Yeasmin is one big story of hope.   She has broken down cultural barriers and achieved happiness that she never imagined was possible.   Her story is one that will touch your heart and will hopefully inspire many others struggling against prejudice. Yeasmin is a little more than 3ft tall and 22 years old.   She first came to Hathay Bunano when she was 17.    She had been living at the Centre for the Rehabilitation for the Paralysed, a truly inspirational NGO doing incredible work for those who are both disabled and poor.    In Bangladesh if you are…

The latest Pebble catalogue is now available in audio slideshow format.   All the fun of Pebble toys with music attached.   There's some lovely new products in this catalogue including a range of 3 smiley caterpillar rattles.   These are easy for little hands to hold and shake and sure to be a hit.    There's also a whole new range of hats with earflaps which we think you'll like a lot.    Pebble hats is a new venture for us and will be growing over coming seasons.   You've all really liked our rainbow hats in bright colours,…

There's a wonderful charity in Bangladesh called Blankadesh and every winter they make and distribute fleece blankets to poor children in Dhaka and throughout Bangladesh.   The business model is clever and simple.    They sell exactly the same fleece blankets to expatriates in Dhaka for twice the cost price and for every blanket an expat buys, a second blanket is given to a poor child.    It's a wonderful model.   You buy a blanket for yourself and get your blanket and at the same time keep a child somewhere in Bangladesh warm.    This winter they have been…

For those of you who love pebble toys and always wanted the opportunity to knit them for yourselves we are now starting to issue some of our patterns through the blog.    It seems to make sense that the first pattern we should issue should be one of the first toys we made at Hathay Bunano - the carrot rattle.   You can download the pdf from this blog and start knitting.    If you go into this blog post by clicking the 'read more...' link and then further down that page you will see the 'download attachment' link.  …

We've been making knitted vegetables since Hathay Bunano began in 2004.   The knitted carrot rattle was one of the very first toys that we made.    At the time, a wonderful woman, Jo Hanley, was posted in Dhaka as an expatriate with her husband and she made most of the patterns for the early vegetables.    My children had a set of plastic vegetables in a basket when they were little and they loved them.   They carried them around the house and would periodically stop and take them all out of the basket before putting them all back…

It's been a busy year for the crochet tiger in the Pebble range.    In the Autumn he was the featured icon at the Top Drawer A/W11 trade show and so we thought that you might like to see him being made.    The tigers are made in centres in Khulna and Sirajganj by expert artisans.    The shape is difficult to create consistently and so only our most experienced artisans are able to make them.    The weather in Bangladesh now, as it draws into the winter, is cooler and less humid.    It's about 22oC in the sun…

We've just introduced video as a way of training and learning new products and patterns and we're very excited about it.   In the picture Nasima is following the video that I made explaining how to make the new hat pattern that we are sampling.    The samplers have all been following videos this week and their feedback is really positive saying that it makes it much easier to learn new patterns than just having written instructions and diagrams. I'm making videos now for new items as we come up with new designs and the samplers will soon start to…

Congratulations to Taslima on the birth of Habib.    Habib is now three months old and comes to the creche at the Hathay Bunano head office everyday with his mother Taslima.   Taslima started working with Hathay Bunano in May 2007 when we first started to work in Notun Bazar and set up the urban production centre there with the financial help of Charles Voegele.    Taslima came for training and was determined to learn and to improve her life.    As a child she had wanted to be a doctor but she had left school early because her family…

Pebble toys are made in Bangladesh.   But lots of things are made in Bangladesh.   Just take a look in your own wardrobe and you'll probably find lots of items from international brands that were made here.   Now the garments industry has lots of problems but I don't want to dwell on that in this blog.   Regardless of the problems, the pay and conditions, the alleged exploitation, the forced overtime, the bottom line is that the garments are made by very talented and hard working young women from Bangladesh.    At Pebble we wanted to celebrate how…

Since I started this organisation based on knitting and crochet, lots of people ask me if I can knit.   And when I tell them 'Yes', they then ask me when I learnt to knit.   So here's the story. I was very young when I learnt to knit.   It was before I started school and before I could either read or write.    I couldn't find any pictures at all of me knitting as a child and so the one here is of me and my brother, Calvin, on his first day at school.   He's 13 months…