Sirigiri Silks

You can find us at 560 Avenue Road in Chickpet, which is probably one of the busiest streets you’ll ever see. It’s crowded from morning until night with people and carts moving everywhere. Inside our shop, it’s a different world with rolls of silk stacked right up to the ceiling. The smell of the fabric is very specific, a mix of dye and silk thread. We spend a lot of time unrolling cloth for people to see the patterns and then folding it back up neatly, which is harder than it looks. The wooden counters are worn smooth from years of fabric sliding over them. We don't have much space to move around, so we’ve learned to navigate the narrow aisles without bumping into each other. Chickpet has its own energy, and we’ve been part of it for quite some time now. We usually have a small fan pointed at the stool where we sit between jobs. Tea is delivered in small glasses several times a day by the boy from the corner stall. Sometimes the light bulbs flicker a bit when the grid is overloaded, but we just keep going. We use old-fashioned measuring sticks and heavy shears to cut the cloth. It’s a lot of manual work, and our hands get a bit stained from the darker fabrics. It’s a noisy, colorful, and very busy way to spend a day.