Although ethnically Russian, my wife was born in Kazakhstan, and I worked there for several years in the late 1990s. Although it's listed as a Kazakhstani tartan, I regard it more properly as a "Central Asian" tartan, as the national boundaries in the area are very much a 20th century creation.

The gold and blue are heavily used colors throughout Central Asia, although frequently the blue is a lighter color. (Hmm, get it in "weathered colors"?)

Kazakhstan itself is about three times the size of Texas, has a population of about fifteen million, and is apparently the sole country on the earth that has every element from the periodic table.

It feels a lot like the American West, both in terms of geography and history. The Russian overlay is a very recent thing, Almaty was founded as a fort called Vernii ("Faithful") in 1842 . . . so it's younger than my home town of Houston.

From reading books by and about Roy Chapman Andrews, I know that in the teens and 20s of the last century a school of thought regarded Central Asia as the heartland of the world, and to this day it remains a tremendously vital and important region. (Kazakhstan's neighbors, for example, include China, Iran and Russia.)

I don't know if it's the heartland of the world . . . but it's a place that's near and dear to my own heart, yes it is.