My mother invited me to join her on a trip to South America, to meet my sister there and explore our familial routes in Uruguay and Argentina. I accepted, posing one condition: when we visit Montevideo, we must go visit Malabrigo’s workshop, and both my sister and my mother had no objections.
I contacted Antonio at Malabrigo, and he was very friendly and said they would be happy to have us over for a visit. We knew we were going to have a rented car, so it wouldn’t be a problem, but little did we know about the location of the workshop in Montevideo itself, which turned out to be one of the not-so-good quarters of the city, as phrased by our close local friend who was shocked we wanted to visit that area.
We managed to find the place, though with not so few turnabouts, but it just added to the thrill. The fact that our phone battery was giving us problems and we couldn’t get Antonio on the phone only added to the edge. When we got there, he sent somebody to lead us up and we breathed a healthy sigh of relief when we were safely at our destination.
It didn’t take us long to recover, and Antonio showed us around, allowing us to take photos of everything but the dyeing area, and we were thrilled – it’s so beautiful, to see all the yarn being dyed, dried, being packed and stacked in colourful bags.
But the best part was yet to arrive: the possibility to buy off-lot dyed malabrigo yarn, which was for me much better than any visit to a confectionery shop to any child in history. We took about 5 Kg. (!) of yarn with us that day.
But even with all that, our Malabrigo saga wasn’t over. On our way back I remembered that I forgot to take with me the hand made spindle I brought as a gift, and we decided to come back when we returned to Montevideo, on our way to take the ferry from Colonia de Sacramento to Buenos Aires.
When we visited the workshop again, we left with “only” 2.5 kg more, plus a special gift from Antonio and the rest, a skein of yarn made with the best merino wool, from the contest they hold between their wool providers, dyed in delicate purple tones. It’s the softest yarn I ever held in my hands, and I just don’t know what I would make of such a fine yarn, but I’m sure I could think of something, eventually. For the time being, it will remain as a glorious skein, to be petted and admired constantly.
Here are some photos from our visit, which for me was one of the memorable events of my entire visit; it was most certainly the only occasion in which I spent substantial sums, but then again, those are my “souvenirs”, no?
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