Laura is a 30-something California native who transplanted to the Midwest seven years ago with the love of her life. She isn’t always enamored of the cold weather, but she does love having a great excuse to knit and spin warm woolies. She is a knitter, spinner, podcaster and lover of all things creative.
I’ve been a knitter as long as I can remember. When I was 6 or 7, my grandmother taught me to knit. She patiently cast the stitches onto the needles and talked me through the process, helping me rip things out when I made mistakes and start again.
I knit on and off through my teenage years, but picked it back up again in college. When I moved home after college, it was the early 2000’s and knitting and the fiber arts were enjoying something of a renaissance. Suddenly I wasn’t shopping at Michael’s any more, but at beautiful stores filled with nothing but yarn and fiber. 
One of the things I had never seen before was people taking fiber, whether straight from the sheep or processed and dyed in beautiful colors, and turning it into yarn. I was fascinated with getting to touch so many parts of the process. I decided to try it – I took a class on spindle spinning and created my first yarn, something that approximated boat rope. I was fairly discouraged and went back to my knitting.
In 2010 I decided that I wanted to try again. I had made quite a few knitting and spinning friends online through Ravelry, and the spinners were posting gorgeous braids of fiber and even more gorgeous skeins of yarn.
I picked up my spindle again and practiced at it. I had to learn how to handle the fiber. How to open it up and loosen the fiber (a process called drafting) so that I could then add twist to it and create a single strand. Then I could wind multiple strands together (a process called plying) to create stronger yarn.
These days I continue to spin almost every day. I love purchasing colorful braids of fiber from dyers and turning them into one of a kind yarns. I sell some of my yarns in an etsy shop and others I use to knit my own sweaters and winter accessories and also to knit toys and gifts for others. I love photographing the entire process from fiber to knitted garment.Love what you see? You can follow Laura on
her blog, The Corner of Knit and Tea,
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