Its World Fair Trade Day!

So today is World Fair Trade Day, aiming to promote ethical standards amongst producer groups around the world....

The Nepal Fair Trade Group is holding a market today in the City Hall in Kathmandu, with all members promoting sales of their products, with handicraft demonstrations across the different product ranges - from lokta paper stationary, to carpet weaving, basket weaving and a variety of cloth products using traditional methods from various parts of Nepal.  I have to say that the Fair Trade Group in Nepal is very well established with a great collection of various handicraft workshops, charity groups and social initiatives, as well as a large selection of product areas - the member groups that I work with within this collective are a pleasure to work with!

The picture above shows some of the women who hand-knit jumpers and accessories at Kumbeshwar Technical School, who are quality checking various pieces that they have been working on at home. It is much easier for the women to be able to work from home, giving them flexibility to earn a living around their daily family commitments - then they come back to the workshop once they have finished their assigned pieces to check them through.  So I thought this was an appropriate picture for World Fair Trade Day....

This week, I visited the KTS handknit workshop to confirm my patterns and orders for the Autumn/Winter 2011 collection, which has now been distributed to various hand-knitters to take home and work on - so the bag panels and various scarf designs are being hand-knitted in the banana yarn at this very moment!

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Free Eye Tests and Womens Health Check-ups at KTS for the upcoming World Fair Trade Day

For the upcoming World Fair Trade Day, Kumbeshwar Technical School promoted a Free Eye and Womens Health Check up and Treatment Program last Saturday on their premises.  The program was advertised within the local area, with 283 people participating on the day - including students, staff, produers and members of the local community in Kumbeshwar, Patan.

During the eye check ups, eighteen people were found to have cataracts, one of the cataract patient was a 100 years old man Mr Ratna Bahadur Khadgi. The program was conducted in association with Nepal Eye Hospital, who provided skilled doctors to carry out the check ups. Kumbeshwar Trading Centre supported the provision of medicine and the program logistics.  The cataract surgeries for these 18 patients will be performed in Nepal Eye Hospital who has given special discount for the operation, with the rest of the operation costs sponsored by Kumbeshwar Trading Centre on 12th May. 

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Though I was not able to visit and help out on Saturday because of other commitments, I wanted to blog about this, as it shows how KTS and the wonderful Khadgi family that founded and run the organisation, consistently tries to assist their producers and people in their local area, in practical and useful ways. As one of the founding members of the Nepal Fair Trade Group, KTS is a great example of a producer group run by Nepali's, helping Nepali's and with motivation to constantly improve and try new ideas, not only in their technical work, but also with their local social work.  I am really lucky to be working with them!

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Production getting started! - Hand dyeing the Banana Yarn

So our next production is just getting started slowly but surely in Nepal!!  The whole process takes time; once orders are finalised, the Banana Yarn has to be hand-dyed and dried, before distributing to the women handknitters at Kumbeshwar Technical School (KTS).  Once the knit pieces are finished, then they are delivered to the leather factory (along with all other components and materials) to start the bag production for all the leather goods....

For this AURA QUE production, I will be documenting and describing the whole process as it happens whilst I am currently in Nepal....so for now, we are starting with the dyeing of the Banana Yarn:

The Banana Yarn is supplied in washed natural colour, having been boiled and hand spun from the raw material - the pruned outer layers of the Banana Tree after the fruit harvest in rural Nepal.  This natural yarn is supplied in mass to KTS from their trusted supplier. I am hoping to visit the farmers and producers outside Kathmandu that make this yarn from the raw material, over the next few months, dependent on the next crop season - fingers crossed!

Each lot of natural banana yarn is firstly washed and prepped for dyeing and then dyed the following day in larger copper pots, all on site at KTS.  As I wanted the banana yarn to be a tonal match to the buffalo leather that I am using for the bags, the women dyers firstly try a recipe of different azo-free dyes on a yarn sample.  It is a trial and error process, though all previous dyed colours are catalogued with their dye colour 'recipes' which can also be helpful to find a suitable shade.  When they are happy with the sample colour, a larger sample will be dyed with the same 'recipe'.

A challenge with the natural banana yarn is that sometimes different lots of the same yarn, when dyed with the same dye recipe, come out slightly different tones - which is frustrating when you are trying to match to a sample or leather colour! Therefore I have spent much time in the last two weeks going back and forth to the dye area to check on the process, waiting for the yarn to dry to check before the next lot is dyed (only 1 lot = 10 kg can be dyed in one pot in one day).  There would be even more diversity in colour matching with natural dyes, so to maximise efficiency and minimise wastage, we have to stick to azo-free dyes for now....

For example - see the picture below showing three bundles of the Grey banana yarn for our A/W 2011 collection - if you look closely you can see there is a slight shade difference between each bundle, despite using the same yarn fibre, dye recipe and process!  Its a mystery to me!! Luckily all are similar enough to use for our production in seperate pieces.

Once the yarn lot has been dyed, it is then dried for several days, outside but away from direct sunlight.  Then the yarn is wound into balls ready for the hand-knitters to take home.

So now our banana yarn is nearly finished in our four colours: Black, Grey, Stone Brown and Cream.....almost ready for our AURA QUE bag panels, scarves and accessories to be hand-knitted by KTS' skilled women, who will be collecting the yarn and the patterns from the workshop to then continue knitting the pieces from the comfort of their own home, around the Kathmandu Valley over the next few weeks!

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