DISCOVER THE STORY
Behind Ethically Sourced Yarn
I ‘auditioned’ 4 wholesale yarn companies before I found my perfect match. My wool is 100% Rambouillet from a small farm in Montana and milled locally. And even better, it is owned and operated by an incredible woman named Kami who seems to know how to do everything related to fiber.
It’s incredibly important to me that in the tradition of knitting or crochet- which is a slow and mindful process which produces pieces that are meant to last, that the yarn I offer shares that same ethical space. Sometimes, there are bits of grass and hay tucked between the twists of the yarn. Every time I come across one of these, I leave it. It reminds me that my yarn- which will become YOUR yarn, was carded, washed, scoured and spun in small batches.
This is unlike the giant milling industry which produces yarn that is totally uniform but devoid of character. Every skein I use is a little bit different even before it goes in the dye pot. To me, this is the absolute definition of slow fashion.
My mother cast on and knit the first round. She then taught me the basic knit stitch. It took me over an hour and a half to get through a single row. When it was done, I found that my yarn was attached. My mother had accidentally joined to knit in the round. To solve this problem she simply cut it and tied a knot.
I kept knitting and knitting knitting. It was still taking me ages to get a row finished. I went through the five balls of yarn I got and then ordered 5 more. My baby blanket was still only five inches tall. By this point, I was back in Los Angeles where I was living at the time. I figured that if there were stores dedicated to yarn in Victoria, there had to be one in LA. So off I went to buy more yarn that would somehow work with the not as nice as I thought it would be fabric I had knitted up so far. The woman who worked there looked at the project and then looked at me and my belly.
“This is for your baby?” she asked in an accent I’m fairly certain was Swedish but may also have been Romanian.
“Yes,” I replied.“You cannot give this to your baby. You will kill it. You will smother it.”
And then to my horror, this woman TOOK MY STITCHES OFF THE NEEDLE and unrolled my work. It dropped down past the table onto the floor and kept going.
My mother had cast on over 600 stitches.Many lessons were learned that day. And even though I didn’t keep my dust ruffle/baby blanket, I kept my love of knitting.
A couple of years ago, I realized that I knew almost every yarn brand big and small. I knew their color ways and fiber content. I would buy yarn for projects and found that I had to compromise. The color I wanted wasn’t the kind of wool I really wanted to use or the wool I was really into didn’t offer colorways that excited me. Being that I’m both a control freak and a go getter, I decided to buy natural yarn and learn how to dye my own colors.
I bought books. I did research. I watched YouTube. I asked for help and was a bit surprised when people were reticent to offer how to teach me. Undeterred, I bought a ton of dyes and went to work. It took me six months to get past the basics and finesse the dye solutions to get the results I was looking for. It’s not unusual for there to be 5 or 6 different colors in one recipe. Adding beads began as a personal touch- to add dimension and texture without being super ‘blingy’. I got so many compliments on my finished pieces I thought…’hey, maybe I could start a little business.’
It’s taken two years, hundreds of test samples and lot’s of patience, but I’m finally ready to share my yarn babies with the rest of the world. When I’m not knitting, I’m an author. I write YA fiction. I also write songs, embroider, throw pottery, slip cast and fire my own pieces. I travel all over the world to write, speak at various conventions like Comic Con and Literary Festivals. I also teach fiber related classes- like how to knit with beads and how to create your very own Yarn Stories.
Upcoming events will be shared in the Newsletter and on my Instagram account.
ABOUT A.SKYLARK
The A in A.Skylark
My name is Amy Skylark Foster. I’m a Canadian living mostly in Portland, Oregon but sometimes I live in Iceland- which is basically Mecca for all wool lovers. I’ve been a knitter for twenty years. I often tell the story of how I learned how to knit when I’m teaching a class or meeting new and trepidatious knitters…I didn’t get off to a great start. I was pregnant with my second child. I was huge and bored and uncomfortable. Knitting had started to make a comeback and all the cool girls were knitting and I thought it would be a perfect hobby while I waited for my daughter to come into the world.
If I had known more about knitting, I would have gone to a knitting store and signed up for a class.
I did not know there were knitting stores.
My mother offered to teach me. Just to give you context, my mother was a singer in the 60’s and 70’s. She was and is unconventional. She didn’t cook or bake or sew. She sang and had rad parties. The idea that my mother could knit was mind blowing. At the time, I was visiting her in Victoria, British Columbia- where my entire family is from. She said she knew about a store that sold wool. We walked into the store, I asked for ‘baby blanket yarn’. I picked a soft but HIDEOUS verigated purple and pink combo because again, I did not understand yarn. Circular needles were suggested. My mother, always confident, said ‘sure yeah, these will work’.
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