Page 27 - Knit Now - Issue 112 (January 2020)

FEATURE

knitting and sewing along with Doris, who – this was her rst time experiencing their histories in their stitches. Later, after
co-owned the Black Sheep yarn shop on the a culture in which the making of them graduating from college and being awarded
town square, Mary Jo, and an assortment of was front and centre. She learned about a Fulbright grant, she returned to this region
the other ladies in her grandmother’s circle Gandhi’s call, in the early part of the 20th to continue her work with the Rabari as well
of friends. They would visit one another’s century, for Indians to spin and weave as learn more about the natural dyeing,
homes to eat lunch or dinner, to see quilts their own cotton at home rather than buy weaving, embroidery, and other forms of
in progress and sometimes so Kristine cloth manufactured in British mills, part handwork that have been practised in this
could choose a new out t for her Barbie of a far-reaching program of non-violent area of India for centuries.
dolls. Laid out across a dining room table civil disobedience aimed at winning Indian After a year and a half abroad, Kristine
or a sideboard (or both) would be intricately independence. For a nal research project, returned to the Bay Area in 2002 and, not
sewn Barbie wardrobes, created by some Kristine traveled by train from Jaipur to unpredictably, felt troubled and lost. “The
of the local women for extra income. From Ahmedabad, then by overnight bus to Kutch, world was so big, and I had no idea who
Lorene and her friends, Kristine learned landing her nally in a circle of women I was supposed to be in it,” she recalls.
how to knit, sew, and quilt and, just as on the oor stitching. These women were “I could see all the problems but didn’t
important to her, experience the value and members of the Rabari, a semi-nomadic know how to interface with them.” Kristine
joy of friendships forged though textiles. people known for their intricate appliqué faced a wide array of problems – from
In 1999, Kristine was an art history and mirrored embroidery. “They were socioeconomic and sexual inequality to
student at Mills College in Oakland, amazed,” Kristine recalls, “that, as an the environmental toll of synthetic dye,
California, when she decided to spend a American woman, I could cook or stitch.” pesticides and other chemicals used in the
semester in India. Though of cially there She wrote a paper called Threads of Light: mass production of textiles, to the lack of
to study art and architecture, she was Patterns of Change in which she explored awareness among consumers of how and
immediately drawn to the vibrant textiles the ways in which Rabari women embed by whom textiles and other manufactured

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