I’ve always made things. Blame my parents. Often you’ll hear me respond to the question ‘hey, why don’t we get one of these?”, with, “well, we could just make one?”. Most of those answers are full of true intention to make the ‘thing’, but more than a few don’t materialise.

That mentality is why I do what I do. I always want to know more; how stuff is made, how things work. Ultimately, to get more connected with whatever I’m doing, especially with what I love doing. If you want to get more connected with your food, you cook more, find out where your food is coming from, start shopping locally, and end up enjoying the best meals you’ve probably ever eaten. For me, [along with food] I love to knit.

I’ve always played about with fabric, textiles and fiber, but I didn’t start knitting until I spent a [dark] winter in Finland, in 2007. It was an instant fit [the knitting, not the dark].

I quickly became more interested in different kinds of fiber and what they offer to the final knitted item. Along with trying new knitting techniques the more confident I became, I was always on the search to try out new fibers and blends.

It wasn’t until I moved to America, where I became hugely involved in farming and growing and raising food, that I realised I wanted the same satisfaction I got from growing all our own food and meat as I did with my knitting.

One day I found that a local store stocked this random basket of yarn [it is a furniture store] spun from the sheep belonging to a lady just down the road. I made the first version of the Cowell Ranch Hat with that yarn and was amazed that I had knit something out of fiber from sheep just 2 miles away from me.

Naturally, the next step was spinning, although I rarely have the time to sit at the wheel, there is nothing better than to knit using the yarn you have spun. I took on 5 sheep from a friend and spent the next few years shearing them, skirting, scouring, carding, spinning their fiber and knitting the most wholesome hand knit items I have ever made.

This is about the time that I started sharing with people that I was a knitter. Not just any knitter, but a every-spare-minute-with-the-needles kind of knitter.

What I didn’t know was that almost all of my friends knit, or had dabbled in it, and that I would soon be teaching them, creating knitting groups with them, eventually teaching classes and organising craft events, and this fueled my passion even more.

So,

At the beginning of 2011 I took on the challenge of making available, not only to myself but others too, organic, naturally dyed yarn. Alongside learning how to spin, and how to shear sheep professionally , I had been for some time exploring with natural dyes, learning more about my immediate natural environment, and the traditional methods of dyeing. I began selling my yarn at a local farmers markets, surrounded by the support of my local community I realised that there was a need for this kind of yarn. I source my yarn only from small flock farms within CA, currently from Full Belly Farm in Yolo County, and Cormo Sheep and Wool Farm in Gleen County.

I came to my organic, naturally dyed yarns out of the desire to become more connected with the yarn I take so much time knitting with, and hope to make this connection available for others too.

Thanks for reading.