1.

The Cashmere Goat

The Capra hircus begins its descend towards greener pastures of Rupshu, Korzok and Hanle in the month of February

2.

Fibre Harvesting

This begins in june and is over by the first week of August. The pashm, raw cashmere is removed by combing and shearing. Done with indigenous tools, the Changpa tribe do it in stages so that the goat keeps warm

3.

De-hairing

Raw hair is sorted out manually to remove admixture of outer coarse hair. A painstaking process, it takes eight hours to de-hair 50gms of pashm.

4.

Glueing

The Capra hircus begins its descend towards greener pastures of Rupshu, Korzok The fibres are put in a large basin and sprinkled with pounded rice. This is left for two nights to strengthen the strands.

5.

Spinning

This is done manually on a spinning wheel locally called charkha. The charkha converts the fluff into yarn.

6.

Plying

The yarns are then made into hanks, which are opened on large wooden stands. It is then mounted on wooden spindles termed as prech.

7.

Weaving

The yarn is separated for the use of wrap and weft and isweighed before weaving. The warp maker twists the yarn to the desired thickness and steeps it in rice water, in a copper vessel for two days. The yarn is then dried & stretched. Twelve hundred stretched threads are fixed in the heddles of the loom to create a running cashmere fabric of four to six scarves. This takes close to two weeks, after which the process of weaving begins.

8.

Finishing

The hand woven drape is tweezed, clipped and brushed to rid of flaws and loose fibres on the surface.