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

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.

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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!

Last week I made the short trip to the Shanghai tradeshow, Spin Expo, overall I think it went well but time will tell.  I have high hopes of connecting with some hand knitting yarn distributors in Europe in Scandinavia who could help us promote the yarns to those markets.  Here is a pic from our tiny booth, not so great because of seriously bad lighting! 

I showed a few of the new yarns I've been spinning the past few weeks and they turned out to be the most popular ones.  I had a bunch of different sample requests for them so spent about 2 and half days this week just spinning up the samples myself.  It was relaxing and helped me figure out what their perfect formulas are.  I hope to start selling them in a few months time- email me if you're interested in them! 

Those are all pics of the new Friendship Bracelet yarn :) Below is Cinnamon Shimmer.

While catching up on some of my favorite TV shows yesterday, I finally finished the scarf I started waaaay back in July.  In August at some point, I bought the Hana-Ami Flower Loom that I originally found out about on Purl Soho's blog (see link: http://www.purlsoho.com/purl/products/item/7297 ).  I had to have one, the loom makes the most beautiful '70's crafty looking flowers. Since the scarf I was working on lacked the trinkets and trims I typically add into my designs, I thought the flowers would be the perfect addition. And voila, see pics below.  Still much too hot here in Hong Kong to wear this anytime soon :(

Lovely Knit Collage yarn spinner Ms. Yuen modeling the finished scarf.  Gotta love the use of the peace sign, pretty much a staple in pics for Hong Kong peeps.