Dozens of shops stretching from downtown Anchorage throughout the area offer a wide variety of handcrafted and specialty items. No shop is more unusual than Oomingmak.
And it's not just the name that makes is unusual.
Oomingmak, an Eskimo word for musk ox, is a cooperative that sells hand-knitted clothing made from qiviut, the fine underwool of musk ox. Musk ox grow the fine wool to keep warm in the extreme cold of arctic winters. The animals shed the underwool each spring.
Alaska Native knitters turn the material into super-soft garments.
"Qiviut is extremely soft," said Sigrun Robertson, executive director of the cooperative. "It's comparable to the very best cashmere.
"It costs about $150 a pound for qiviut, so I say it's closer to gold than to cashmere. It's just beautiful stuff and when it's knitted, it's really very useful."
Oomingmak, 604 H St., offers items from more than 200 Alaska Native knitters who live in isolated villages hundreds of miles from Anchorage and far away from the state's road system. Each village has a signature knitting pattern, derived from traditional Eskimo art.
Those patterns are visible on scarves, stoles, caps, tunics and Eskimo smoke rings -- a combination scarf and head covering. The cooperative has recently started a new line offering a mix of 80 percent qiviut and 20 percent silk. Headbands are available in the new line. Prices on the original items run from $125 to $600.
Robertson said the co-op was started in 1969 as a way to help the Alaska Natives supplement their income. Some of the original knitters are still working today and many have taught daughters and granddaughters the skill.
"Most of the knitters are from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and that's an area that is economically depressed," Robertson said. "The people there live mostly a subsistence lifestyle. The income possibilities out there are very small and the expenses are very high.
"This is a way they can earn a supplemental income. How much they earn depends on how much work they want to do."
Because knitters work at their own pace, Robertson said the arrangement creates some unusual situations.
"We try to balance the customer's needs and the knitter's needs," she said. "That keeps it interesting. We're dealing with two different worlds here.
"On one hand you have the guy in New York who wants his item yesterday, and on the other hand you have a lady in Tununak who says, 'It's coming.' "
