Be Inspired Hand spun wool and mohair yarns for knitting and crocheting sweaters and accessories.

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Updates from India!

post by Amy Small | spinners, india travel, pixie dust | Sunday May 15, 2011

I just returned back from another wonderful trip to India, it was a quick one since our next tradeshow is right around the corner in early June.  On this trip I worked on some new Pixie Dust colors and checked on how things were progressing with our Rolling Stone yarns.  These will finally be available in stores in a few weeks!  My last trip to India was right before Christmas, our team was small then around 12 ladies.  On this trip, there were 36 women making the yarns!  Not everyone spins, about half of the women spin yarn and the other half preps the fiber and trims and do the quality control and packaging.  It was really fun to see new and old faces. Not many of the women speak English so I think it's finally about time for me to start learning Hindi!  Take a peek at the pics from the trip below.

 

Harmeet, on my left, oversees everything here from planning what colors the spinners are spinning to making sure our shipments get where they need to be on time. Harmeet has been working with us since the start and is an extremely valuable member of our team!  Beana, on my right, helps take care of any issues that might come up.  So anytime a spinner or other lady has a problem they come to her for help.  Everyone here calls her Auntie. She also oversees all the quality control, an immensely important job. 

Carding fiber for Mermaid Cafe!

Spinning Sunshine Daydream...

These ladies crochet the tiny flowers and thread them for easy spinning as well as cut the trims in the correct lengths and check each skein to make sure trims aren't coming loose.

More spinners!

Peek at the new Pixie Colors I've designed.  These will go on sale to yarn shops at the June TNNA.  Last but not least, if you're interested in our pattern booklet it's available now, either a hard copy or the pdf downloadable version.  Check out the patterns area of our site right under yarns for more info.

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India Team

post by Amy Small | india travel, spinners | Friday October 29, 2010

I just returned from another short trip to India.  The spinners there have slowly gotten the hang of how to make all of our yarns.  I've been working around the clock to check every yarn they've finished to make sure the quality is top notch to sell. Exhausting but rewarding!  We took some pics last Monday of the entire team.  Take a peak below!

How boring is my outfit compared with theirs?!

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Setting up the studio in India

post by Amy Small | spinners, india travel | Wednesday September 29, 2010

One and a half weeks ago I hopped on a plane to India and began the adventure of starting up a spinning studio in Punjab.  The overhead costs of running a spinning studio in Hong Kong are just too high for Knit Collage to be a viable business.  So, I've decided to team up with old friends of mine that run a sweater factory I used to work with when I was working at Free People years ago.  We'll house our tiny operation within their factory until we're big enough to expand into our own space.  The first week, we made good headway and trained around 5 spinners well.  This week has proven more challenging.  There are bumps in the road that we've got to get to the bottom of to keep the quality consistent!  It's exhausting but it's a lot of fun to see it all happening.  If it takes off I won't be stuck looking after production so closely and will be able to spend more time designing and marketing our yarns.  Here are some pics of the Indian spinners from last week.

More pics to come of the whole process!  My boyfriend came to visit me last weekend in India and we went to 2 amazing palaces- pics below. Definitely reason enough to visit India!

Neemrana Fort Palace

Painted elephants in Rajastan!

Amazing painted room in Samode Palace!

Samode Palace!

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