Have a look at these 5 short videos on YouTube, they give you an excellent idea of how we started the Dolls4Tibet project about 5 years ago. I still enjoy watching them myself. Remembering with affection some of the women who have moved on by now, wondering where life has taken them…
In particular, I remember the hardships and fun we had on our trips down to the river, cleaning all our wool by hand, which is a story in itself. At that time our workshop was half the size it is now and we received our sheep wool directly from the shepherds two times a year: In Autumn, when they came down from the mountains and in spring, when they moved up again.
Cleaning wool was a big event: everybody would be involved, carrying the bags full of wool down to the river, washing them by hand in often freezing cold water.
Then we would be drying them on huge river boulders while enjoying a good rest, tasty picnic, singing and a bit of fun before heaving the whole lot – still damp, so double heavy – all the way back to the workshop. But this wasn’t the end of it: we then took the wool to the carding machine and after that had to card it all once more by hand before we could use it for our dolls – a lot of work!
Still, to get the wool clean enough remained a problem for 2 long years, before Karma travelled the whole region to enquire about better possibilities. To our delight he found the perfect wool supplier just a few hours away from us. Clean wool from the Himalayan foothills, ready to be used. Hurray!!!
We now remember these ‘old’ times with a big smile. We had fun, yes, but we are still glad that we have moved on. And look at the difference in our dolls! Haven’t we come a long, long way…
