This idea of collaboration is not a new one, and it’s one of my favorites. I love collaborating with farmers with their particular breeds or crosses of sheep. I love collaborating with mills to create interesting and fun blends for yarns and spinning fiber. And I love collaborating with designers to see what they bring to life in those yarns.
Enter Jill Bigelow-Suttell as friend, collaborator and designer (psssst - check out The Bean Knits. You’re welcome). We played merry-go-round for about a year before we finally met, and now we have SO. MUCH. FUN. Jill is a fabulous person to bounce new yarn/fiber/kit/show ideas off of, and (bonus) she used to own a yarn shop, so she understands that part of things too! Now, we get to collaborate on Farm-to-needle yarns and patterns they can grow up to be!
This whole series of blogs was actually Jill’s idea (she’s brilliant). My part is the “From Farm” portion and then I punt it back to Jill for the “to Needle” portion.
See, this is just perfect for me because I get to write about my favorite thing: Fiber, and all the things surrounding it; the animals, the farmers, the mills!! Oh my! If you’ve met me, you know that this is the subject that lights me up, kinda turbo power (look out), and I’m ok with that. It’s a great thing to be excited about in my humble opinion.
So, welcome to From Farm - To Needle. I hope you enjoy our ramblings about our favorite things.
Check out Jill's part here - we'll be kicking off the really good stuff next week: 7/8/2022