Gift Shopping for Switzerland

As I wrote earlier, in September I am planning a trip to Switzerland to visit my cousins.  Of course, I will want to take gifts for them.  One gift which I send to them every year is the calendar which I make with photographs that I have taken.  Each year the calendar is a different theme.  (As my readers know from my blog posts on the first of each month, this year the theme is Mexican art.)  I have already gone through my archives of photos and prepared a calendar for 2025.  I make my calendars on the website Shutterfly and have them sent to me.  Now it will be a bit more complicated since I am in Mexico.  It will be a test of the private mailing service that I have down here since this is the first time I have had a package sent to me.  I received an email that the calendars have been printed and sent.  We'll see how long it takes for them to arrive.  Since I am not leaving until mid-September there should be plenty of time.  I can pack them in my suitcase, and this year I will give them to my cousins personally.

Besides the calendars I want to bring other presents, especially for the ones who have invited me to stay with them.  I was thinking about buying a "rebozo", a Mexican shawl, for my cousin Brigitta.  Without revealing what I was planning to buy, I had asked her what her favorite colors were.  She wrote back and said, "light orange" or "soft rose".  So, last weekend, Alejandro and I headed downtown to look for a "rebozo".  We went to a couple of shops in the "Centro Histórico", but they didn't anything in the colors I was looking for.

Then I remembered the museum gift shop at the Colegio de San Ildefonso which I had visited the week before.  The store had some beautiful, although expensive, handicrafts, and I recalled seeing some "rebozos" there.  We went there, and I found a "rebozo" in what I would call "dusty rose" which I think fits the bill color-wise.

It was very expensive, but the quality of the shawl is top-notch.  It was woven by Camelia Ramos, a fifth-generation artisan born in Tenancingo, a town famous for its "rebozos".  The shawls are hand-woven on a backstrap loom, and each one takes one to two months to produce.  I think Brigitta will be pleased with it.

While I was at the gift shop, I saw something which I could not resist... a clay Day of the Dead skull surrounded with monarch butterflies.

The monarchs return to Mexico right around the Day of the Dead in early November.  For that reason, there are those who believe that the butterflies are the souls of the dead.  I gave in to temptation and bought it.  But this is not a gift; it's for me!