I grew up on a small farm in southwest Michigan and we farmed in in manner not unlike my ancestors did in Eastern Europe. The foods familiar to my parents in the old country were difficult to find in American supermarkets so we grew and preserved our own.

When I was seven years old my father showed me how to knit. My mother had passed away when I was an infant and I found a half-finished sweater that she had been working on. I brought the needles to my father and forced him to teach me how to use them. It wasn't that he sat around and knit socks but he could if it came down to it as *his* mother taught him when he was a little boy.

I left the farm to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and continue to live in the city where I work as a teaching artist and freelance writer. In the summer I continue to grow crops on the farm and sell to Chicago restaurants such as Nightwood, Lula, Bite, and Revolution Brewing. As the garden slows down in the winter I work with the fiber from the small flock of sheep on the family farm.

Most of my work is created from scratch and primarily uses wool that comes from our own sheep. The wool is hand-sheared and then handspun using either a drop spindle, a Babe Fiber Starter wheel, or my garage-sale-find Ashford Traditional wheel. The dyes come from plants grown in my garden (with a few fun, bright colors created with Kool-Aid or Jaquard dyes). As my wool production is limited and customer demand for ease-of-use/wear I've added some acrylic products to my Etsy shop.