous blog. Originally posted on October 21st, 2019

My craft projects tend to balloon. The problem is that I know how to do it right, and I hate having to do it wrong.

I need a shawl for flamenco. I have some practice things, but I need a real one to use for shows, on the assumption that if I've been at this long enough to buy real shoes I'm probably going to end up doing it on stage. The customary ones, mantones de manila, are made of embroidered Chinese silk brought in through the Philippines. The nice ones can run north of $300, which is not going to happen. The simple student ones made of acetate and polyester satin are about $100, which I could probably do eventually, but would rather not if I can help it.

I did some math and raw materials would run me $30-35. I can do that, probably. I know where the fabric store is, I know where to get hoops, and I know how to embroider things, technically, although I spend more time darning clothes I don't want to replace than I do decorating things with thread. I decided to splurge a bit and gave Amazon a whole $8 to get a set of six nested embroidery hoops, which will take care of all of my embroidery needs for the rest of time, rather than just buying the 12" hoop I needed. The floss I can buy for $1 a pop if I spring for the shiny stuff, once I actually figure out what I want to put on it.

The sticking point is the fringe. The long fringe, or flecos, is an integral part of the design, and given how much it weighs, it contributes a lot to how the manton moves when you swing it. You can actually get 24" chainette fringe by the yard, but there are a few problems with it. It's thicker than flecos usually are, and it's attached wrong. Fringe trim is just loops of chainette cord that are stitched together at the top to form a band, whereas flecos are punched through the shawl with a crochet hook and tied in a lark's head around the edge, then a few rows of decorative knots are run around the perimeter to keep everything in place. It's also typically thicker than the cord used for flecos, and most damning, it's so frigging expensive that buying enough of it to edge a 5' x 5' shawl would miss the point of making a manton instead of ordering one.

Okay. I know how macrame works. I'll just do the fringe myself. I just need to find the right cord to use. Flecos have a particular fluidity that comes from the strands sliding over one another. Mercerized cotton is about the right diameter and looks right in the ball, but once you cut it and try to string it on an edge, the strands want to cling to each other and clump up.

Two- or three-ply embroidery floss is also about right, but again, cotton floss sticks to itself. The flecos on a synthetic manton are made of "viscose" or "art silk", which is called rayon in the US after an old trade name for nitrocellulose. Happily, rayon embroidery floss exists; unhappily, it seems to only be available to consumers in small skeins, rather than the industrial 1 lb spool I'd need.

Rrgh. FINE. I will figure out what they're made of in Spain and go get a bunch of THAT. After getting Maestra to kindly send over a photo of the stuff she bought on her last trip over, I set about Googling the company in an attempt to figure out whatthefuck it actually was. It turns out that my Spanish is just about sufficient to bang my way through the website of an Andalusian textiles manufacturer without the magic of Google Translate. Which was fortunate, because all of the useful link text was in the form of graphical buttons, as they had been tragically trapped in the proto-internet of 1995.

Success! The cording flecos are made of is a very fine chainette called hilo de cuquillo in Spanish -- 'cuckoo thread'. Why is it called that? No fucking clue. Cuckoos are famously deceptive birds, so it's possible the stuff started off as a convincing substitute for something more expensive. But nowadays, it is the genuine thing that genuine flecos on a genuine manton are genuinely fashioned from. It is not particularly expensive, and it is common enough I could even price shop. I think I paid about €12 for a 500 g spool.

There is one more step to the process, however, and that is getting the cuquillo physically into my hands. And there I was stumped. No one would mail it to the US. Literally no one. I tried individual shops. I tried hitting up the manufacturers websites directly. Amazon España even had it right on the product page -- Este producto no puede enviar a los Estados unidos. I couldn't figure it out. Maestra couldn't figure it out. Her Spanish husband was baffled. Apparently hilo de cuquillo is just some sort of ancient Spanish secret that you are forbidden to tape into a box and huck onto a DHL jet.

I now owe one of my classmates a beer for smuggling my craft supplies out of Europe in her suitcase when she went to visit her family. I swear to God nobody else has to do this.