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 alpaca herder children high in the Andes, a meeting that would change our lives. Meeting these children initiated a process of raising money for a boarding school that would give the children in the district the opportunity to choose a different future than poverty and illiteracy. The infant mortality rate was as high as 50%, but I am proud to say that today it is almost zero. The children have moved into the school and are now busy making plans for the future. This project has not only changed their lives, but also enriched our own lives in ways we could never have imagined .
Art and textiles
The road continues.
In parallel with knitting design, I also explore other forms of expression. In the spring of 2016, I exhibited an installation of 13 large, crocheted wheels, "Wheels of Life - A Pilgrimage to Inner Wisdom," at Hadeland Glassverk. These wheels have now been added to our new home in Italy, Villa Rosita, which has a magical garden where some of the wheels are exhibited.
You can follow our new life on our blog, www.villarosita.net. Today I focus more and more on art, both through painting and textiles. My greatest drive is the exploration of my inner landscape and the understanding of what it means to be human on Earth and in the cosmos. This creative journey gives me the opportunity to express myself in new ways and share my vision with the world.