Thursday 19 May 2016

More Totem Poles

I wandered around downtown Anchorage, and visited the three totem poles - Raven and eagle on one street corner, and Tlingit bear on another.

Just near the first one is the native knitters cooperative, which sells musk ox wool things. Musk ox is the warmest wool in the world, and doesn't shrink as it has no barbs and won't felt. It is frightfully expensive, as it is difficult to harvest, each musk ox only gives about 4 to 6 pounds of wool a year (it's a down undercoat, similar to cashmere), and there aren't many around. The women from different isolated communities harvest the wool, it is accumulated for several years until they have enough (600 pounds) to get spun commercially, and then they knit it. They had a wonderful display of samples of various animal wools knitted up - many of them I hadn't seen before - Buffalo, the three South American fur animals, bison as well as all the standard animals.

I also saw the first permanent building in Anchorage, which is also the oldest (I can't understand why it wouldn't be).

And then I saw a lynx hat in a fur shop window - there are more here than I have ever seen before. They also had a similar fox hat.

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