Raisa Abzalovna

About the craftswoman

Raisa Abzalovna has literally been knitting for as long as she can remember. Her achievements in the craft are not just impressive but astonishing: she knitted her first down shawl before she even started school. Raisa Abzalovna has always combined vast experience with perseverance, hard work and the habit of finishing what she starts.

“I always picked every single hair out of the down,” she says. “I believe a quality down item should be done perfectly from start to finish.”

A childhood “quota” and “A tractor drove by”

As children, Raisa Abzalovna and her peers had a kind of “quota”: a certain number of border points had to be knitted each day. The task was always completed, and only then did the children sit down to their homework, let alone their own affairs. Such discipline influenced both the craftswoman's professionalism and her whole later life.

Raisa Abzalovna told us many interesting stories connected with the Orenburg down shawl. For example, like her friends, she always wanted not only to master new patterns but also to invent her own.

“Once I knitted what seemed to me a new pattern,” she laughs. “I was asked: ‘And what is it called?’ I looked at it for a minute and said: ‘A tractor drove by!’”

From hobby to masterpieces

Raisa Abzalovna worked on the railway for most of her life.

“Back then it was just a hobby,” she says. “I knitted only for myself, I just liked it. After I was made redundant I began selling shawls. They saved my life more than once.”

Now Raisa Abzalovna knits for our company one of the largest and most difficult items to make, which can rightly be called a masterpiece of the down-knitting craft.