Fiber Hooligan

Next week (06/23/14) my guest will be very funny and enthusiastic Nicole Snow.

Born in central New Jersey where she grew up in a log cabin and spent hours playing craft corner with an old fashioned cash register and her parents office supplies, Nicole Snow is the founder and CEO of Darn Good Yarn the world's greatest online recycled silk yarn company. Nicole had known since the seventh grade that she wanted to serve as an officer in the United States Air Force; she started taking flying lessons when she was 13, dreaming of flying KC10's. Nicole attended college on a Full United States Airforce Scholarship at Clarkson University in upstate New York, where she played on the tennis team and was a Resident Advisor. She also met Mike, a fellow Resident Advisor who became the love of her life and now husband while at Clarkson. Nicole received a Bachelor's of Science in Business and Technology Management with Honours, with a concentration in International Business in 2004.

Nicole served two years of active duty service as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force, before launching ‘ round the Om', a general imports from around the globe company in 2006. Mike’s career as a Civil Engineer has taken Nicole to California, Alaska, Utah, Maine, New Hampshire and New York. Wanting to create a business that she could take anywhere with her and fulfill her goal of creating social consciousness through crafting and design, Darn Good Yarn was founded. Since 2008 Darn Good Yarn has saved over 25, 000 pounds of material from ending up in landfills, recycling it, and employing over 300 women in India and Nepal who create Darn Good Yarn's hand-spun, hand-dyed silk yarn and craft supplies.

Nicole is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Policy Commitee, and in 2013 was the $25,000 Grand Prize Winner of FedEx's inaugural Small Business Grant Contest. She has worked closely with Maine’s Governor Paul LePage since 2013 to grow Micro-Businesses in the state, and has passionately shared her own micro-business expertise as a consultant.

Nicole and the Darn Good Yarn gang are currently moving—bringing Darn Good Yarn operations to Schenectady, New York, where Darn Good Yarn will open their first retail location in the historic downtown business centre this month. But she’s be taking a break from unpacking & renovating to talk to us about her story and the amazing business that is Darn Good Yarn.

I’ve had a chance to talk with Nicole… she’s not only an amazing entrepreneur, she’s a kick! I hope you’ll all tune in next week so you can hear from this dynamic woman yourself.

Next week (06/16/14) my guest will be very talented and versatile Edie Eckman. Edie grew up in Georgia but has spent most of her adult life in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She learned to knit and crochet from her grandmother, who lived with the family, and to sew and needlepoint from her mother. While she always had some kind of craft going as a child and teen, it wasn't until she was a young adult that knitting became a passion. One of the first sweaters she made was a complex fingering-weight shawl-collared vest made with a combination of fair isle and intarsia. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best choice for a beginner, but she didn't know any better than to try to attempt it.Edie serves as a technical editor for yarn companies and independent publishers and writes columns for both Creative Knitting and Crochet! magazines. Her designs have appeared in Knitter’s Magazine, Interweave Crochet, Creative Knitting, Knit N Style, and many other publications. She has taught at STITCHES events, The National Needlearts Association, The Knit & Crochet Show, Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Fair, New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck), Fall Fiber Festival (Montpelier), and other national venues.She considers herself fully bi-textural, and likes to serve as a Knit-Crochet Diplomat, easing the schism that can exist between the two disciplines. Edie is one of the smartest and hardest working people in the fiber arts world. She’s also very sweet and someone I consider a friend. I hope you’ll join us next week so I can share this very special lady with all of you.

On the next edition of Fiber Hooligan (06/09/14) my guest will be nationally known knitting instructor, Anne Berk. Anne was born in Grinnell, IA., and learned to knit at age 8, from her friends’ mom. She did lots of crafts, growing up… crochet, embroidery, counted cross-stitch, macramé, sewing. She moved to Portland, OR at age 10. In college, she was a camp counselor at Camp Namanu in Sandy, OR, and was a craft director for a few summers. Her main interest besides school and crafts was singing, playing guitar, and writing songs, and she worked her way through college and grad school by performing (weddings, restaurant sets, musical theater, etc.). Anne majored in Natural Science at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, pre-med. Her junior year was spent studying abroad, in Ireland, where her interest in fiber arts was re-kindled. While there, she knit and crocheted all year, but on returning to the States, she didn’t have time or resources to keep it up, and went back to studying (and singing) full-time. Anne attended Pacific Univ. College of Optometry in Forest Grove, OR, becoming an Optometric Physician in 1985, and also married Bill Berk, a fellow student, that same year. They set up private practice together in Portland, and expanded to a second office in Clackamas a few years later. They now live in Clackamas and still run both practices full-time. When her now grown children started school, she felt the urge to start crafting again. She did a lot of needlework, and decided to start knitting, also. When Anne ran out of space on the walls for the needlework, she got serious about knitting, and decided to enroll in the TKGA Master Handknitting program. As she worked through the program, a patient of hers, who owned an LYS, asked if she would be interested in teaching in her store. It turned out that she not only enjoyed teaching… she was pretty good at it. By the time she graduated from the Master Handknitting program in 2003, she was teaching at events in the Northwest, and had a busy sideline doing commission work for yarn store customers who needed hand-knits finished, repaired, restored, or custom-made. She is a problem-solver by nature, which makes her a very good doctor, and has also informed her path as a knitter. She builds knitting courses based on problems that knitters have, trying to solve issues in the most efficient way possible. For the past three years she has been working on her self-published book, Annetarsia Knits, a hardcover, 224 page resource for intarsia instruction at every level. Anne has to be one of the busiest people I know. But she’s going to take a break from her practice to tell us her story and talk to us about her new book. I hope you’ll join us for what I know will be a fun show.

On the next edition of Fiber Hooligan (06/02/14) my guest will be Patty Lyons. Patty is a nationally recognized knitting teacher and technique expert who is known for teaching the “why” not just the “how” in her pursuit of training the “mindful knitter”. She specializes in sweater design and sharing her love of the much-maligned subjects of gauge and blocking.

After deciding to leave her previous life as a Broadway stage manager to follow her passion and work in the knitting world, Patty managed a New York yarn store, and then in 2008 she joined Lion Brand Yarn to create the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in New York City, where she served as the Studio Director for five years.

Patty now teaches nationally at guilds & knitting shows around the country such as Vogue Knitting LIVE, Knit and Crochet Show (the official show of TKGA and CGOA), and STITCHES. Patty’s popular classes can also be found online at Knitting Daily (Interweave Press) and Craftsy, and her “Improve Your Knitting Class” was named Craftsy’s most popular class of 2013!

Patty designs for yarn companies like Cascade Yarns and Takhi Stacy Charles, and her designs and knitting articles can be found in Vogue Knitting, Creative Knitting, Knitter’s Magazine, Knit 1,2,3, and KNITStyle magazine.

Patty loves to knit, crochet, spin and has even dabbled on the knitting machine. She is currently attempting not to get sucked into another yarncraft, but weaving is looking pretty interesting.

Patty lives in Brooklyn with her husband, a room full of yarn, and her rooftop garden. But she’ll be taking a break from her busy schedule and her rooftop garden to join us for what should be a great show. I hope you’ll tune in so I can share this wonderful lady with all of you.

On the next edition of Fiber Hooligan (05/26/14), my guest will be Drew Emborsky (a.k.a. The Crochet Dude™). Drew is going to talk to us about his career as a designer, teacher, and as an icon in the fiber arts world. He's also going to be talking about his line of yarns, his new Craftsy.com class and the other great things he has planned for this year. This is going to be a show you will not want to miss!

On the next edition of Fiber Hooligan (05/12/14), my guest will be Stuart Hochwert, President and Founder of Prime Publishing. Stuart is an expert and really a cutting edge entrepreneur in world of internet marketing and content creation. He's also, in my opinion, a giant in the online fiber arts world. Prime Publishing is his 4th media start-up. Their group of 27 cooking and crafting properties creates, aggregates and reviews original content. The brands span digital websites, e-mail newsletters, social media, licensing, e-commerce, business information, and marketing services. If you don't recognize the name, Prime Publishing, that's because you probably know them from their more well know online presciences like favecrafts.com, AllFreeKniting.com, AllFreeCrochet.com, StitchAndUnwind.com, and the Knit Picky Patterns eNewsletters… to name just a few. He and his team are great folks that do a wonderful job reaching millions of knitters and crocheters with killer content. And they've been great partners me, to our company (XRX, Inc.), and to many of our STITCHES vendors and sponsors that we work with. I'm excited to have him on the show to talk about himself, his company, and something new that we have planned. I hope you'll join us for what I can guarantee will be an exciting show.