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What is Pashmina?

Tsering Choekyap Sherpa, Sunrise proprietor.

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Tsering Choekyap, the proprietor of Sunrise Pashmina owns two hand looms. He directly employs two weavers (Rajendra and Sudhip), one skein winder (Saraswati), and one "pashmina massager" (Thuli). The dyers, embroiderers, and beaders are subcontractors. He buys pashmina yarn from Wangchuk, a Tibetan wholeseller who owns Dampa Enterprises. Dampa Enterprises is one of the biggest pashmina wool sellers in Kathmandu.

Buying the Wool

Wangchuk sells five kinds of pashmina yarns, although these days he is stocking only two. One kilo of "Everest" pashmina (A-grade) costs more than $150, 10 times more expensive than B-grade yarn. It seems that, in today's hugely competitive market, most exporters have resorted to cutting costs by choosing the cheapest grade of pashmina yarn. Below Tsering (left) and Wangchuk (right) at Dampa Enterprises, with two grades of pashmina.

Pashmina is made from the undercoat wool of a high-altitude breed of the domestic goat Capra hircus. Extracting the coarser guard hairs and other impurities is a tedious and time-consuming chore. Because it is lighter, the 5-kg bolt of top-quality Everest yarn is considerably more bulky than the lower-quality bolt (B).

In the photo above, a street merchant sells "pashmina" shawls in the Asan Tole bazaar of Kathmandu. Most of his shawls are actually made from regular wool, cotton, or acrylic.

Tsering uses only Everest quality pashmina.

Weaving the shawl

Rajendra Maharjan and Sudhip Shrestha are our master-weavers. Rajendra is married and has a nine-year-old daughter. Sudhip is twenty-three and unmarried. Both Rajendra and Sudhip come from a village called Man Maiju Gaun and migrated to Kathmandu looking for better economic opportunities. Saraswati Karki is in charge of winding the skeins of pashmina yarn. She is married and has a nine-year son named Sanjib. Saraswati and her husband, Udhay Karki, come from Panauti. Thuli Januka Subedi massages each piece as it comes off the loom. Thuli is married with one son (age 15) and one daughter (age 16). They are originally from Bhaktapur, one of the three main villages in the Kathmandu Valley.

1. Setting up the loom

The loom needs to be specially set up for shawls of different width. On average, setting up the loom takes four days. Setting up a Jacquard loom takes up to ten days.

2. Preparing pashmina skeins

The pashmina skeins are rolls of wool loaded onto the shuttle that travels back and forth to lay down the woof of the weave across the long warp threads.

In the photo above, Saraswati rolls skeins; her son, Sanjib, still in his school uniform, is dozing off after school.

3. Looming the cloth

Below, Rajendra is weaving the pashmina cloth. His feet control the shuttle movement, while his hands guide the bar that tamps down the woof thread as it is laid down. He has to maintain a consistent rhythm with hand and feet in order to produce a regular weave. This rhythm is the defining skill of a good weaver.

Weavers are normally paid by the piece. An experienced weaver can make up to ten fullsize shawls in one seven-hour shift. Both to ensure top quality and to relieve the stress on our employees, we have requested that Rajendra and Sudhip make no more than six fullsize pieces per day, although we pay them what they would earn for ten pieces.

4. Cleaning the loom

After production of one type of shawl is completed, all parts of the loom have to be thoroughly cleaned to make sure that nothing will damage the next batch.

5. Massaging the wraps

Once the wraps are finished are dyed, Thuli massages them thoroughly. Why? Although pashmina is soft by itself and gets softer with use, during the weaving process the wool has been under stress. The objective of the massage is to relax the fibers so that they return to their normal state. After the massage, the wrap is ready to take to the dyer.

The dying process

Tsering doesn't do the dying himself. He has an agreement with the best dyer in Kathmandu to dye Sunrise shawls.

Above: Tsering at the dyer's, handing over the morning's shawls.

1. Washing the wraps

The first step of the dying process is to wash the wraps in neutral soap. Each piece must bel clean when it goes into the dying pot to avoid dark spotting.

2. Getting the right color

The Sauji regularly produces 340 different colors. (These are shown on the Sunrise color chooser pager.) In addition, he can match samples provided by his clients. All these colors are obtained by mixing the chemicals that produce the eight "rainbow colors." For each color the master dyer, has developed a recipe. The powder dyes that Sauji uses are imported from Switzerland because they are more reliable and consistent than Indian dyes.

Above: a dyer demonstrates the preparation of the dye compound. Despite all the care exercised in measuring dye proportions, calibrating water temperature, and timing immersion, dying is an inexact art: if you order two shawls of the same color but place the orders a week apart, the colors may be slightly different.

3. Dying the wraps

Once the powder mix is ready, the dye is dissolved in warm water in a large cauldron and the shawl is soaked and stirred for about an hour. Darker colors require more soaking at higher temperatures than light colors. In the picture below, we can see Bishnu stirring a black shawl. The shawl must be stirred continuously and consistently to make sure that the whole shawl gets the same amount of dye.

4. Fixing the color

After the dying process the shawls are again soaked in fresh water with neutral soap and color fixer for fifteen minutes. Although the dyes are supposed to be self-fixing, Sauji prefers a certain redundancy in order to avoid even a remote chance of bleeding colors.

5. Softener

Wraps are soaked in a solution of 0.7% softener for 15 minutes. This is a sensitive decision, because Western consumers do not usually understand that pashmina becomes softer with use, and they tend to purchase or reject a shawl according to the initial texture. However, a solution stronger than 1% would weaken the cloth.

Managing the softening (red container) and the fixing (green container) agents.

6. Rinsing

Once the cloth has been in the softer for 15 minutes it is drained and rinsed.

7. Drying

As we can see in the picture below, the drying is done naturally in the open air; this is gentler on the fabric than machine drying. The drying time depends on the weather conditions, and introduces one of the more significant variables in delivery time. The shawls won't go on to the next step until they are compeletly dry.

8. Twisting the fringes

After the drying, the fringes have to be twisted and knotted. This process can't be done at an earlier stage, or the fringes would not be completely dyed.

9. Ironing

Once the wraps have been through all the previous steps, they are ready to be ironed and packaged.

Tsering, his wife Pema, and his quality inspector Ngawang carefully check each of the pieces to make sure everything is correct and ready to go: the fabric, the color, the softness, the fringes, and customizations (particularly beading and embroidery).

The embroidery

Like the dying, the embroidery is done by subcontractors. Tsering has an agreement with Hajie Ibni Ali (below, left) who has eight skilled embroiderers working for him. Masleo Din (below, right) is the master embroiderer.

The eight members of the embroidery team come from Mohattari, a town in Western Nepal. They are Habi Bhula (age 18), Abdul Kalam (25), Hamid (18), Nassim (20), Rafic (21), Jaffir (24), Masleo Din (30), and Abbass (25).

Marking the design

The first step of the embroidery process is to mark the shawl with the chosen design. The patterns are carefully copied onto white paper, and a stencil is made by perforation of the drawing. A mixture of chalk and paint thinner is brushed over the stencil to transfer the design onto the cloth.

The photos below show the embroidery process in detail. In the first picture we see the needlework on top side (or front) of the piece. The second picture shows the backside of a shawl: while the top hand manipulates the needle, the lower hand feeds the thread from below.

Washing the piece

Once the embroidery is finished, the wrap must be washed to remove the stenciled pattern.

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