Imagine creating your own vibrant, ever-shifting colours on luxurious, natural fibre yarn and then transforming those yarns into gorgeous textiles and fabrics through knitting and weaving. This is the world that I’m obsessed with creating at SweetGeorgia.
I was born into a creative family. My father is a painter and printmaker; my mother is passionate about writing and has also taken up painting; and both of my brothers and I grew up surrounded by oil paints, colour, music and books. Being immersed in art, colour and music at a young age sparked my lifelong passion for colour and craft. This obsession has taken me on a creative journey that includes starting a luxury yarn company, an online fibre arts school, and a media company in the yarn and textile arts space. In 2024, we celebrated 20 years since the day I started SweetGeorgia.
When I was very young, maybe 6 or so, I watched my mother cut and sew a dress out of silky fuchsia fabric and it left an unforgettable impression on me … the idea that you could make something that didn’t previously exist. Looking back, I believe that carving out the time and space to sew this dress was such a meaningful choice for my mother. She had so many roles and responsibilities at work and at home, but was still inspired and motivated to make something beautiful with her own hands.
Later, when I was around 12, I watched my father make a career change — leaving a structured, stable career to completely dedicate his life to becoming a painter and printmaker. Again, this reinforced for me the significance of self-expression as a way of life.
In fourth or fifth grade, I sent away for a black and white pamphlet to learn how to knit. By seventh grade, I had finished knitting my first sweater. All through high school I sewed my own clothes; and at 16, I started my first business, sewing clothes and doing alterations around town.
I started a graphic design business at 21 while I was studying and finishing my five-year degree at university. During this time, I put down my knitting needles to focus on school. But in 2004, after being out of school and working for a few years, I picked knitting back up and almost immediately became interested in learning to spin my own yarn, dye wool fibre, and weave on a floor loom.
All my newfound skills were so fascinating to me and I wanted to share my enthusiasm, so I started a blog to document my projects and learning experiences. Never did I imagine that my curiosity and passion for just “making things” would lead me into this business and life. I’m incredibly grateful for all the opportunities, mentors, teachers and experiences that the yarn and craft community has brought me over the years and I wish to share everything I’ve learned with others as well.
I call SweetGeorgia the “home for the multicraftual maker” because we encourage and empower people to explore the multiple crafts involved in transforming fibre to fabric — everything from preparing and dyeing wool fibre from a sheep, to spinning fibre into yarn, to knitting, crocheting or weaving the yarn into cloth.
My vision for SweetGeorgia Yarns is to create visually stunning colours on luxurious, high-quality yarns and spinning fibres. The goal for the School of SweetGeorgia is to produce engaging online video-based educational courses and content around knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, dyeing, and more — we support this entire spectrum of the fibre arts.
On any given day, we might have dyers on our team preparing and creating yarns destined for yarn shops around the world, while others are filming new content with guest instructors. Some of us might be photographing products for our online store and designing or editing patterns, and I might be writing or filming new content for our YouTube channel or school. With the multiple activities that our team and I handle, we need a variety of creative spaces, so we maintain a big studio for SweetGeorgia and another set of spaces at my home.
Currently, for SweetGeorgia Yarns, we have a 3,500-square-feet production dyeing and content studio that is located in a peaceful spot in south Vancouver, right next to the Fraser River. The team and I share a quiet view of the river and trees just outside our windows. The sound and sight of the river offer a moment of meditation every time I stop to look.
At the front entrance of our studio, we have our own yarn shop. The SweetGeorgia “front shop” is open to the public and has welcomed many knitters traveling to Vancouver. Every shelf is filled from top to bottom with our SweetGeorgia hand-dyed yarns. You can find every yarn line in most every colour that we dye. The biggest dream for me has always been to offer spinning and weaving yarns, and tools and equipment through our front shop, so the dedicated space also has many different weaving looms and spinning wheels.
In the heart of our riverside studio, our team of production dyers creates hand-dyed yarns and spinning fibres in our custom-built dye kitchen. Stocked with giant commercial-grade pots and pans, dyes and un-dyed yarn, this is the seventh iteration of our production dye studio, as we’ve had to move and rebuild the studio many times over the past 20 years. With each new studio build, we have improved the design of our workspace so that it is more ergonomic and efficient for our dyers.
Upstairs, we have our open workspace and the photography and film studio where we produce many of our video courses for the school and shoot natural daylight photos for our websites. The film space doubles as my office and loom room, as a third of the room is taken up by a 45-inch-wide Leclerc Mira II counterbalance floor loom.
For me to do my best creative work, I need to balance team collaboration with absolute quiet and solitude. So, on days when I’m not at the riverside studio, I’m working from my creative spaces at home.
In 2013, when I was seven months pregnant with our first child, my husband and I went looking for a home for our family. After weeks of visiting open houses, we stumbled upon a house with a beautiful finished attic space, lined from floor to ceiling in wood panels. The original owner had built the house himself, finishing the attic with two distinct rooms, each about 350 square feet in size. The seller was using one of the attic rooms for yoga, but when I saw it, I just knew (naturally) it was destined to become my craft room!
This room is my sanctuary. It is a secluded space where I can explore different crafts, store favourite supplies, and safely leave projects that are still in progress. The craft attic now hosts a pair of Louet Spring countermarch weaving looms, a sewing machine, several vintage and rescued knitting machines, all of my knitting yarn stash, and now also my circular sock knitting machine.
When my two kids were very little, we spent hours in this attic. Maybe I was weaving and they were drawing or playing with Legos … or maybe we were sorting yarn colours together … or sometimes they would help me wind yarn into balls for knitting. I wove a baby wrap for my daughter and later taught her how to weave here. And my son helped me film my first videos in this space. This attic has become a very special place for making things and is full of happy memories.
Finally, one of my favourite spots in the whole world is sitting at my Leclerc Fanny counterbalance loom next to the window in the dining room (I just slide our dining table over a little bit to make room!). This loom is an older one, built in 1968, that I bought from a marketplace in Ontario and had shipped to Vancouver. It’s one of my proudest achievements that I completely restored the loom, sanding it down to bare wood, refinishing and rebuilding it. It is a special 27-inch-wide size that isn’t made anymore, and the relatively smaller width fits beautifully next to the window.
When I weave here during the quiet morning hours, it feels incredibly meditative and restorative. And when I weave here in the evening, I’m surrounded by the sounds and activities of my family. My kids see me doing something I am so passionate about, but I am still present and available to them.
I’ve always said that I am living my ultimate dream — to make things that I love, share those things through photos and videos, and then teach others to also make things they love. This is creatively satisfying on so many levels for me.
I’ve always believed that a creative space is meant to be a sanctuary — both physical and mental. I believe in the idea of having a room of one’s own. It’s the necessity of carving out both time and space to honour your creative soul and feed your spirit. The SweetGeorgia studio and my spot at my weaving looms and knitting machines are my sanctuaries — physical spaces that are quiet, warm and inviting, and also create space in my mind for me to chase clear thoughts, new ideas and even more inspiration.
Imagine creating your own vibrant, ever-shifting colours on luxurious, natural fibre yarn and then transforming those yarns into gorgeous textiles and fabrics through knitting and weaving. This is the world that I’m obsessed with creating at SweetGeorgia.
I was born into a creative family. My father is a painter and printmaker; my mother is passionate about writing and has also taken up painting; and both of my brothers and I grew up surrounded by oil paints, colour, music and books. Being immersed in art, colour and music at a young age sparked my lifelong passion for colour and craft. This obsession has taken me on a creative journey that includes starting a luxury yarn company, an online fibre arts school, and a media company in the yarn and textile arts space. In 2024, we celebrated 20 years since the day I started SweetGeorgia.
When I was very young, maybe 6 or so, I watched my mother cut and sew a dress out of silky fuchsia fabric and it left an unforgettable impression on me … the idea that you could make something that didn’t previously exist. Looking back, I believe that carving out the time and space to sew this dress was such a meaningful choice for my mother. She had so many roles and responsibilities at work and at home, but was still inspired and motivated to make something beautiful with her own hands.
Later, when I was around 12, I watched my father make a career change — leaving a structured, stable career to completely dedicate his life to becoming a painter and printmaker. Again, this reinforced for me the significance of self-expression as a way of life.
In fourth or fifth grade, I sent away for a black and white pamphlet to learn how to knit. By seventh grade, I had finished knitting my first sweater. All through high school I sewed my own clothes; and at 16, I started my first business, sewing clothes and doing alterations around town.
I started a graphic design business at 21 while I was studying and finishing my five-year degree at university. During this time, I put down my knitting needles to focus on school. But in 2004, after being out of school and working for a few years, I picked knitting back up and almost immediately became interested in learning to spin my own yarn, dye wool fibre, and weave on a floor loom.
All my newfound skills were so fascinating to me and I wanted to share my enthusiasm, so I started a blog to document my projects and learning experiences. Never did I imagine that my curiosity and passion for just “making things” would lead me into this business and life. I’m incredibly grateful for all the opportunities, mentors, teachers and experiences that the yarn and craft community has brought me over the years and I wish to share everything I’ve learned with others as well.
I call SweetGeorgia the “home for the multicraftual maker” because we encourage and empower people to explore the multiple crafts involved in transforming fibre to fabric — everything from preparing and dyeing wool fibre from a sheep, to spinning fibre into yarn, to knitting, crocheting or weaving the yarn into cloth.
My vision for SweetGeorgia Yarns is to create visually stunning colours on luxurious, high-quality yarns and spinning fibres. The goal for the School of SweetGeorgia is to produce engaging online video-based educational courses and content around knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, dyeing, and more — we support this entire spectrum of the fibre arts.
On any given day, we might have dyers on our team preparing and creating yarns destined for yarn shops around the world, while others are filming new content with guest instructors. Some of us might be photographing products for our online store and designing or editing patterns, and I might be writing or filming new content for our YouTube channel or school. With the multiple activities that our team and I handle, we need a variety of creative spaces, so we maintain a big studio for SweetGeorgia and another set of spaces at my home.
Currently, for SweetGeorgia Yarns, we have a 3,500-square-feet production dyeing and content studio that is located in a peaceful spot in south Vancouver, right next to the Fraser River. The team and I share a quiet view of the river and trees just outside our windows. The sound and sight of the river offer a moment of meditation every time I stop to look.
At the front entrance of our studio, we have our own yarn shop. The SweetGeorgia “front shop” is open to the public and has welcomed many knitters traveling to Vancouver. Every shelf is filled from top to bottom with our SweetGeorgia hand-dyed yarns. You can find every yarn line in most every colour that we dye. The biggest dream for me has always been to offer spinning and weaving yarns, and tools and equipment through our front shop, so the dedicated space also has many different weaving looms and spinning wheels.
In the heart of our riverside studio, our team of production dyers creates hand-dyed yarns and spinning fibres in our custom-built dye kitchen. Stocked with giant commercial-grade pots and pans, dyes and un-dyed yarn, this is the seventh iteration of our production dye studio, as we’ve had to move and rebuild the studio many times over the past 20 years. With each new studio build, we have improved the design of our workspace so that it is more ergonomic and efficient for our dyers.
Upstairs, we have our open workspace and the photography and film studio where we produce many of our video courses for the school and shoot natural daylight photos for our websites. The film space doubles as my office and loom room, as a third of the room is taken up by a 45-inch-wide Leclerc Mira II counterbalance floor loom.
For me to do my best creative work, I need to balance team collaboration with absolute quiet and solitude. So, on days when I’m not at the riverside studio, I’m working from my creative spaces at home.
In 2013, when I was seven months pregnant with our first child, my husband and I went looking for a home for our family. After weeks of visiting open houses, we stumbled upon a house with a beautiful finished attic space, lined from floor to ceiling in wood panels. The original owner had built the house himself, finishing the attic with two distinct rooms, each about 350 square feet in size. The seller was using one of the attic rooms for yoga, but when I saw it, I just knew (naturally) it was destined to become my craft room!
This room is my sanctuary. It is a secluded space where I can explore different crafts, store favourite supplies, and safely leave projects that are still in progress. The craft attic now hosts a pair of Louet Spring countermarch weaving looms, a sewing machine, several vintage and rescued knitting machines, all of my knitting yarn stash, and now also my circular sock knitting machine.
When my two kids were very little, we spent hours in this attic. Maybe I was weaving and they were drawing or playing with Legos … or maybe we were sorting yarn colours together … or sometimes they would help me wind yarn into balls for knitting. I wove a baby wrap for my daughter and later taught her how to weave here. And my son helped me film my first videos in this space. This attic has become a very special place for making things and is full of happy memories.
Finally, one of my favourite spots in the whole world is sitting at my Leclerc Fanny counterbalance loom next to the window in the dining room (I just slide our dining table over a little bit to make room!). This loom is an older one, built in 1968, that I bought from a marketplace in Ontario and had shipped to Vancouver. It’s one of my proudest achievements that I completely restored the loom, sanding it down to bare wood, refinishing and rebuilding it. It is a special 27-inch-wide size that isn’t made anymore, and the relatively smaller width fits beautifully next to the window.
When I weave here during the quiet morning hours, it feels incredibly meditative and restorative. And when I weave here in the evening, I’m surrounded by the sounds and activities of my family. My kids see me doing something I am so passionate about, but I am still present and available to them.
I’ve always said that I am living my ultimate dream — to make things that I love, share those things through photos and videos, and then teach others to also make things they love. This is creatively satisfying on so many levels for me.
I’ve always believed that a creative space is meant to be a sanctuary — both physical and mental. I believe in the idea of having a room of one’s own. It’s the necessity of carving out both time and space to honour your creative soul and feed your spirit. The SweetGeorgia studio and my spot at my weaving looms and knitting machines are my sanctuaries — physical spaces that are quiet, warm and inviting, and also create space in my mind for me to chase clear thoughts, new ideas and even more inspiration.
