L.A.R.S.

Today was wonderful. One of those days filled with happy synchronicities. I went to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station. My goal: to see qiviut on the hoof and interview Sandy Garbowski, musk ox wrangler, qiviut expert, and heck of a cool lady.

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Musk ox are amazingly tiny, see how I’m looking down in the pictures of these cuties? The were only about three feet high at the shoulders, not the six-to-seven feet tall I’d imagined.

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One of the highlights of the interview? See that? That’s a garbage-sack worth of qiviut spread out before me. And then Sandy went looking for the highly-advanced tool that they use to comb out the qiviut, and turned her back…
[img_assist|nid=25|title=|desc=|link=none|align=none|width=640|height=480] I grabbed up the entire pile and ran pell-mell for the hills, microphone trailing behind me kept my hands jammed firmly in my pockets the whole time.

The high-tech tool used to harvest qiviut?
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Afterwards I walked five-ish miles in 90-degree heat to reach A Weaver’s Yarn, a delightful LYS run out of the bottom of the owners’ house. Well worth the trek. All those stories you hear about Alaskan hospitality: all true.

More about that visit later, it’s past midnight and I need to pack.

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