From Down to Thread: How the Finest Pashmina Is Spun and Woven by Hand

People pick up one of our shawls and the first thing they say is nearly always the same: it weighs nothing. They expect something warm to be heavy. A pure pashmina shawl is warm and almost weightless, and the reason is not a secret technique or a special machine. It is a pair of hands, and then another pair, and then another.

We filmed the work that happens before a shawl ever reaches an embroiderer's needle, from the raw down all the way to the loom. I want to show you what it looks like, because once you have seen it, you never look at a pashmina in quite the same way again.

Where pashmina comes from: down, not wool

Pashmina is not sheared like wool. It is the soft undercoat that the Changthangi goat grows to survive winter on the high plateau of Ladakh, and that it begins to shed when spring arrives. That down is gathered by combing, and it reaches Kashmir as a cloud of fibre mixed with coarse outer hair, dust and the odd bit of the mountainside. (I have written more about the fibre itself and why it comes from one place.)

Every one of those coarse hairs has to come out. If it stays in, it will show in the cloth and it will prickle against the skin. So before anything else, the fibre is cleaned and combed by hand, a pinch at a time.

Combing the raw down, a pinch at a time.

Watch how gently she works. She is not tugging the fibre through the comb, she is coaxing it. The fibres are so fine that pulling too hard snaps them, and a broken fibre is a weak thread later on. What comes away is a soft, aligned roll of down, clean enough to spin.

Hand-spinning pashmina: turning down into thread

This is the part I find most remarkable. Before the spinning wheel does anything, the spinner has to persuade a few fibres to hold on to each other. She draws them out between her fingertips into a strand so fine you can barely see it on camera until the light catches it.

A thread you can only see when the light catches it.

Then it goes to the yinder, the wooden spinning wheel you will find in Kashmiri homes, usually worked by women sitting on the floor by a window. One hand turns the wheel. The other holds the down and lifts away from the spindle as the twist runs up into the fibre, feeding out just enough, never too much.

Spinning on the yinder: the arm rises, the thread lengthens.

That rising arm is the whole skill. Her fingers feel the thread thickening or thinning and correct it as she goes, many times a minute, for hours. It is slow, and it is meant to be.

Why the finest pashmina thread is spun by hand

Pashmina fibre is extraordinarily fine and quite short. A spinning machine works at speed and under steady tension, so it spins pashmina into a good, even thread, just not quite as fine as a skilled pair of hands can manage.

A hand spinner can go further. She feels exactly how much the fibre will bear and stops just short of it, drawing the down into the finest thread it can make. That extra fineness is what gives the very lightest shawls their almost weightless feel.

Handwoven on a wooden loom

Pashmina thread is delicate, which is why it goes on to a handloom, not a power loom. The weaver sets up a warp of these near-invisible threads and passes the weft through, one line at a time, beating it in with a lightness that a machine simply does not have. Too much force and the threads break. Too little and the cloth is loose.

At the handloom: one line of weft at a time.

Look at the warp in front of him. Hundreds of fine pashmina threads, each one delicate enough to snap if it is handled carelessly, and he works across them for hours by the window, by feel as much as by sight. Nothing about it can be hurried.

What comes off that loom is the shawl people hold and say weighs nothing. Warm, soft, and so light that it falls over the shoulders like a breath. From there it may go on to be embroidered in Sozni. A Kani is different again: its pattern is woven into the cloth on the loom itself, from the same fine pashmina thread.

What you are actually holding

So when you hold a handmade pashmina, you are holding the work of the combers who cleaned the down, the spinners who turned it into thread, and the weavers who made it into cloth, before a single stitch of embroidery. Many of these are women working at home, as their mothers did.

A shawl from a power loom and a handwoven one can look alike in a photograph. In the hand they are not the same thing, and now you have seen why.

Questions we are often asked

How is pashmina made?

The soft undercoat of the Changthangi goat is gathered in spring, cleaned of coarse hair and combed by hand, spun into thread (for the finest, by hand on a wooden yinder), and woven into cloth on a handloom. A shawl may then be embroidered in Sozni, while a Kani has its pattern woven in on the loom.

Why is the finest pashmina spun by hand?

Pashmina can be spun by hand or by machine. Machine spinning gives a good, even thread. Hand spinning lets the spinner draw the down finer still, which is why the very lightest shawls begin on the yinder.

Why are handwoven pashmina shawls so light?

Because the fibre and the thread are so fine. Fine pashmina thread, woven gently on a handloom, makes a cloth that is warm yet almost weightless, which is why a pashmina shawl can feel like it weighs nothing at all.

If you would like to see the shawls these hands make, browse our full collection, or write to us at info@miraaskashmir.com. We are always happy to talk about how a piece was made.