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Kaesorn Khamphira

"My name is Kaesorn Khamphira, and I was born in Sanpathong. My parents raised 11 children and I was the ninth. My parents being farmers, all my brothers and sisters, including me, helped and worked in the fields. Of course my parents could not financially afford giving us a thorough education. The highest I could get was primary school, and only because I wanted to finish primary school very much. I remember fleeing from the field and borrowing my friend's shirt to be able to enroll. Once allowed in, I had to daily walk 15 kilometers to go to school and the same distance to go back home. But this large family of ours was a real problem and my parents could not pay for the 11 of us to study at the same time. So I was not an exception and dropped out of school to work.

"I worked in the fields for about eight years and I think I was 21 years old when I moved to the city where I got a housekeeping job in a hotel. I met my husband, then the cook, in this hotel. But housekeeping was not so good a job for my health. I was allergic to dust and could not work properly. That is when I started planning to earn a living with knitting, for knitting was, and still is, my passion. I learned by myself at about 16 or 17 years old and have been knitting ever since. So I quit and began knitting right afterward. I do not know why I could not and did not want to make anything else. I knitted, knitted, knitted, creating my own forms and styles, and sometimes copying patterns from books or simply custom-making what the customers wanted.

"At first I knitted cloth for my old school teachers, but now I mostly use flax and make bags. Everybody said that I was not so smart because flax was too strong a material to be knitted by hand. But I did not mind in the least, and kept doing it. In the morning I would start the day by sending my son to school and would immediately comeback to make my bags. I sit down and work from nine in the morning to ten in the evening. People often came to me to be taught, but most of them said it was too hard a craft. They saw me working and working all the time, always asking why I was doing this difficult craft. It looks as if it was absurd to do it, whereas to me it was just something I really loved to do and also that could provide for my family.

"Last year, a doctor found that I had cancer and I had to undergo an operation. A fortnight later, I left the hospital and resumed an unfinished order. Although everybody strongly disagreed, I thought that we did not have enough money left for me to stay confined to the bed all day. You see, now I can properly provide for my son and can sometimes give him some pocket money. He is now five years old. I want to tell the customers that I solely use my hands to make my bags. You will see from the patterns and finish that flax is stretchable but strong. I am sure that you will love my bags as much as I do."