Knit in Public. It is for the greater good. 🥰

This past Saturday, June 13th, was World Wide Knit in Public Day! 

A perfect day to grab your needles and head out to your favorite cafe or park and knit a few rows. 

One of my favorite reasons and I would like all of us to knit in public:

To show the diversity of folks who knit! 

And to encourage, inspire, and welcome more people to start knitting (or resume their practice). 

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This is also a lovely prompt to think about one's connection to their knitting. 

Why do you knit? 

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I knit because: 

+ It helps calm my nervous system. My hands touching the yarn, the softness, and the tactility, brings me into my body. The rhythmic nature of knitting one stitch after another, one row after another, is meditative, like breathing, it is constant and reassuring. 

+ It allows me to connect and support folks who I believe are trying to maintain and uplift processes, science, craft, and art as a distinctly dire part of life and existence. This includes everyone from farmers raising sheep and other fiber bearing animals and those who raise dye plants, folks who work in mills, and those that carry on the tradition of making textiles! Like you!! 

It has taken these people thousands of hours of hands-on practice to understand and know their material and the four seasons, combined with a sense of business and management to bring it all together. Often times within a world that is bent towards mass production, massive advertising budgets, etc. 

I believe these micro-businesses are a modern day miracle. And am so grateful to be part of a community who values including members who are working to preserve this knowledge. We are like the vast network of fungi found around the world - nurturing and sustaining many forms of life! 

I also practice natural dyeing and lead a natural dyeing studio for similar reasons.

+ It is a way to live within the seasons and be within the rhythm of nature. For example, there is something so satisfying about having a piece of clothing I have knit, out of fibers inherent to that season, such as a tee knit using a blend of cotton or lightweight wool yarn. It makes me feel happy and cared for - a care I can provide for myself. 

+ Because I am obsessed with color and learning about how colors impact and play off one another. I could swatch and study color interaction for days, weeks, and months, and still want more. There is something about the way my brain lights up when seeing certain colors come together with a particular stitch pattern. I feel connected to my senses in a positive way. 

+ I can keep myself warm (or the perfect temperature I crave at that moment). 

+ I can clothe myself in the way I want to be clothed. 

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The sheep who provide the wool for Nibble and Graze.

Santa Barbara County

Listen to our podcast episode with Cuyama Wool.

Indigo dyeing yarn in our Oakland studio: 

Floating and Nibble

The color of the indigo dyebath must be green in order to dye blue. 

Growing Persicaria tinctoria for indigo pigment in Oakland. 

Freshly shorn fleece at Sally Fox's farm in the Capay Valley, a place heralded for their organic farms and raising of heirloom varieties of  vegetables, fruit, wheat, and thanks to Sally: organic cotton. 

Spinning yarn at the mill: Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont. A 30+ year old co-operative that grew out of local farmers need to have their sheep's fleece processed into yarn. Sheep are an invaluable resource to a farm: they mow the grass and fertilize the soil to grow healthy vegetables, fruit, cover crops (for milk and cheese), and wheat. 

Green Mountain spin our Flock and Horizon yarns. 

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Thank you as always for being here. 

I am so grateful to know you over making together! 

~ Kristine