Do 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.]
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.