I get asked this a lot. "How did you get started?" "What made you want to go into dyeing yarn?"
And a couple of years ago, I started writing the story of Three Irish Girls. You can read it here, if you have an hour or three.
I'm feeling a bit nostalgic lately, as we just celebrated our one year anniversary here in Northern Minnesota. Today, we drank coffee, ate sushi, snuck too many chocolates, and gave ourselves pats on the back.
Yesterday, I started trolling my hard drives for pictures of how this business came to be. I have surprisingly few shots of my first studios or of myself in action, but I do have close to 50,000 pictures of yarn.
And once I started looking at pictures, I realized that tracing the history of this little yarn company is a bigger story than one post will allow.
I can see it like yesterday. I can go right back there again, place myself in the exact spot in my kitchen, hugely pregnant with my third child and working at 1:00 am when my older babes were sleeping. I can see myself at 3:00 am in my basement wearing headphones and drinking coffee. I can feel the long weekends in my studio with little more than an iPod for company. Being a Yarnista isn't glamorous. I just scrubbed two days worth of dye off my arms, threw my stinky T-shirt in the laundry, and unleashed my limp mane from the constraints of its perpetual ponytail.
It's a lot of hard work. But in every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap!, the job's a game.
And every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake.
A lark, a spree, it's very clear to see...
Here I am, living in the same zip code I grew up in, next to the biggest lake in the world, with a job that I always look forward to. And if you told me two years ago that I'd be here, I wouldn't have believed you.
The flames of sentimentality have been stoked by visits to my hard drives, the modern-day keeper of the memories. I went in search of the earliest photographic evidence of my yarn dyeing, and I think I've found it.
This picture was taken in June of 2003, and this was back before everyone had nice digital cameras. In fact, this was taken with a video camera, because I didn't even have a digital camera yet. This little boy is now a hockey player, a horsedog walker, and the class clown. And he's cute. And he's a giant. And I love him.
See the undyed yarn around the back of the chair? I know it's easy to be distracted by the blue eyes and the little Chiclet teeth.
At first, the dyed yarn just fueled my custom knitting orders, where I made things like this:
(A hand dyed, hand felted flower pin perched atop a pumpkin orange hat.)
I made this to match:
I think I ripped out the meandering vines panel eight times before I was happy with it.
This is the only picture I could find of the kitchen I started dyeing in. (Really, self? One picture? Let's hope it's a good one!)
(It's not.)
My son had just taken a tumble, and I was trying to make him feel better by taking our picture and then showing it to him. The stove I started on is right behind me, and the microwave is to your right.
This kitchen was cute, but was a tiny room in a tiny (1,000 square foot) house.
My dyeing attempts flared and then fizzled. I had no ambition to production dye yarn, as it's messy, stinky, and my teaching job was starting up again.
Plus my knitting kept me busy. I made lots of baby things for other people.
Wasn't this model a beaut?
I always loved it when customers would send me pictures of my work in action. Still do.
I made up all of these patterns. Did I write them down? No.
And that's because I am very, very intelligent and blessed with the gift of forethought.
But I did discover how awesome my hand dyed leftovers were when I took on these embroidery projects.
Beat that with a stick.
And though my photography skills were on the wrong side of bad, I did make some darn cute mouse slippers.
All this knitting kept me busy while I was growing this sweetie pie.
I can hear the inward groans of the men who are reading this.
Sorry, dudes. I can't help it.
But I will warn you before I start discussing placenta. Fair enough?
If you've ever had a baby girl, you know how irresistible baby girl clothes -- and knitting -- are.
I used more Kool-Aid to dye up some semi-solids so I could make a ruffled skirt.
The ruffles!
The ruffles! They kill me! I don't even know what this piece of knitting is! But it kills me!
Little B. was the proud recipient of many beruffled, beflowered knits.
When this baby was a baby, I started experimenting with acid dyes. My new kitchen was bigger, and the island with skylights over it made the perfect work surface.
Sadly, my experiments yielded results like this.
Ha. Hahahahahahahahhehehehehehohohoho. Ho.
Oh no I didn't!
Sadly, oh yes I did.
Tomorrow's installment is entitled: Yarn That Only Sucked a Little Instead of a Metric Tonne.
Dudes, there are fewer babies -- and by extension, fewer placentas -- in the next chapter. Promise.