Maybe everybody doesn’t know Chule, but I would bet just about any Glen Ivy Hot Springs guest who visits regularly does.

Dimitrije and Vera Cülevski first came to Glen Ivy in 1968. Better known as Chule, for more than 40 years he has been Glen Ivy’s most enthusiastic promoter and frequent guest. You may know him as the aging European cherub of  the mineral baths, an ivy leaf on his nose held in place by thick glasses. All who know him love his zeal and zest for life. Many of us have experienced his springing out of a mineral bath to greet us with a wet hug and kisses on both cheeks.

The Cülevskis are from the city of Bitola in southwestern Macedonia, just north of the Greek border. The land is naturally beautiful and the people are tenaciously cheerful in character. These are Chule’s roots.

Chule and Vera met during World War II and married in 1947. Having mastered the traditional skills taught to him by his father and grandfather, he had his own small shop in Bitola about 1940. In addition to weaving, he also spun his own wool into yarn and dyed it in homemade vats. After the war he moved to a larger shop along the Dragor River in Bitola, and became locally known as the master weaver in a town of master weavers. Weaving was and is his passion. It’s in his blood. Chule is the 5th generation of weavers in his family, who altogether produced rugs and blankets for a century and a half.

Living in a socialist society entrepreneurship was discouraged. Private business owners were disapproved of by the government, taxed heavily, sometimes forced to fail so the state could take over the enterprises. Unwilling to continue under these conditions, the strong-minded Chule applied for and obtained a visitor’s visa to the United States. He left Macedonia alone in 1966. Vera, daughter Lidi, and son Niko couldn’t join him in America for nearly two years. In the meantime Chule was granted a permanent visa as an artisan, and could stay in the U.S.

He worked hard to start their new life, learned English, and saved all he could to later realize his vision of having his own business, free from the oppression of the past. In 1968 he brought his family, his entrepreneurial drive, and his Macedonian weaver’s skills to California. He was finally able to set up his first weaving shop in 1974, in a rented garage in San Pedro.

Literally thousands of times over the years, Chule, often with Vera, visited Glen Ivy Hot Springs Spa. He thought nothing of making the hour’s drive each way, even if just to stay and soak an hour or two. Glen Ivy was their break, their relief from work. The healing waters soothed their bodies and salved their souls. Chule attributes his longevity to Glen Ivy. “Without Glen Ivy, I would have died from stress. Here is where I relax. I am happy here. I love it!”

Weaving is an ancient textile craft in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads, called the warp and the filling, or weft, are interlaced to form a fabric. The way the warp and filling threads interlace with each other is called the weave.

The fabrics of our lives are woven of the warp of our character and the weft of our choices. Every day – indeed, every moment – our behaviors, how we express ourselves, pass like weaver’s shuttles left and right, revealing patterns in our fabrics. Like all of us, Chule is more than a weaver of blankets. Across generations he and Vera weave an old world and a new in the warp and weft of their lives. Their love and their blankets touch many people. The colors are vivid, the patterns rich, the results lasting. Chule’s blankets are both facts and symbols of a life’s work.

From its 1970s beginning, “Chule’s Wool Blankets” has been a family business. Chule wove. Vera hand-tied the wool fringes on both ends of every blanket. Lidi and Niko, adults with families of their own and full time jobs, displayed and sold blankets as many as 30 weekends a year at art shows and festivals all over California. After Vera tied tied the fringe, every blanket was washed to pre-shrink it, hung in the shop to air dry, and brushed to fluff it up and to remove excess wool fibers, before folding and storing. For 20 and more years the business grew. Chule added looms and other equipment, bought wool by the ton, worked endless hours, and visited Glen Ivy to get away. Through all those years the Spa was growing too, and Chule often remarked on the entrepreneurial parallel: “Give a good product at a fair price, and you’re happy. I’m happy, everybody happy.” His vision for his business was “to warm the world with blankets.” He saw Glen Ivy’s as “to warm the world with water.”

This year during the holiday season, Chule blankets will be for sale in the retail shop at Glen Ivy. With each blanket comes a measure of history along with the touch of two special spirits, woven together through time.

-John C. Gray, Glen Ivy Founder

Updated: In loving memory of Vera Cülevski