Women, Craft, and Purpose

HJK is built on the desire to create meaningful work and business opportunities within our community. Since our early days in 2020, our pieces have been hand-made by local artisans, independent craftswomen, and small family run workshops. We’re proud that years on, we still work with many of the same people—and continue to expand our partnerships year over year.

Keeping the culture and skill of knitting alive while supporting women’s livelihoods is at the heart of what we do at HJK. Today, our pieces are either hand-knit by our network of ladies in Cusco, crafted through an artisan cooperative in the Sacred Valley, or made with care at family-owned workshops using semi-automatic, and computerized knitting machines—each approach preserving craftsmanship while allowing communities and small businesses to grow their livelihoods.

Meet Our Knitters

Cusco 

The most special and intricate pieces in our collection begin in the hands of one of the eight talented women we’ve known for years, with whom we’ve built trusting relationships and have met organically through friends, chance encounters, and recommendations.

What makes these collaborations truly unique is the flexibility they offer—each woman works on her own terms, piece by piece, with prices negotiated according to the complexity of each design. This approach allows us to create one-of-a-kind, exquisite pieces while supporting women’s livelihoods that they can fit into their busy lives while also looking after their families. 

Typically, the ladies pick up their projects, yarn, and instructions from our shop, working from samples, sketches, or knitted swatches imagined by our designer and founder Hannah. 

Family-run workshops

To produce our fine alpaca basics, we collaborate with three family-run micro-factories, each bringing their own expertise in baby alpaca and hand-worked knitting machines. Hannah is a frequent guest in their home workshops, building close, trusting relationships over years of collaboration.

Vari and Jose have worked with us for over six years, and Jose has been able to send his daughters to university through these orders. He has 3 hand-worked knitting machines in his home-workshop, about a 35 minute drive from our Cusco HQ. They work on our Alpaca Collection. 

Johann and Sonia are a mother - son team with just 2 computerized knitting machines in their home-workshop. They help us bring our ideas to life for our Everyday Collection and other special projects, employing other local people who can work in their own time picking up work as and when it is needed. 

Lucio and his mini-factory is just a 15 minute walk from our shop and HQ in Cusco. He used to run a workshop with only domestic hand-worked knitting machines and has recently upgraded to computerized knitting which allows for consistent quality and higher productivity, as well as the ability to produce some more interesting stitches and knitwear techniques. 

Sacred Valley

Not far from Ollantaytambo, in The Sacred Valley of Cusco, we collaborate with a cooperative of around twenty women, whom we’ve worked with for several years. They work on our hand-knitted accessories and on larger orders—like collaborations with brands such as Free People—we can rely on them to produce exquisite, consistent work that just cannot be replicated by a machine. 

Our production manager oversees each project, ensuring quality, consistency, and fair, timely payments to the cooperative. In rural communities, formal employment is often very limited. Bringing work to these areas gives women the flexibility to combine childcare and work under one roof while staying close to their families and communities.