A life as a knitting designer
I have been knitting since I was 6 years old, and I have continued to do so ever since.
Already in the early 80's I established my company as a freelance knitting designer and designed for Dale, Drops, Garnglede and most of the weekly magazines.
After working in Denmark for a yea as an agent for a number of Italian spinning mills, I got a job as marketing manager at Dale AS, where I learned a lot about Norwegian yarn production and got to know the industry even more thoroughly. When I moved back to Oslo, I started Colours, where I worked with color and style analysis for a number of years. I also sold yarn in all the colors of the rainbow and many learned to appreciate the colorful shop in Vika. There I also met my husband, Per, who introduced me to alpaca and I fell head over heels for both the alpaca fiber and the man!
Du Store Alpakka
Associate Professor Tørdal's favorite expression became a natural name choice for the company Per and I started together in 1999. We wanted to introduce the alpaca to the Norwegian people!
We started with two empty hands and lots of courage and desire to work. The company grew, year after year and when we sold the company in 2012, we sold 30 tons of alpaca yarn a year. The learning curve was steep, but we had a lot of fun also. I continued to make designs, learned to photograph and had the main responsibility for yarn collections and color charts. Photography gradually became more and more fascinating and today I work as a photographer and have my own photo studio as well.
Mirasol School
From heart to heart
From Norway to Peru
On our first trip to Peru, we met two children of the alpaca sheperds high up in the Andes, a meeting that would change our lives. The meeting with these children started a process of raising money for a boarding school that would give the children in the district the opportunity to choose a future other than poverty and illiteracy. Child mortality was 50% and I am proud to say that today it is almost down to zero and the children have moved into the school and are in full swing making plans for the future.
Art
I also explore other forms to express the wisdom of life and in the spring of 2016 I set up an installation with 13 large crochet wheels, Wheels of life - a pilgrimage to inner wisdom, at Hadeland glassworks.
Today I focus more and more on art paintings where I explore my inner landscape via the canvas.
You will find more info at my website,
www.karihestnes.com and a selection of my paintings for sale.