Resolute Bay (May 17/04) - Saroomie Manik has been knitting since she was about nine years old, but the muskox wool sweater she is planning to do will be her first.

Saroomie Manik spins muskox fur into soft wool. She makes socks, and will soon knit a sweater. - Kathleen Lippa/NNSL photo

Manik, an artist in Resolute Bay, wowed people recently at the Nunavut Trade Show, where she hand-spun muskox fur into wool. When knit tightly, it feels just like angora.

The wool's natural colour is an appealing light brown. It's warm, and an added bonus to muskox wool is that it doesn't shrink when you wash it. "You know, like silk!" Manik said.

Manik makes muskox wool socks, which she sells for about $100.

Her next project will be muskox wool sweater, but she hasn't started it yet.

She spins it by hand, and after many demonstrations at the trade show she received orders for her products.

But when asked about the increasing demands for her products last week, she said, laughing: "I'm not a machine!"

Soul of an artist

At the trade show, Manik proudly displayed many photographs of her life in Resolute Bay, including one striking picture of her mother who had tattoos on her face -- an old practise of Inuit women.

Born on Nov. 15, 1951, near Pond Inlet, Manik's birth mother was from Pond Inlet; and her father, an artist, was from Clyde River.

Manik says she inherited "the soul of an artist" from her father. But she never spent much time with her birth parents.

She was adopted out when she was three years old.

At 13, she started school in Pond Inlet and never let her artistic soul die. Through the years, the line between art work and functional clothing essentials in a place like Resolute Bay was very thin for Manik, who also sews important clothing like polar bear mitts for guides.

As a mother of seven kids with three grandchildren, Manik never stops thinking about new projects.

The muskox wool sweater is one. Polar bear fur fish flies are another.

"The fur, it glitters under the water and lures the fish," she said.