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We're here to help you stitch sustainability into every aspect of your making.
With our carefully curated selection of non-superwash, plastic-free yarns and notions, we have everything you need to get started on your next project - and the one after that.
Here's to a wardrobe of knits we love and want to wear for years to come!
We're here to help you stitch sustainability into every aspect of your making.
With our carefully curated selection of non-superwash, plastic-free yarns and notions, we have everything you need to get started on your next project - and the one after that.
Here's to a wardrobe of knits we love and want to wear for years to come!
October 14, 2020 4 min read
Back in 2015, way before Making Stories was even a thought on the horizon, I went into a yarn shop in San Francisco where I was visiting my partner and, looking for something that was locally made, picked up a cake of Twirl Yarn. It was one of the most gorgeous yarns that I had ever seen, and it sat in my stash for a good long while (it takes time to find the right project for a precious skein, am I right?) before I eventually transformed it into one a hat. When picked the yarn up to start that project, I took a closer look at the ballband and discovered that Twirl Yarn was part of the Californian Fibershed. Fibershed? Sounded very intriguing, but I had no idea what it was!
It's an absolutely fascinating concept and one that goes very much in line with our strive towards more sustainability in our knitting and making life, so we decided that a short blog post exploring what a fibershed is was in order! You might encounter this term on ballbands, as I did, or when you're looking for yarns or farms that are local to you and active in the fiber space.
A fibershed is a strategic geography, similar to a watershed which describes the area where streams and rivers drain into a larger body of water, or a foodshed which is a term that is used for the geographic region which produces the food for a particular population. Transferred to fiber, a 'fibershed' is a geographic region and its network of fiber flows that connect farmers, fiber producers, processers, and consumers. I like to think of it as an 'end-to-end' concept - from farm to yarn to body to compost - interlinked with geographic boundaries, meaning that all the materials and processing steps for a certain product consumed under this 'end-to-end' concept stem from within the same region.
It also implies that a fibershed is regenerative, i.e. that the consumer products produced in a fibershed can (and should) be composted and fed back into the fibershed cycle as nutrients for the farmland. This is beautifully illustrated here:
The term 'fibershed' was first coined by Rebecca Burgess, who back in 2010 embarked on a wardrobe challenge where she wanted to develop and wear aa wardrobe where all materials and processes didn't come from farther away than 150 miles from the Fibershed headquarters. This first project turned into the nonprofit organization Fibershed, which I highly recommend to check out! They have a beautiful blog and host the directory of the Northern Californian fibershed on their website.
This is how Fibershed describes the connection between fibersheds and sustainability:
The concept of fibershed takes the concept of local yarn that we explored a while backone (or several) steps further: A 'fibershed yarn' is one where all process steps, from the growing of the fleece to spinning, dyeing and selling it, take place within a specific geographic area. If you as the knitter are part of that geographic area, you're also part of that fibershed when you knit with such a yarn!
But fret not: It's actually very rare that a yarn is a full fibershed yarn. Most regions don't have all of the processing facilities or not to the extent that would be necessary to do produce a soil-to-soil fibershed yarn. It's still fun, I think, to imagine our role as knitters in this cycle, isn't it?
What you can do if you're curious about fibersheds is to explore yarns that are associated with a local fibershed, even if it's not your own:
Fibershed has an affiliate directory, cataloguing all fibersheds associated with the Fibershed nonprofit. I definitely recommend checking that map out if you're looking for the closest fibershed to your home!
For the Northern Californian fibershed specifically, Fibershed provides an excellent producer directory and an associated marketplace.
For the UK, the South West England fibershed has a similar producer directory, which features quite a few farms and yarn producers! I also highly recommend this interview with the South West England fibershed founder Emma Hague.
For Canada, ash alberg created 'from field to skin', a project exploring Canada's fibershed community through a podcast, directory, and patterns specifically designed for fibershed yarns.
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April 10, 2024 4 min read
Hi lovelies! Spring has sprung here in Berlin – as I am typing this (mid March), the buds on the chestnut tree out the window are a few days away from bursting, the forsythias are in full bloom, and our strawberry plants have started their comeback as well (leaves so far, but Aurin checks every day for berries :)).
So it's no surprise at all that today's blog post is very much inspired by the sun and the warmer days to come! I have put together a sweet roundup of 6 joyful spring knitting patterns, all of which I'd love to have on my needles soon. (If someone can get me an extra day or two per week to knit (oh, and to spin), I'd love that!)
The three yarns I've paired them with are my favorite spring / summer yarns: De Rerum Natura's Antigone, a delightful sport-weight linen yarn, Wooldreamers' Saona, a 50% Spanish cotton, 50% Spanish wool blend, and Natissea's Pernelle, our newest spring yarn: A 100% European hemp yarn!
April 02, 2024 3 min read 1 Comment
Hi lovelies! As you might know, we are slowly, surely expanding the portfolio of the shop – I am always on the lookout for wonderful sustainable yarns that might fill gaps we still have, and one that was on the list since last summer was an additional spring / summer yarn.
When I learned about Natissea, a French yarn company dedicated to organic plant yarns, from Audrey Borrego last year, I immediately contacted them to order some samples. As soon as I had Pernelle, their 100% European hemp yarn, on the needles, it was love – grippy, but not ropey, with a lovely drape that only got stronger after a good washing and blocking session.
The shade cards had me swooning too – a really comprehensive, well-composed range of colors with something for everyone in it, from neutrals to spring-inspired pastels to deep jewel tones.
So I was so pleased when Natissea accepted us as a stockist – and I am extra excited to introduce Pernelle to you. Our first 100% hemp yarn, perfect for summer tops, T-Shirts, and lightweight sweaters!
I reached out to Mathilde over at Natissea and she graciously agreed to answer a few questions about Pernelle. I loved reading her answers!
March 11, 2024 1 min read 2 Comments
Hello lovelies!
I am back today with a slightly unusual post that starts with a big, big apology to Liza Laird. Liza is a wonderful author (you might know her book Yoga of Yarn), knitter, teacher and yogi, and we were supposed to publish her beautiful poem "in and out", inspired by the ocean, in our Issue 11, "Seashore".
While I was putting the final touches on our layout, I realized that we had a spread too many (we always print in increments of 4 pages, or 2 spreads) and inadvertently cut the spread with Liza's poem instead of the photo spread I meant to delete.
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