Srinagar, India–It was in October that Shaista Bilal, a resident of the old quarters of Srinagar in Kashmir, first heard of a spinning wheel that works by a pedal, to yarn pashmina.
The 37-year-old homemaker had for years, in her adolescence, spun raw pashmina into threads on a traditional wooden spinning wheel, called yinder in Kashmiri. On that, it would take her about two months to yarn enough pashmina for a single shawl.
