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Celebrate Diversknitty by Supporting Yarn Makers of Color

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yarn makers of colorDo you know about the Yarn Mission? I’ve followed them on Facebook for a while, and I love their purpose of using fiber arts to support social justice and economic empowerment for black people, and love the idea that we all can do better to support creators of color.

We can all make an effort to support designers of color by buying, knitting and sharing their designs, and we can support yarn dyers of color by buying their yarn.

Yarn Mission started the year with a post all about purposeful support of black yarn dyers, which includes a list of yarn makers that is a great start if you want to diversify your knitting purchases.

Buy their yarn if you can, share their stories online, follow them on social media and seek out other diverse knitters and fiber artists by following hashtags like #diversknitty, #blackgirlsknit #blackknittersofinstagram (and others like #asianknittersofinstagram, #queerknitters, etc.)

Do you have favorite designers or yarn makers of color? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Ewe-Knitted States of Fiber.]

Comments

  1. I say, buy the yarn you LOVE and want to work with. I don’t intend to buy from anyone because of the shop owners race, religion, sexual orientation or otherwise.

    Why would any shopper care about those things? It just doesnt make sense.

Have you read?

Classic Dishcloth Knitting Patterns

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use. 

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make. 

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!). 

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn. 

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart. 

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern. 

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.