Gifts from the other side of the World

My son and his girlfriend just returned from a month long vacation in Cambodia and Thailand. They brought home wonderful gifts for the family, everything purchased from Fair Trade shops. This is from a shop in Cambodia that produces it's own silk from silk worm to finished weaving, hiring local help and paying fair wages. It starts with this wonderful box (hand woven from palm leaves in the shop), no plastic bags here.

When you open it there's a hand-woven bird sitting on top

of a hand-woven, natural dyed silk cloth.

Beautiful rich color with a heavenly sheen.

In the next package they brought me

was hand-spun and natural dyed (from lac) silk thread. Spun on a hand-carved wooden spindle.

The name of this enterprise is IKTT, they brought me the book on it's history and the man who started it with a dream to bring back the lost art of silk weaving that was forgotten during the war. Cambodia used to produce some of the finest silk fabrics in the world.

In Thailand they found a couple more Fair-Trade shop selling hand-woven goods, This scarf was dyed using lac (a bug that lives in their trees, they use it's nest to dye with).

These were woven by the refugees on the Thailand-Burma border.

This scarf is hand-woven but not natural dyed.

They also picked up a lot of scarves for other family members, I'm pretty sure machine woven with beautiful colors and patterns.

Last night I met with my girlfriends for a Valentines dinner, my friend Laura decorates wonderfully for every holiday.

And look at these cute felted hearts draped over her windows.

I hope you have a wonderful, chocolatey, candy, flower holiday!!