We're thrilled to be a feature story in the current issue of Laine (Issue 13)! A few months ago, Sy and I enjoyed a Zoom interview with Maija Kangasluoma, who in turn wrote a beautiful 6-page spread about us. Laine is a Finnish knitting magazine published in English and Finnish and distributed widely around Europe, USA, and Canada. We hope the publicity will help us to grow our community of knitters. In addition to offering beautiful knitting patterns, every issue of Laine includes recipes, sometimes from other cultures, sometimes to showcase Scandinavia. I love food traditions and in my family, December is the month in which food revolves around my Swedish heritage. We eat lutefisk on Christmas Eve (yes, I...
I am enthralled with how people design. . . and I love textile swatches - woven ones, knit ones, printed ones, all the ones. I love to imagine what those swatches might become. When hand drawn sketches are involved, I swoon. And swoon, I did, when I saw Tayler Harris's design boards for our Holiday 2021 Collaboration. Tayler's inspiration for the collection came from the Uinta mountains of her home state of Utah. In Tayler's words- The Uinta Range is full of forests, lakes, and meadows, and is home to the highest point in Utah, Kings Peak, that reaches over 13,000 ft. It is a beautiful place full of so many textures, colors, shapes, sounds, smells, and wildlife. All...
IT HAPPENED. A clearly visible drop of greasy sauce. Right on the middle front of the Norah Gaughan Sand Waves Poncho that I wear All. The. Time. . . Oooohhhh Noooooo, I blurted outloud when I realized. . . However, I've decided to make lemonade out of lemons, as they say, and use the greasy spot to talk about caring for and washing cashmere garments, as well as share my favorite trick at removing grease stains out of anything from cashmere to those cotton t-shirts where the stains aren’t discovered until after being set in the dryer.
The Chong Alai valley is an oval-shaped plain surrounded by mountains on all sides. The Eastern end of the valley is a little over 10,000 feet and the Western end of the valley is about 7,300 feet. In addition to their livestock, the main agricultural crop that shepherds grow is potatoes. The crops do not grow as well in the first eastern third of the valley, but after that they increasingly do quite well. Potatoes are typically planted in early May and harvested in early/mid October. For a long time people did this using plows drawn by horses and by hand digging. In recent years, more and more tractors have appeared on the scene making the work much faster. Even...
We have a section in our weekly newsletter that we call 'On the Silk Road with June Cashmere' because we travel this ancient trade route in southern Kyrgyzstan to reach, work with and purchase from the shepherd families who provide the exquisite and precious cashmere fiber for our yarn. . .
