Ranch Festival

Kingsville, Texas

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These are weavings from horse hair. It is a family project, the hairs are on needles and the patterns are as a result of carefully counting each weave. Mom is doing the weaving and one of the kids count.

This man is making riatas, rawhide ropes used by real cowboys. It takes him 60 hours to make each one. He starts with a cowhide that is untreated, he prefers hides from sickly cows who drop dead. I did not pressure him for details, he was a vet from south Arizona, so he probably has a lot of raw materials. He takes a circular patch and sets up his knife and cuts off a 1/4 inch wide strip. If he is careful, he can get a 300 foot long strip from the piece he is working on. He brades four strips into the riata. I have two photos of the riatas showing different style ends which form the lasso. Everything is from rawhide, and it is coated with beeswax.

There were chuck wagon cooks fixing lunch and blacksmiths and cowboy poets.

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