This is me. My name is Vera, and on this picture I am just about to blow out my son’s first birthday candle. Which probably makes me a helicopter parent, but if I left it up to the kid, that candle would still be burning! But I did let him have a go at a bare-handed fight with the cake, seconds after this photo was taken. And yes, there are photos. And no, I’m not showing them. Even if some of the cake landed in his mouth and not his hair.
I spent most of my childhood making something: sewing Barbie doll clothes, pressing autumn leaves, baking sand cookies, storing funny-colored liquids I called “experiments” in the kitchen cupboards to my mother’s greatest mystification. Being creative seemed – and still seems – to be the best marker of childhood to me. When I was around 8, my mother started teaching me how to sew, my grandmother to knit and crochet, my great-grandmother, who was then over 80, to embroider, my wonderful art teacher, Valmira showed me how to dye silk. Fiber and people have always been inseparable to me. When I have yarn or a piece of fabric in my hands, loving someone and making something for them, with them, or thinking of them seems just about the same thing to me.
Which is why I want to share my yarns and fabrics with you. I hope they will inspire you to make beautiful things and remind you of your favorite people.
Vera