About Us
I'm Erica Brady, a native of Colorado, and a lifelong fiber artist. I learned both crochet and knitting at the age of eight-- WELL over 30 years ago <wink>!
(Colorado Makers Market, 11/25/23)
I'm passionate about color, creativity, whimsy, and taking the patterns others create and immediately tweaking them to suit my own desires! In 2015 I started writing patterns for crochet and knitting and selling them online on sites like Etsy, Craftsy, and Ravelry. You can find them by searching my name or that of my other business, "NoCoKnitWitDesigns". It was at this time of perfecting my pattern-writing skills that I discovered the joys of buying hand dyed yarn.
It wasn't long before I had an idea-- I noticed that I'm particularly drawn to solid and semi-solid/tonal colors, as opposed to variegated or self-striping. The challenge I always had in purchasing my own yarn for projects was how on earth to find all of the exact colors I wanted on ALL one yarn base. It seemed no brand on the planet had more than maybe 20-30 colors in one type of yarn. Or, if they did, the yarn was commercially dyed and of fairly poor quality.
I set out to teach myself to dye my own yarns at this point. And while most indie dyers focus on natural fibers like wool, silk, and alpaca, legendary recording artist, Prince, taught me that that route wasn't for me. Many people don't know this, but Prince was a prolific, dedicated animal rights advocate and vegan, and I learned through him about how cruel the commercial wool industry can be. As an animal-lover and long-time vegetarian myself, I knew I had to learn to dye plant based yarn.
Dyeing bamboo and cotton blends is a very laborious process and to do it correctly requires a great deal of time and patience. But the vivid, eye-catching colors make it SO worth it! Within a few months, my first 25-color "extended rainbow" palette was born, and I knew before even starting to dye them all that each color would be named after an inspiring woman in my life.
Since then, I've created many product lines, numerous color gradients and rainbows, shaded, fade, and ombré kits, gift sets, yarn advent calendars.... the list goes on, and I'm just getting started!
That's the story-- that's how we (and by "we" I mean "me"), got here. Thanks for being here. I hope these colors will inspire you in much the same way I've been inspired to create with yarn since childhood.