Custom Alpaca Moose Pillow Brings Back Fond Memories

I get a lot of calls from people on a mission. Sometimes it's a quest for a rug that was seen years ago but could never be found again. Or it's for a fur wall hanging that's literally falling apart from age but cannot be released because of all the memories attached to it. And sometimes it's to recover something lost.

Whatever the reason, I talk to a lot of people who are looking to recapture or preserve something precious to them. They bring a lot of emotion and sentiment to the quest, and it's natural to want to help them. I'm glad I'm able to do it, because it can be fun.

Carolyn from Wellesley, Massachusetts was such a person. She wanted to recover an alpaca pillow she had lost years ago but that she couldn't stop thinking about because it reminded her of a very happy time in her life. It was a large pillow with a Moose on it and she was hoping we could help her get one like it. We have made a lot of  cute animal pillows over the years, but unfortunately the international brotherhood of Moose had not yet made it into that honored pantheon.

Luckily, Carolyn was able to come up with a picture of her lost pillow. It wasn't the best picture in the world, but I figured it might be good enough to make a design from. 

We sent it down to the artisans in Peru and I crossed my fingers. Soon enough, the answer came back, "sure, we can make one, but we would really like to see the face more clearly" . This is understandable, since the Moose's face is probably the focal point of the pillow.

I called Carolyn and asked her to scrounge around one more time. Amazingly, she came up with another picture from which we were able to get a closeup of the moose's face. 

Off to Peru it went. Our designers gave the thumbs up, and Carolyn ordered two pillows for good measure. Typically,  custom alpaca orders take 4-8 weeks to get back to the States. It's not really about fabrication time, but more about getting in the queue and getting priority. We ship alpaca to customers all around the world and sometimes it can be hard to stop production for one custom order.

Besides production delays, shipments can get bumped in favor of perishables flying out of Peru, and sometimes Customs likes to take a really good look at shipments from South America. Carolyn was very patient however.  As long as we could get her pillow, she was willing to wait.

Finally the day arrived when we had her pillows and could send them to her! They are each 24in x 32in and as you can see in the below picture, our designers made each pillow a little different to take advantage of alpaca's natural variations. Carolyn loved them, but what do you think? Comments can be left below this post, and if appropriate I will even forward them to Carolyn herself.