Meet The Artist: YoKNITS Yarn

We want you meet Matney Paine of YoKNITS!  YoKNITS (which stands for the knitting term Yarn Over) is run from her home in Colorado, where she spends most of my time raising my two children. Matney is a self-taught knitter of 8 years creating handmade scarves and hand-spun yarn for many special and unique people. All the handmade, homemade, handknit, handsewn, handfelted, hand-dyed, hand-spun items on YOKNITS are one of a kind. let’s find out more about her business…

How long have you been running your fiber art business and what inspired you to do this for a living?
I started out as a self-taught knitter, selling my knit items at craft fairs and local events for about 7 years. Then I just made a sudden shift to spinning after being mentored for 2 mos. In the rhythm and technique. I have been spinning yarn for 11 mos.

What part of your work do you enjoy the most?
I enjoy sitting at the wheel of course, but I also enjoy the response to my work. I feel like people have been really great and easy to work with and it keeps me inspired to make yarn for someone to create with.

What part of your work do you enjoy the least?
I do not really enjoy the smell of wet wool.

What styles, artists, designers do you find more inspiring and why?
I enjoy so many different types of art. Lately I have been really into photographs of stacked teacups…and certain vintage yellows that tend to catch my eye. Dresses from the 1930’s….I really adore anyone who can photograph halos well.

Being self-employed can be hard to maintain motivation. What do you do to keep the creativity flowing in your everyday work?
Double shot lattes

What blogs/magazines/books do you like to read?
I like to search blogs by images, I love stumbling into someone’s life and reading about their personal experience. I think it is amazing that so many people are part of the cyber blog roll world….I have an ego about reading, in that I feel like I already had all of “those” ideas.

Do you have any hobbies other then fiberarts?
Mostly I raise my two blue-eyed children babes in the Colorado Mountains, and I tend to flow in and out with the seasonal hobbies. I have a love hate relationship with my sewing machine….. And I am going to learn to Clog this year!

Now that I am a responsible adult with children of my own I laugh sometimes at the all too famous word from my mother, and an assumed many other mothers, “Someday when you are grown up you will understand”….My deepest ambition as a adult…is really just to be ballerina, if not literally, somehow subconsciously.

Anything new on the horizon for your business?
I just want to keep it spinning!

Thanks Matney! Be sure to visit her online at www.etsy.com/shop/YOKNITS