Several moons ago I wandered into a yarn shop off University Avenue in Berkeley in search of something pretty to crochet. I was on my third winter break from school up the street and maybe a little bored, or something like it. School and part-time work consisted of study study study and work work work and honestly an escape was in order. 

It was quiet in that shop. The only two people in the store was the lady who owned it and me and we started talking. I told her I wanted to crochet something and she asked me why I wouldn't knit instead? She spent the next couple of hours or so teaching me how to knit and I left armed with a knitting pattern and enough yarn for a color-block sweater.

The rest of my vacation was spent obsessed over knitting that sweater. The yarn that looked so silky smooth at first got a little fuzzy and knotted from all the snags and pulls. Refusing to be defeated, I marched on until about a week later, I had created my first knitted garment. My mother was indeed impressed - I ended up giving her that sweater later. Somewhere along the line, after half a dozen handmade sweaters and scarves, I got bored and put my needles away. It was around the same time I graduated from college and felt ready to just move on, and move on I did.

A little later after moving back to California I reunited with crocheting. I had been taught how to crochet when I was very young and never learned how to follow a pattern. The only reason I had ever followed one with knitting was so that I could secure the basics, and I had abandoned knitting because I didn't have a whole lot of patience for following patterns. Once I came to that realization, I got back in the saddle.

When I create anything you see in my collections, whether it's hats, scarves or handbags, I do so with what I see in my mind. Each item is unique and I won't create anything exactly like the last one. At some point as my collections grow and evolve I will embrace patterns and instruction, but right now I love the process of bringing to life whatever blossoms inside my head.  

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