My name is Yvonne Ellsworth and I dye yarn and spinning fiber under the name LavenderSheep. My studio is located in my home in Cascade Locks, Oregon, a very small town about 30 minutes east of Portland.

“Americana”

2. How long have you been dyeing yarn?

I have been dyeing yarn professionally since 2005.

3. How did you get started?

I have had a life long interested in textiles. My grandmother taught me to crochet at 7 and to knit and weave at 15. My mother is a skilled seamstress who made wedding dresses while I was growing up. I don’t remember a time when textiles weren’t a part of my life. Since this was the case it seemed entirely natural to take weaving classes in college. This led to classes in dyeing and textile printing. Before I ever took a dyeing class I didn’t see the point in dyeing my own yarn. Doesn’t yarn come in every color already? Then I tried it and saw white yarn magically transform into something more. I was completely in love.

After I graduated from college in 2005 I noticed Indie Dyers popping up everywhere. Around the same time I discovered Etsy. I thought with everything I had learned in college, I could do it too. So I tried it out and found I really enjoyed it. The rest, as they say, is history!

“Bad Girl”

4. What motivates you?

I live in the Columbia Gorge, one of the most beautifully scenic areas in Oregon. I am constantly inspired by what I see around me. I’ll see colors next to one another and I have to create a colorway out of it. I love mushing colors together to make great semi-solids, or working in stripes to create awesome variegated yarns.

I keep a sketchbook with me most of the time so I can jot down notes for colors or projects. Every so often I’ll go through it and get inspired all over again. It’s great for helping the creative process.

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?

I love experimenting with new fibers. I think it is really interesting how the same color can look slightly different on merino wool vs bfl, plain wool vs superwash, or even wool vs silk vs cashmere. It’s a lot of fun for me to experiment with a new yarn. That being said my favorite so far has to be the pure cashmere dk yarn I was lucky enough to get from the mill before it was discontinued. It is so soft and luxurious, it takes the dye beautifully and all around is a great yarn to work with. It is being replaced with a Cashmere/Silk blend which I am looking forward to playing with in the future.

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?

Make sure to not take on too much at one time. It’s very easy in the beginning to be excited about your new venture and take on too many orders. Give yourself plenty of time to complete orders and remember to have fun! It’s really easy to get burnt out and forget why you started doing this in the first place. I make sure to take out time to spend with my family. I try to end my day around 4pm so I have time to make dinner and play outside with my son. It’s all about creating a balance between work and play.

“Retro Groovy”

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role
model?

I love many different fiber artists and designers. I would have to say my top most is Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I am very inspired by the type of business Tina has established. I would love to have a setup where I had a couple of employees and be at a stage where I did both retail and wholesale. I also love how Tina has retreats and workshops (not to mention Sock Summit) in addition to her yarn business. I like the idea of expanding beyond yarn. It is something I keep in mind while I am at home with my son. My goal, once he is older and more self reliant, is to look into more of these avenues to see how I can expand my own business.

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to
be fiber related.

Right after my son was born in 2010 I came up with the idea of starting my own fiber festival in my hometown of Hood River, Oregon. We have a rather large and thriving fiber community, so I thought it would fit right in. So April of this year brought the first ever Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival, which turned out to be a great success. I learned a lot through the process and really enjoyed it. I’m already working on next year’s show, which should be even bigger and better!

My name is Rachel Maurer, my company is Studio Avenue Six and I work out of my apartment in Brooklyn, NY

2. How long have you been dying yarn?

It will be 3 years this summer.

3. How did you get started?

I took a dyeing class at a local yarn store that taught me some of the basics. I was immediately hooked!  I was (and still am) fortunate to be able to purchase my dyes from a local company and I bought a couple of pounds of yarn from an on-line retailer was off and running! For a couple of months I experimented with different methods and techniques.  Once I had something I was proud of and thought was special, I committed to really doing it by placing what was at the time a *huge* order of yarn.  I think it was 10lbs of sock yarn.  Which is pretty amusing when I compare it to the size of the boxes that arrive at my door on a regular basis now!

4. What motivates you?

Everything!  Colors and textures and the juxtaposition of the two are some of my biggest inspirations.  I also love the opportunity to play with colors.  By dyeing both a color palette of nearly solid shades as well micro-variegated and my trademark self striping yarns, I have the best of both worlds – creating yarns that are both consistent and quicker to produce and constantly being able to come up with new colors and combinations for my one-of-a-kind skeins.

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?

That is a hard one!  I frequently create skeins that I don’t want to part with and I have a hard time not shopping the bins of business yarn to enhance my personal stash.  I’ve been getting more into pattern designing lately and I find it really rewarding to be able to create pattern for something that works especially well with the yarns I dye.

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?

Work with what you love!  Life is too short to do a project where you don’t love the yarn and aren’t excited by the pattern.  And never accept money to do your craft unless you’re willing to work to a deadline and risk having what you love to do become work you have to do.   That is the reason I won’t knit for money – I enjoy doing it too much and never want to stop loving it.

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model?

There are so many great designers and independent dyers out there who are actively changing the face of how the industry works.  It is no longer just about the big yarn companies and major pattern magazines – there are numerous different models of success out there now. There are many people who deserve credit for helping make the change and to all of them I am deeply grateful and appreciative.   As to who inspires me – while I have a few favorite self-published designers and smaller dyers who are my go-to faves for making things for myself, I try not to spend too much time focusing on what other fiber artists are doing when it comes down to dyeing my yarns and designing my patterns. I’m too afraid their ideas will lodge into my brain and what I come up with will look more like *their* work than my own.   As when I was designing clothing for a living I prefer to look outside my own discipline to fields like painting, graphic design and architecture for direct inspiration.

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related.

I used to design and construct painfully accurate period costumes.  I can make a mean fabric rose and sew a great bridal veil. I can fold my tongue into a triple fold, like a three-leaf clover.  All these things have been of great use to me at one time or another – or at least a good party trick.

What is your name, company name and which city and state are you from?

My name is Sarah Marsden and my yarn business is Fiber Optica. We’re located in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I grew up in Michigan, and moved to Utah 20 years ago for a ski season, then never got around to leaving.

How long have you been dyeing yarn?

I’ve been dyeing yarn and fleece on and off for ten years and began Fiber Optica two years ago.

How did you get started?

I was knitting a lot of socks, and was frustrated by the long color repeats in the locally available sock yarn. Simultaneously, the spinning guild I belong to was working on a large dyeing project. I started adding sock yarn to my dye pot and was excited by the results. Fortunately, the experience was inspiring or that probably would have been the end of it!

What motivates you?

All sorts of things move my dyeing along. The colors I see around me, a need to handle yarn, color combinations that I don’t see and that pique my curiosity, and the complements from people who really enjoy my products.

What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?

Usually, I’m most excited by whatever came out of the dye pot last – then all the possible knitting projects run through my mind.

I’m  drawn to my Bamboo Frost because it’s such a great yarn. The bamboo gives the yarn a light, understated sheen, the colors are intense, and the knit stitch definition is very satisfying. I knit myself a lace and cabled vest from it and it’s one of my favorite garments.

Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?

My advice would be not to fear your own style. You may be the first person to put a yarn color combo together, but you won’t be the only one to “need” it once it’s out there!

Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model?

I’m not sure I really have a “role model” but there are many artists, designers, and businesspeople working with yarn that are pushing open new doorways. Alice Starmore and Cookie A come to mind, and Ravelry is jam crammed with amazing color combinations, designers, and small business owners doing really lovely and innovative work.

Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related.

I’m fascinated by foreign languages and speak French and Norwegian. I’ve spent time living in both countries and travel back every chance I get, usually bringing home a handful of new knitting patterns and a carry on packed with yarn.

1. What is your name, company name and which city and state are you from?

My name is Roxanne Yeun and my company is Zen Yarn Garden Inc. based in Ontario, Canada.

2. How long have you been dying yarn?

I first started dyeing yarn in late 2005 so that makes it about 5 ½ years of dyeing yarn.

3. How did you get started?

When I first was interested in dyeing yarn in late 2005, Etsy.com had just come onto the internet scene and a handful of other dyers had started selling their handdyed yarns on Etsy. Having had difficulty finding colourways I liked in commercial yarns at that time I decided to try my hand at dyeing for myself. It only took a handful of skeins and I was hooked!

4. What motivates you?

Colour is my motivation. Thinking back 5 ½ years ago, it was colour when I first started and to this day, it has not changed. I am still amazed at what colours can come out of the dye pot.

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?

Oh gosh, it’s hard to pick a favourite but lately it’s the cashmere blend yarns that please me the most not only for how colour expresses itself on these blends but also because these yarns are a real treat to the tactile senses when knitting with them.

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?

The only advice I can give after all this time is to follow your muse. Don’t let someone detract you from your vision and constantly work on being unique at what you do as others will appreciate the artistry and unique touch you bring to your chosen art form.

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model?

Gosh, this is a hard question to answer only because there are so many fantastic  fibre artists out there and they all have something unique to contribute to the fibre arts so realistically, I find something special in each and every one of them. I admire the creativity that designers, dyers and other fibre artists bring to the craft because with all of them, the fibre art itself is evolving and without each and every one of them, I suspect the art form would not have reached the heights it has today.

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related.

I grew up on the west coast of Canada then moved to Alberta for a number of years and am now in Ontario which has been my home for last 6 years. I moved out here to marry my husband who I met online (no, it was not an online dating service LOL) during a time when dating online or meeting future spouses on the internet was not that common or as easy as it would be today.

Each skein is one of a kind. You will love all of the yummy colors, my favorite Retro Kitchen.

Retro Kitchen

1. What is your name, company name and which city and state are you from?
Melissa Highfill, A Tree Hugger’s Wife Yarns. Juneau, Alaska (originally from Northern Illinois, my husband is in the Coast Guard so Alaska is home for us for the next year.)

2. How long have you been dying yarn?
I’ve been dyeing commercially prepared yarn for just about two years.

Pot Geraniums

3. How did you get started?
I started out by dyeing Merino top, spinning it and selling it at my LYS. One day I played around with some plain white wool yarn and dyes and was knitting it into a sleep sack to be auctioned off at the Birth Center where I had our second son, when the LYS owner saw it and loved it and asked me to do more to sell to the tourists in ther summer.

4. What motivates you?
The desire to create yarn that is even better than what I just took out of the dyepot. I always say that whatever color I am dyeing is my favorite, then I move on to the next color and declare that it is my favorite.

Sweet Baby Girl

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?
My all time favorite yarn that I have dyed is my Soft DK, a Merino/Cashmere/Nylon blend that takes dye incredibly and is such a nice versatile weight. A very close second is a new fingering weight yarn from a small mill in Wyoming. One of my goals this year is to work with farmers, ranchers and small mills to procure yarn for my customers.

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?
Connect with other fiber artists and network. Don’t be afraid to take risks and challenge yourself.

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model?
The first designer that comes to mind is Jane Ellison (http://www.janeellison.co.uk/) I love just about every single thing that she does. I have so many people in the industry that I look up to, it would be hard to name just one. I adore the creative minds behind Dream in Color, MadelineTosh, and Blue Moon Fiber Arts.

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related.
I taught myself how to knit in 2006 while we were stationed on Saipan, a tiny Pacific Island north of Guam. There were no yarn shops around, so eBay.com and KnittingHelp.com were my saviors. My Mom loved to crochet and knit, so she would send me boxes of yarn. At that time, we had a big chest freezer in our spare room that we didn’t use because energy costs were too high. Well, I had read about moths and such and was terrified of moth infestation, so I stored my yarn in the unplugged freezer. I didn’t realize at that time that moths weren’t really interested in kitchen cotton or acrylic yarn. My friends still give me a hard time about my “freezer full of yarn”.

2. How long have you been dying yarn?I’ve been dyeing yarn about a year and a half professionally.

3. How did you get started? It started with the social networking site Plurk, actually. in 2008 there wasn’t much of a fiber community in my town so I joined Plurk (many knitters have accounts) to find friends that I could share my knitting love with. One of my plurk buds got me into spinning – she sent me one of her spindles and some of her fiber stash, just because she wanted to share the love! Naturally, the more I got into the fiber world, the more I wanted to be involved. It was a natural step to dyeing, and then to opening an Etsy shop to share my creations. I can’t keep them all for myself, and in a way it’s how I pay the fiber community back for giving me so much.

4. What motivates you? I really think that I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I see moose, deer, coyotes, bobcats and more on my way to work. I wake up to gorgeous mountain views and swim in the clearest lakes. I try hard to capture the beauty around me in fiber. I’m not always successful, but my failures make me want to try harder. My patterns are inspired by the locales and people I see every day. It’s how I share my out-of-the-way space with the world.

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made? That’s a toughie. When a fiber or yarn is dry, I often have to fight the urge to keep it. Empress is one of those colorways that always calls to me. Often accidental colorways end up being favorites, too – when I think I know what I’m dyeing, but it comes out to be something different – “Dandelion”, a sw merino fiber came out that way. It wasn’t what I thought I wanted, but it was something I absolutely loved.

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists? I share advice about the business side of things on my video podcast, The Fiberista Files (www.thefiberistafiles.com). As for the creative side … don’t try too hard! Go with it. Sometimes I will grab three packets of dye with my eyes closed to see what colors a colorway will be. It doesn’t always work out, but sometimes it’s fantastic. And if something is really heinous? You can ALWAYS overdye it. Overdyeing is the cure to almost every dye mistake. Seriously.

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model? I love every single thing CJ Kopec (http://www.etsy.com/shop/cjkopeccreations) has ever created. The woman has a fantastic eye for color and her fibers are to die for. I’m in awe of any designer that can think up, write down, and create a pattern in a reasonable time frame – it seems like designing takes me forever, not to mention creating a cohesive pattern! There a ton of other inspiring indie fiber businesses also – too many to list here.

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related. I’ve got to share two, because one is interesting and the other is zany. Interesting: I was a contestant on The Wheel of Fortune in 2004. Vannah really is as nice as she seems. And the wheel? Actually very small! I came in second place, in case you were wondering. Zany: I can quote every word and sound effect of the movies The Princess Bride and The Labyrinth. They are my all time favorite movies and I watch them *a lot*. I mean it!
Anybody want a peanut?

(SEE? It’s a sickness!!)

Heather

Highland Handmades Sugar Maple Sock – Seedless

Highland Handmades Sugar Maple Sock – Empress

Donna Colorio

To welcome 2011 we’ve invited a very special artist of the month for your yarny pleasures.  Our January Artist of the Month is someone local to us, someone from Massachusetts. Her yarn Sockie Maki is some really cool self-striping sock yarn, and who doesn’t like self-striping yarn? : ) I know that I particularly like self-striping and have quite a few socks made up and lots more in the stash, I just might have to keep some for myself this time around!

Chrystee dyes her Sockie Maki in two manners. Some of her colorways are dyed to be self striping rather than a transitioning gradient like the other colorways. I use a different method for winding and dyeing the yarn. Like my reclaimed yarns, the gradient colorways are dyed in blank form so that the colors can build on each other without getting muddy. The stripe-y colorways need to stay separate so they get they’re own winding method. See below for pictures to show the difference in how they knit up. In the photo on the left you can see Silky Cocoon showing the slower transition and in the photo on the right, In the Loud and Proud hat, she worked from opposite ends of two balls to create the colorwork. You can see the sharp line where the colors change.

Enough babbling, time for our interview with Chrystee of Play at Life Fiber Arts:

1. What is your name, company name and which city and state are you from?
I’m Chrystee Governo, owner and solo dyer at Play at Life Fiber Arts.  I currently live in Fall River, MA not far from RI where I was born and raised.

2. How long have you been dying yarn?
I started dyeing for my own use in the summer of 2008.

Xigua

3. How did you get started?
I had been knitting for several years but could never afford sweater amounts of nice yarn. So I began reclaiming yarn from gently-used sweaters. Soon after I got the dyeing bug and I began experimenting in my kitchen with food safe dyes. In Jan. 2009 I had amassed more hand dyed reclaimed yarn than I could possibly ever use, so I opened up  Play at Life Fiber Arts at Etsy. From there I was able to expand to sock and lace yarns and spinning fibers.

4. What motivates you?
My training as an Illustrator has prepared me to work well with copy – quotes, passages from books and stories, movie clips…etc. I love working in themes! I also use colourlovers.com to create unique colorways from random photos. When I’m feeling like I need some inspiration, I’ll head there to browse some of my Palettes or I’ll create some new ones.

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?
I love my Maki. I love the reclaimed Maki especially. I am able to find the most interesting fiber blends in reclaimed yarns and I get some very interesting and unique effects when I dye yarns with cotton and acrylic content. And because of their inherent one-of-a-kind quality, I’m able to test new colorways. Most of my Sockie Maki colorways started as reclaimed yarns.

Loud and Proud

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?
Experiment and take clear, easy to read notes! I have created so many awesome, completely non-repeatable colorways because I couldn’t decipher my own notes

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model?
I am constantly inspired by Frida Kahlo and Helen Frankenthaler, two women who made their own rules and turned their lives into beautiful works of art.

Keeled
 

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related.
I can’t not create. In addition to my fiber arts job, I have a fledgling Illustration career and I help run an art motivation group that meets monthly to share new art. Each month we choose a new theme and do a creativity exercise – they keep me going!

Thank you Chrystee! I hope you all enjoy her lovely yarn!

Donna Colorio

Donna Colorio

Here is our interview with Rachel:

1. What is your name, company name and which city and state are you from.
 My name is Rachel Hawksley, the name of my company is Have You Any Wool. I’ve lived in several different places since starting to sell my yarns, but I’m currently back in my home state of Maine. I grew up in Lewiston but moved away about 15 years ago, but I’m happy to be back home.

2. How long have you been dying yarn?
I’ve been dyeing yarn since 2003, but I didn’t get serious about it until 2005.

3. How did you get started?
I started out playing with Kool Aid, then experimented with Wilton’s icing dyes, but found that neither one gave me the color range that I was seeking. I graduated to professional grade acid dyes, and never looked back. I started dyeing more frequently in 2005, when I was looking for semisolid hand dyed yarns, but they seemed to be hard to come by.I didn’t have the time or patience to stalk websites of dyers who sold out in seconds, so I decided to dye my own. Eventually, I dyed more yarn than I could possibly use, so selling the yarn was the next step.

4. What motivates you?
My biggest motivation is the positive feedback I get from the knitters who use my yarns. I love going through projects on Ravelry to see what people have created. I find inspiration for my colors in many different places. Sometimes from nature, clothing, paint colors, or a piece of artwork. I love trying to translate the color I have in my mind to a skein of yarn.

5. What is the favorite product you’ve ever made?
My favorite yarn to dye is the Luxe base. I find that it takes colors much better than many of the other bases I dye. It tends to have much more depth of color and tonal variations which makes it seem to glow. I love knitting with semisolid yarns that have just enough variation to keep it interesting without obscuring any stitch patterns, so that’s what I usually dye. I only dye colors that I would use myself, so I have a hard time picking a favorite.

6. Do you have any advice for other fiber artists?
My advice for other fiber artists interested in dyeing is to just go for it. Don’t be afraid to mix colors, and look all around you for inspiration. I’ve found that when a yarn doesn’t come out the way I had anticipated, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Often, I find the “mistake” to be just as lovely.

7. Are there any designers, fiber artists or any other artist you consider your role model?
I spend way too much time on Ravelry, so there are so many designers that I am inspired by. I love the design aesthetics of Cecily Glowik MacDonald, Hannah Fettig and Connie Chang Chinchio. I find that their patterns fit my personal style and I love seeing the designs they come up with. They all have patterns that are simple yet interesting, and many of their designs are perfectly suited to hand dyed yarns.

8. Please share with us a zany or interesting thing about you. It does not have to be fiber related.
Hmm, I’m not sure I have anything particularly zany or interesting about me! I guess the two things about me that surprise people the most are that I love to listen to heavy metal music, and that I used to be a bodybuilder. They aren’t things that you would expect just from looking at me, so I suppose it’s true when someone tells us not to judge a book by it’s cover

This is a photo of a pair of socks knit from Luxe yarn, that are her own design.

Thank you Rachel!

Donna Colorio