We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alison Elder . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alison below.
Alison , appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
I have thought about this question so many times over the years, and the simple answer is both yes and no. The long answer is more complicated being as that I was already working as a creative for many years before I began Stick It Yarns. My background in the arts was primarily in dance and photography. I danced for over twenty years and my B.S. and my M.F.A. are both in art photography. I was an adjunct photography instructor for many years, and I worked as both a product and environmental portrait photographer up until February of 2020. By that time I had begun to burn out. I felt like something I had loved doing was becoming a burden and was weighing on me. I started to dread the moment the photo shoots were over because the editing process had become a slog and the final product of a digital file sent to a client was so unsatisfying and unfulfilling. So I finished out my photography shoots for the year in January 2020, and I didn’t book any more sessions because I was scheduled to have my fourth spine surgery a few weeks later.
My love of the fiber arts began in my early twenties after unsuccessfully learning how to knit and crochet three different times in my mid and late teens. When I was 23 I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and my hands and joints all over my body had stiffened up. My family (a family with a rich history in the fiber arts) suggested that I use knitting and crocheting in order to regain flexibility and strength in my hands. It worked, and from that point on I was hooked and used the fiber arts as a way to cope and move forward in life, to mark the passage of time, and as a way to bridge difficult moments that came when I least expected them. I was fascinated by how from one single strand of yarn I could create a three dimensional object with purpose, one that had the power to tell a story and celebrate a history of those who came before me.
Back to February of 2020, I was recovering from back surgery, and it became very apparent that I would no longer be able to carry heavy photo equipment around like I used to, and I needed to create something while I came to grips with that. I decided to knit a sweater. I wanted it to be a very specific shade of gray, but I just could not find it anywhere, so I decided that I was going to dye it myself. The moment I poured the dye into the pan full of water, I knew what I was doing felt like coming home – that this was what I was supposed to be doing. It felt like I was putting on my favorite old pair of soft jeans, listening to my favorite music, or smelling Thanksgiving dinner cooking. The more I dyed, the more certain I was that this was what I wanted to do. The process felt right and the resulting product was incredibly fulfilling. The funny thing was that I never dyed that gray yarn I had wanted so badly. It turned into something full of color, richness, and depth. I couldn’t ask for a better metaphor than that. My color theory professors would be so proud.
What I discovered through this transformative process was that I am not what I thought I was at all. I thought I was a photographer through and through, and that I loved everything about the act of photography. That simply wasn’t true. I was trained in wet lab photography, a form that has an incredibly similar process to dyeing yarn when I get right down to it. From the pans to the chemistry and the fact that you don’t quite know what you have until it is out of the pan and dried, and I felt like my body already knew the steps to this new dance. As my photography practice moved towards a digital final project, it started to feel more like work. Not that that final product isn’t powerful and valuable, I use digital photographic files for my yarn every single day and have come to love it again. What I found, though, is that I am a process-oriented artist, and that the physical activity of making a work of art is just as important as the end product. This is what I wish I had realized so many years ago. Maybe if I hadn’t sacrificed the physical practice of making that I loved, I would have felt like I was living in vivid color instead of closer to middle gray.
Do I wish I had been dyeing yarn all of these years? Part of me screams yes!! The other part of me thinks maybe I would have missed the same crucial point I missed before if I hadn’t gone through all of the other steps that brought me to where I am today. Each experience along the way served it’s purpose, and now I have a job that I love making a product that I want to share with others so they can take their strand of yarn and make an object with purpose to move them forward in their lives. This way, I get to play a little tiny part in their stories.
Something that I wish I could change about my work as a creative is to have had less fear and to have taken a chance on creating my own yarns years ago. The fearful side of me always took over, and I thought there is no way that I could make this a career or a living. I wish I could have realized sooner that there isn’t only one way to run a business and there isn’t only one way to have a career. Once I got creative with how to go about the process and put aside some of the fear, I was able to start making it into something that works for me and my family. I still have a long way to go, but I’m on a forward moving and enjoyable path.
Alison , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Alison Elder, and I am the owner, dyer, and photographer behind Stick It Yarns, an independent yarn business in Vista, California. I specialize in richly colored and speckled small batch hand dyed yarns in a variety of weights and bases. I only use yarns from high quality, ethically conscious, sustainability focused companies. This is a very small business and everyone in the family (amazing husband, two fantastic daughters, and two hilarious dogs) is involved in some part of the process since I create these yarns in our 875 square foot apartment. I have a small space, I make small batches, and I pay big attention to detail. I absolutely love color and it is important to me to try to make yarns that celebrate each color’s richness and depth and that are as consistent as possible from pan to pan and skein to skein yet still keeping that hand dyed unique aesthetic.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Life never stops. What I have learned in my life as a creative is that no matter what gets thrown in my way, I just have to step on over it and keep going. I think a lot of people figured that out during 2020. For me it was 2022. This year. I’m no stranger to challenging situations in my life. I have an autoimmune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis diagnosed in my early twenties. I have had four spine surgeries, the first one at 28 years old. I’ve learned to live with chronic pain and having to change directions in life and am no stranger to reinvention. But this year has been the most challenging of my life so far. Supply chain issues, economy problems, parenting two active girls while my husband and I both work from home, an autoimmune flare as a reaction to a stomach bug, medication changes, my dad’s Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis, the inability to physically work for a few months, and an ongoing cancer scare all came within a span of a few months. I don’t list these things to vent, I have already done that. I list them to make a point about what I came to realize as an artist. I just have to keep making, to keep creating what I love because it is that process that helps move me forward and helps me to surpass the challenges set before me. Two weeks ago was the first time I was able to dye a batch of yarn in a few months and immediately I felt like anything was possible. Just keep going.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I come from a family and extended family of science-oriented individuals. My mother was a pharmacist, my father was a chemist, and my three siblings are all in a form of engineering. And then there is me. I was a little bit of a black sheep from the start in my interests and skills. Well, maybe more of a dark gray in that I was a quick learner and curious, but certain things didn’t come as easily to me as they did to my siblings. I was a dancer from an early age, and in my teens I was introduced to wet lab photography. It was the perfect melding of science and art, and I was a goner.
The problem was no one quite understood my absolute necessity to make this the focus of my education and later into a career because it wasn’t a career that promised a high amount of stability. So I kept trying to mix my photographic education with something that would offer that stability. I got my B.S. in Art & Design: Photography and then went on to get my M.F.A. in Creative Photography so that I would be able to teach at the college level, which I did. After several years of adjunct teaching I started to lose my spark that kept me bonded with photography. There were no more photographs on the walls at home, and I didn’t want to look at images or pick up my camera at all. The things that always pulled me through these difficult times were my fiber projects. Knitting and crocheting always helped me get through the challenging moments in my life. When I finally found yarn dyeing, I felt like something awakened in me again.
I immersed myself in research on dyeing and different fibers, dyes, processes, methods, and equipment. I realized as I started to meld my love of fiber, art, color, and photography into a business that there is never one way to do something or one way to reach a goal. One person’s path or method to get where they want to end up isn’t right for everyone, neither is a person’s success determined just by financial security. I realized I needed to create in order to be fulfilled in my chosen job. I needed to be a maker, to be engaged in the physical act of making something to make sense of the world around me. Once I stopped trying to fit myself into a ingrained constructed blueprint for a “successful” or “stable” life, I was able to define what success actually means to me and began to experience success on my own terms.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/StickItYarns
- Instagram: @stickityarns
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stickityarns/
Image Credits
Stephen Elder