Susan - July 16th 2008

Today was another great day. Two of the women actually came early before 9 am and the rest also came by 10 am. It shows that they are really getting enthusiastic. There was a lot of activity with three wall looms going, our floor loom and spinning and numerous women carding. There were 20 people in the house, including instructors and IPI staff. During that time I helped cook lunch for the big crew. Then in the afternoon George gave a lecture and then hands on instruction on how to dye the wool. We did it outside with a wood fire to save propane. He washed three skeins of doublestranded wool that the women made, and we had time to dye one red. It was very interesting.
Also today three placemats were finished and one small rug on the loom. Also another doublestranded skein was finished. It's so great when everyone is working on stuff and George can walk around and fine tune people. Everyone is improving so much and several women are really good on spinning. Lilly is now an expert! But there is a lot of training yet to go, before they can do something commercially. Slowly and surely we are getting there.
George loves our Ladybug spinning wheel. He said that it is a great spinning wheel to do very fine (thin) yarn, and that that fetches a high price. It is much faster than his commercial spinning wheel to do such yarn. He wants them for his staff. He calculated that a woman working six days a week spinning for eight hours could earn about $415 a week, a huge amount of money by Kenyan standards and also a way to start becoming self sufficient so that each of the women (and men) could purchase their own wheel. When I told this to one of the International Peace Initiative staff, she was cautious, saying she really wants to know what the market is for this fine yarn. So I will quiz George about it tomorrow. I also got some good figures for how much it will cost to train four people for one month, and for living expenses and materials. It was about $600 a month per person all inclusive. He feels once we do this, then there are a core group of experts and after that those trained people can come back to train with him in Nairobi for a day or so to fine tune or if they have questions.
I really again feel so lucky to have connected with George. Not only was it lucky I saw his sign, but he told me today that many days he's off in Mombasa (Kenyan coast) selling his rugs to coastal hotels and is not even in the Nairobi office. So it was really meant to be that we connected.