April 3
New Shrinegar is a stone city. We went to visit the family workshop of one of the merchants Remi knows from Puttaparthi. He recognized him on the street. Remi is much happier today. Mustafa's family lives in an area of the city where every house and yard is surrounded by a high stone fence. Block after block of gray stone bordering seriously potholed lanes. Only the cemeteries have low walls you can see over. There are a lot of them.

The young merchant from Puttaparthi gave us tea and cookies and told us about all the work involved in creating a fine shawl. His brother takes almost a day to weave a cloud soft pashm wool on a hand loom, then his father, a master embroiderer spends three months painstakingly embroidering the delicate all over patterns that has been drawn on the fabric by another craftsman. I have seen these shawls selling for 10,000 rs in Puttaparthi, that's about $275 Canadian. He showed us one masterpiece of solid embroidery that looked like it should really be in a museum. Three years work The family also owns machine looms,100 shawls a day, any thickness or quality of wool you care to specify on about about eight or so looms that look like they came from eighteenth century Manchester. This is what I came to Kashmir to see.

I even held in my very own hands a shantoosh shawl, the queen of wool. They start at $1000 American before embroidery. I would never buy one though even if I had that kind of money. They are made from the belly and neck hair of a wild mountain antelope. People used to just collect the fiber that pulled off the animal on bushes during the shedding season in the spring. It is priced in grams. But there is so much money in the wool that greedy people are shooting the animal and driving it over the brink into extinction. I'll stick with wool. Now if I can only find people willing to pay more than twenty dollars for a piece of weavers art back home.