Our New Collection! and New Team!

We have been a busy group at Knitting Peace! We launched a new collection, had our first Fashion Show, and revamped our store space. This is the reason for our silence in the past few weeks.  In addition to all of this, we also started working with a new group of knitters, who are amazingly talented. This new group is creating all the new hand woven pieces added to our collection. We also added a new line of hand knit pieces, which of course as always are made by our group of incarcerated women.

The pieces are chic, full of color, layer friendly and transition beautifully from day to night. We love this new collection and know that you will too!

Here is a preview, and will all soon be available on our online store www.knittingpeace.com

Enjoy!

  Alpaca Hand Knit Ribbed Shrug                                                          Alpaca Hand knit Cardiwrap 

                                                                      

Alpaca Hand Woven Sweater Coat and Scarf                                                    Alpaca Hand Knit Cape

 Alpaca Hand Woven Sweater Dress

                            Alpaca Hand Knit Cardiwrap                         Alpaca Hand Woven Sweater Coat

Cultivating Patience

Sometimes, when running my business I get caught up in the mountain of minutia that needs to be taken care of in the day to day, and I lose sight of purpose, and the reason why I chose to start my own business in the first place.

When my Knitting Peace journey began, I was in denial of it being a business. I was more in love with the opportunity of spending my time creating while being of service, which was my intention and reason for getting on this boat in the first place.  The business aspect, however inadvertently and eventually became a necessity and a very big part of my every day.  

Deadlines, production demands, cash flow, and distribution channels at times distract me from my original intention, placing me in a state of disconnect from what I love most about Knitting Peace. During these times I feel impatient with my team of knitters, and the deadlines which aren’t met and find myself in a state of intolerance for the missed sales opportunities due to the slowness of our production process.

Luckily the Universe through the help of my team of knitters; provides opportunities for me to get back on course, and attune to what matters most.   During the past few weeks, after our week long hiatus, due to the hunger strike, I went back to the jail with a clearer head, and I understood that I was interacting with women who are dealing with a lot of challenges; they are humans who require special care, and extra patience. I cannot expect them to deliver what other knitters who aren’t incarcerated deliver and in order for our journey to coast in harmony I needed to adjust my sales and cultivate patience and compassion for what these women experience in their lives.

In this space I learned that Sandra our newest team member has a 16 year old daughter who visits her and sometimes has to walk home, because she doesn’t have money for the fair. Bertha has a 14 year old son with epilepsy who lives in the jail, and some days it’s really hard for her to knit, she does not have the energy to do so.  Vicky sometimes gives her knitting to her bunk mates, so they have some work to do. These stories are part of the everyday lives of these women living in incarceration. In losing my expectations, and aligning with what is I am more able to see and experience them where they are, making our journey flow more gracefully towards a greater good. 

~Namaste

Pre-adolescents in jail and nowhere to go

Knitting Peace, as a social enterprise seeks to empower its team of incarcerated women in overriding some of their limiting core beliefs with new visions of what is possible for themselves and their children.

In doing so, I am becoming more and more aware of their daily challenges within the Bolivian jail, and count on the pleasure of experiencing their trust as they share with me some of their stories and hardships. One situation which I became aware of and is of great concern to me is in regards to the children reaching the age limit to legally remain within the jail.

Legally, children of incarcerated women in Bolivia may live within the jail with their mothers until the age of six. Exceptions are made in the case of those children who don’t have family to live with outside the jail. These special cases are considered, and the children are allowed to remain within the jail until the age of 12, assuming they have no other alternative.

Once these pre-adolescents reach the age of 12, they are required to leave the jail. Fortunately by then most of these children have a family member or older sibling they can count on to support them while their mothers remain incarcerated. However, there are more than a handful of cases in which these adolescents have nowhere to go.

Picture taken by Hannah Kozak

Charo, one of my team members approached me with great concern because her daughter turns 12 next month. Charo has at least 10 more years to complete her sentence, does not have any family members she can count on to care for her daughter, and her time to decide what to do is running out fast. Charo shared with me that her alternatives are to either send her little girl to a home for street children, or rent her a little room where she can live alone. Charo says she is willing to work hard to make sure her daughters financial needs are met, but she is concerned for her daughter’s safety and well being while living on the outside without her.

To my surprise, Charo expressed much concern in sending her daughter to live in a home for homeless children, where she could count on adult supervision, discipline, schooling and food. Many of the women shared with me that in these homes their children would be exposed to street kids who have been vulnerable to drugs, prostitution and sexual abuse, and fear their children will become vulnerable to these as well while in these homes.  

For these reasons Charo and many of the women with pre-adolescents within the jail are more inclined to send their children to live alone in a rented room, without any supervision and away from the nurturing eye of their mothers.

It is in situations like this that I have a hard time understanding what the lesson opportunity is for these children. Why do some lives have to be so hard? I can’t imagine living alone at the age of 12, how I would have handled it, or what choices I may have made. It seems a recipe for disaster or at the very least another teenage pregnancy or the repetition of the cycle from which these girls were brought into.

At best, my work through Knitting Peace strives to provide opportunities to change the trajectory of the children of these incarcerated women in service to healing and empowering generations to come; however I feel I am at a loss in this situation being that the alternatives seem to lead to more of the same.  My hope is to find an alternative to bridge the gap between living with their mothers, and living in alignment with their higher purpose and well being. 

Picture taken by Hannah Kozak

Inspiring Women...

The past week has been plagued with news about recent reports of abuse to incarcerated women in La Paz Bolivia, specifically within the jail I work in. A Peruvian woman who allegedly attempted to escape the prison in June, denounced the prison guards of punishing her by keeping her in solitary confinement while handcuffed to her bed for 45 days.  I realize abuse within jails is not uncommon news; however when we think about the significance of women and mothers being in prison, without a sentence or trial date the injustice speaks for itself. In Bolivia 78% of incarcerated inmates are in jail without a sentence, mainly due to the lack of quick legislative processes as well as the lack of financial means on behalf of these women to legally defend themselves.


The majority of the incarcerated women, are incarcerated without a sentence for drug transporting which in impoverished countries such as Bolivia, is a very tempting way to earn enough money to care for their families. With drug trafficking at an all time high, the prison walls are filled to capacity and a solution to this cycle has yet to be found.


Indigenous Bolivian women find themselves more often than not, raising their children on their own, which is why these children have few options when their mothers are incarcerated. The majority of these women can not afford legal representation and are shuffled through the system, waiting for their sentence, often times for many years, even if they are innocent. Once their case is settled and they are given their freedom back, they are expected to pay a fine which is usually a astronomical amount for these women, especially since their opportunities to find paying jobs are limited by their incarceration. If the fines are not paid, they are not allowed to leave the prison. 

The more I see and experience, the more I realize how hard life can be for women in developing countries. Their options are limited by cultural roles, the economy, politics, little education and the lack of opportunities to break the cycle of intergenerational identities. Should these women become incarcerated, the stigma that comes along with that is dramatic. They are no longer viewed as adequate wives and mothers, and are forced to live in overcrowded spaces with little options for sustainability. The increased population within these jails due to drug related micro-trafficking poses an increase in abuse and violence within the jail.

As grim and unimaginable this may all sound, my experience of these women and their children has taught me a lot of the strength of the human spirit and how we truly have the freedom to choose our attitude in life in every given moment that we share. Every time I enter the jail doors, I am greeted with smiles, laughter, enthusiasm and authentic appreciation. I am amazed at how these women can find the will to continue to live fully, despite the negation of basic rights such as knowing how long they will be stripped of their freedom to live outside those walls.

Within these walls I have been blessed in experiencing friendship, with women I never would have imagined befriending. These women teach me everyday to use my internal strength inherent to us all, to not only survive but thrive. Thrive in the little things that make a big difference, thrive in sharing the best of oneself despite the physical discomforts our outer world reality may contain.

If these women can live enthusiastically and with laughter, then I have the response-ability to reflect back to them the same enthusiasm and joy. They teach me to give my very best, I wholeheartedly choose to receive their best, and am inspired to give back my best. And so the cycle of giving and receiving becomes one in the same, a continuous flow of love and respect.

Many people say I am kind because I choose to hire these women to knit my Alpaca product line, and in all honesty, kindness has nothing to do with it. I receive and learn so much from these women and children, that if anything, they are behaving with kindness, in teaching me to live courageously and with dignity, regardless of my circumstances.