The remarkable kani pashmina shawl is the best of pashmina that you can ever buy.
The craft of Kani weaving uses small sticks of wood called ‘Kanis’. Around Kanis, colourful weft thread is wound to create magical patterns over a shawl. Kanis are made of a forest wood called ‘poos tul’.
A veil of warp threads in front of the weaver has to be intruded with wefts. These wefts are colourful threads wound around bobbins. Around 75 to 100 bobbins are in use at a time to weave a Kani shawl with an overall design.
Unlike other shawls where design is imprinted or stamped over the shawl itself, here the design is written in a code, called ‘Talim’, on a graph paper.
The coded pattern is prepared by the Talimguru. He is an expert in converting the design to codes, easily understood by weavers.
Next process is the making of warp by a warp maker.
A number of colourful bobbins are arranged as per the design requirement. Weaving starts with the help of talim. As soon as a different colour is required in the design, two bobbins are joined together and the process is continued till the shawl is complete.
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