The Next Row Publication Podcast

I need to start with two confessions. The first is that I am colour obsessed. The second is that I am texture obsessed. So Laura Good’s yarn was always going to be dangerous for me. The first time I showed Laura something I was making with her yarn, she reached out, felt it and said, “It feels like butter.” I have used that phrase ever since because it really does. It is the best kind of buttery treat, all the indulgence and none of the cholesterol. Laura is the person behind Yarn Phase , a North Canterbury yarn business built around locally grown merino, carefully considered colour and a slightly unexpected journey from graphic design into hand-dyeing yarn. I invited her onto The Next Row because I wanted to talk about where the yarn comes from, how she develops her colours, and what it is like putting something deeply creative out into the world when imposter syndrome is sitting beside you asking whether you are really allowed to be there. It started with a graphic-design client Before Yarn Phase, Laura owned a graphic-design agency here in Rangiora. One of her clients was Sarah from The Grumpy Merino, whose family farms around 3,000 merino sheep and Angus cattle at The Grampians, a high-country farm near Culverden. Laura originally worked with Sarah on her branding, packaging and the stories behind her blankets and knitting yarn. At that stage, the yarn came in a small number of colours, including natural, navy and petal. There were also some undyed skeins available for people who wanted to experiment with hand-dyeing. Laura had always wanted to learn to knit or crochet. Her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother could all do it, but she describes herself as having been fairly cack-handed when she first tried. Then the yarn got her. She became curious about dyinng nd asked Sarah whether she could buy some of the natural skeins and experiment. The first dyeing happened in Laura’s kitchen, very shortly after a brand-new benchtop had been installed. A bold choice, really. Thankfully, the dye she uses attaches to natural fibre rather than the benchtop, so the kitchen survived. The rest of the household did eventually suggest that the laundry might be a more appropriate permanent dye studio. Laura began sending Sarah photos of the yarn she was creating. Sarah started taking some of it to markets with her, and then she stopped bringing it back. Not because she was stealing it, but because it was selling! Laura began travelling to markets with her and, over time, took on more of the yarn side of the business. When Sarah eventually decided to step away from that part of it, Laura continued. That is how Yarn Phase began. Not with a giant business plan or a perfectly prepared studio, but with curiosity, some undyed merino and a new kitchen bench that was thankfully more resilient than expected. Colour is personal Laura’s background in graphic design gave her a strong relationship with colour, but hand-dyeing yarn has shown her how differently each of us reacts to it. A colour that makes one person recoil can make someone else light up. We see that every day in the shop. Hot pink is practically a neutral for me. Other people are happiest with oatmeal, grey or beige. I cannot fill a shop with only the colours I want to wear because the whole point of making is that we each get to express ourselves differently. That is also one of the challenges of being an independent dyer. Laura has to make room for colours beyond her own favourites. She watches what people reach for, listens to requests and notices which yarns disappear first. There is some freedom in working in small batches. A large yarn company may need to commit to producing an enormous quantity of one colour. Laura can experiment. When something works, she can explore it further. When a colour does absolutely nothing for anyone, she does not have to make it again. Or she can dye over it and create something entirely new. There is still pressure, though. Yarn is precious, and Laura knows it is precious to the people buying it too. Colour can also shift on a screen, so there is another layer of work in making sure the photographs are as close as possible to what someone will receive. Anyone who has bought yarn online knows the mild panic of opening a parcel and hoping the colour looks the way it did on your phone. Laura thinks about that part too. The push and pull between creativity and consistency Laura and I had a slightly funny beginning when it came to stocking Yarn Phase at The Wool Shop. I loved her yarn so much that I was too shy to ask if I could stock it. Laura, meanwhile, was unsure whether she should ask if my stoore would like to carry it. Thankfully, we eventually worked that one out. Once we did, we had to talk about the slightly awkward relationship between creative work and retail. Laura needs room to keep experimenting. A yarn shop needs some consistency. Retail needs sameness for long enough that customers have time to discover something, understand it and come back for it. It often takes months for people to realise a new yarn is in the shop. If it changes too quickly, we never get the chance to tell its story properly. Laura, quite reasonably, did not want to feel trapped into making exactly the same thing forever. So we found a middle ground. Her collection would remain available for a set period, giving us enough consistency to stock and talk about it, while still allowing Laura to keep creating and move into a new range later. That process also pushed Laura to develop more repeatable dyeing methods. Part of her hesitation was not wanting to let people down if they ran out of a colour and needed more. For a creative person, being asked to repeat yourself can feel restrictive. But it also builds skill. Laura has learned how to reproduce colours more consistently without losing the part of the work that keeps her interested. High Country Hideaway The range we currently stock is called High Country Hideaway , and it is very much a North Canterbury collection. When I first saw it together, I was not prepared for how strongly it told a story. I know these colours. I live in this landscape. The shades were inspired by Laura’s time at The Grampians. The crumbling rocks along the ridges, the frost, the fleece on the sheep, the moss growing on the side of the hut and the changing light across the farm all found their way into the collection. The colours work separately, but they also sit together beautifully. That matters because not every colour works beside every face. There is an orangey yellow in the range that I adore, but I cannot wear it near my face. Because the full collection shares small echoes of colour, I can still use it lower down in a garment and place something more flattering near my skin. Laura designed the collection so that people could make their own choices while still having a fairly safe framework. The colours will work together, but they do not have to be used together. Each one can still stand on its own or be added to something else. It gives the maker room to be creative without feeling like they have to become a colour expert first. A yarn that has stayed close to home One of the things that makes Yarn Phase special is how close the wool stays to its source. The merino comes from The Grampians. It is tested, scoured and processed, then returns to Laura to be dyed. It has not travelled halfway around the world before arriving back in Canterbury under a local label. Laura is very aware that she has been given something unusual. The farm does not provide wool like this to everyone. Sarah and Johnno have supported her because they believe in what she is doing and want to see the wool continue to have a life in this form. Laura described that trust as a gift, both to her and to the people who eventually use the yarn. The supply itself is also limited by the reality of farming. She receives wool around shearing time, rather than simply ordering another batch whenever she feels like it. At the time we recorded the conversation, she had only a handful of undyed skeins left, with some held back to rescue people losing a game of yarn chicken. The minimum processing amount is significant, around 150 kilograms, and she is looking at increasing that as demand grows. That is quite a leap from buying a few skeins to experiment with in the kitchen. It is soft, but it still behaves like wool The yarn is officially an 8 ply or double knit, although it sits toward the fuller end of that category. I have knitted it on 5.5 mm needles and it has held itself beautifully, so I often describe it to customers as sitting somewhere between a traditional 8 ply and a lighter 10 ply. It has that plump, bouncy quality that can disappear when wool is heavily processed. You can also see a difference between the undyed skein and the finished yarn. Once it has been soaked and dyed, the fibre blooms and becomes fuller. That bloom is part of what gives it the buttery feel. Laura also has eczema and cannot wear every wool directly against her skin. This merino works well for her, and she has heard the same from other people with sensitive skin. It is soft enough for garments worn close to the body and lovely for babies and children. We have made a small vest sample using one skein for the smallest size, which makes it a gorgeous option for a very special baby gift. There is something lovely about pairing New Zealand wool with a New Zealand pattern and creating something that can be handed on. Merino is not just for winter We also talked about the number of Australian customers buying Laura’s yarn. At first, Laura wondered why people in a warmer country would be so interested in wool. I did need to remind her that Australia contains places such as Tasmania, Melbourne and Canberra, which are not exactly tropical all year. More importantly, merino is not only a cold-weather fibre. I am knitting merino T-shirts for summer. Good merino can help regulate temperature, which makes it useful for the sort of climate we have in New Zealand, where we move inside and outside all day. That is also why I sometimes get surprised about New Zealand knitters choosing very warm Norwegian wool for garments intended to be worn indoors. Those yarns are beautiful and absolutely have their place, but they were often developed for much colder outdoor conditions. Our lives are different. Merino suits them well. (The sheep are not invited inside, obviously, but we are.) The imposter syndrome has not entirely gone Laura is self-taught both as a designer and as a yarn dyer. In her design career, she employed people with formal qualifications despite not having a design degree herself. It took time to recognise that she brought other strengths to the work, including creativity, instinct, communication and the ability to deliver what was needed. Yarn dyeing brought the same questions back. Am I doing this correctly? Have I missed something? Will people judge the way I work? Am I allowed to be here? There is no obvious university degree in hand-dyeing yarn that would have solved that anyway. Laura still looks at more established dyers and admires their skill, confidence and precision. She still considers herself fairly new to this world. But the feeling has shifted. She no longer feels as intimidated arriving at wool festivals. She sees familiar people. Customers return to her stand. They bring friends. They tell her what they made. And she sold out of the wool she had to dye. That is a fairly strong indication that she is doing something right. Protecting the thing that brings you joy Laura started Yarn Phase partly because she had become creatively dry in her design business. As the owner of a creative agency, she had reached the stage where other people were often doing the creative work while she managed the business. Dyeing yarn gave that part of her back. I understood that immediately. When we took over The Wool Shop, the work was creative at first. Then the business grew, and suddenly my days were full of strategy, management and all the practical jobs that keep a business moving. The need to design and make began pushing its way back in. I started waking up with patterns in my head. The danger for both of us is that we take the creative thing that helped us recover and turn it into another job capable of burning us out. Laura has experienced severe burnout. So have I. That means we both have to protect the reason we began. The making needs to remain a source of energy, even when it also becomes part of the business. It is one reason The Next Row will not be a weekly podcast. I have already done the weekly-podcast treadmill. I know exactly where that road leads me. This one will be more like my vegetable garden last year. Things will appear when they are ready, sometimes with more planning than others, and occasionally something excellent will sprout that I do not remember planting. What comes next for Yarn Phase? Laura had not begun designing the next collection when we recorded this conversation, which was probably sensible because she was in the middle of moving house. A collection inspired by packing tape, cardboard boxes and tense household discussions did not feel quite as evocative as High Country Hideaway. She prefers to begin with a meaningful story, rather than chasing a colour trend for its own sake. That does not mean trends do not matter. People absorb colour from fashion and the wider world without always realising it. They arrive in the shop asking for chocolate brown or burgundy and are often surprised when I tell them those are major colours of the season. Laura notices those shifts too, but her collections need something more than simply being fashionable. They need a connection to a place, a moment or a part of her own life. For now, High Country Hideaway is still telling its story. You can find Yarn Phase through Laura’s website and Instagram, and we stock the collection at The Wool Shop in Rangiora and online. It really does feel like butter. And yes, I will probably continue saying that to anyone who walks close enough to the shelf. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thenextrow.substack.com

The first row: A conversation with Katrina from Purl Foundry Well, I’ve done it. I have officially recorded the first episode of The Next Row , a podcast for knitters and crocheters who know the basics, have developed a slight yarn hyperfixation, and would quite like to understand what is going on beyond the actual stitches. For my first guest, I talked with Katrina Robinson from Purl Foundry, an independent knitting-pattern designer here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her background is in sewing patterns, and you can see that influence in the way she thinks about construction, shape and the fabric we create as we knit. I wanted Katrina as my first guest because we stock a lot of her printed patterns at The Wool Shop. We know them, we recommend them, and several of us have knitted them. I also really like the way she thinks. Her patterns are not designed to be another version of the same sweater we have already seen twelve times. She wants each one to include something interesting. A construction detail, a sleeve, a technique or a small moment where the knitter thinks, “Oh, that’s clever.” We talked about where those ideas come from, and what happens when the brilliant sleeve she has imagined does not actually work once she knits it. Sometimes she spends months trying something, gets to the end, and realises it is not right. I found this deeply comforting. Pattern design involves a lot more maths than I’d like I have recently started writing down some of the things I make. I am using the term “pattern writing” generously here. Mine are currently beginner-friendly notes created by someone who is very likely to change the pattern halfway through. Katrina is doing something quite different. She begins by making a garment for herself so she can understand the fit, the drape and what the construction is doing. From there, she uses industry sizing charts, spreadsheets, technical editing and testing to turn that original garment into a pattern across a broad size range. We talked about why grading a pattern for a larger body is not simply a matter of adding the same number of centimetres everywhere. Our arms do not become dramatically longer just because our bust measurement increases. Our shoulders do not continue expanding at the same rate either. Bodies change in different places and in different proportions. Katrina takes that seriously. She also listens closely when larger-bodied knitters give her feedback because they know things about wearing those sizes that she cannot know from her own body. That willingness to keep learning came through across our whole conversation. Any technique you don’t know is just something you haven’t learned yet One of my favourite moments was when Katrina talked about people looking at a garment and saying: “I could never do that.” Her response was that any technique you do not know is simply a technique you do not know yet . You can look it up. You can try it. You can learn it. We do not have to complete some secret knitting apprenticeship before we are allowed to use circular needles, knit a garment from the top down or attempt short rows. This is one of the reasons I wanted to make The Next Row. Experienced knitters sometimes take knowledge for granted. They have forgotten that terms such as positive ease , meterage , Japanese short rows and saddle shoulders once sounded completely foreign to them too. I want us to pull those things apart without making anyone feel stupid for asking. The expensive yarn is lovely. It is not compulsory. We also talked about something I feel strongly about at The Wool Shop: knitting needs to remain accessible. I love beautiful yarn. Give me the soft, locally made, hand-dyed, slightly bougie yarn and I will happily rub it against my face. But not every garment has to cost hundreds of dollars to make. Katrina is completely comfortable with knitters substituting yarn to suit their budget, their skin and the way they want the garment to feel. Sometimes you may choose the luxury option. Sometimes your goal is to make a whole sweater for under $100. Both are knitting. The important part is understanding what the replacement yarn will do, rather than believing you must use the exact brand shown in the pattern. We also got into meterage, why three balls of one yarn are not automatically equivalent to three balls of another, and why cotton can behave so differently from wool. Naturally, I became extremely excited about yarn substitution. This surprised absolutely nobody. There is beauty in taking three years Katrina came to knitting after working in sewing, and she talked about appreciating its slower pace. Sewing can create a garment relatively quickly. Knitting asks you to make the fabric and the garment at the same time, one stitch after another. I tend to knit quite quickly, although I also choose fairly straightforward projects. People sometimes tell me they wish they could make things as fast as I do. But during this conversation, I remembered a woman I met at a knitting group who had made an incredible cardigan. It took her three years. There is something quite magnificent about that. We are so accustomed to treating speed as the achievement that we can miss the beauty of staying with one object over a long period of our lives. A handmade garment can hold the television programme that tightened your tension, the person you were thinking about while you knitted, the mistake you chose not to fix and the version of yourself who first cast it on. You are allowed to learn differently Katrina works on one project at a time. I need approximately five projects at different stages or I start feeling uneasy. She finds multiple projects mentally fragmenting. I like having something simple for meetings, something exciting to cast on and something nearly finished when I need the satisfaction of getting one over the line. Neither method is the proper method. That became one of the quiet themes of this first conversation. There are many ways to make, learn, plan and follow a pattern. You may want every row written out clearly. You may prefer a short explanation of what you are trying to achieve so you can work more independently. You may swatch diligently every time. You may know a familiar yarn so well that you cast on and hope for the best. Although, officially, both Katrina and I would like to state that you should swatch. Do as we say. About this first episode This is the first proper row of The Next Row, so it may not be perfect. In fact, I accidentally paused my first attempt at the introduction and had to do it again. I am fairly sure that is exactly the right beginning for a podcast built around learning as we go. In this episode, Katrina and I talk about: * moving from sewing into knitting-pattern design * where her design ideas begin * size-inclusive grading and listening to testers * yarn substitutions at different budgets * why meterage matters more than the number of balls * writing patterns for different types of brains * swatching, tension and the thriller that left a permanent line in my sweater * learning new techniques without waiting for permission * why slow making still matters You can find Katrina’s downloadable patterns through Purl Foundry and Ravelry. Printed Purl Foundry patterns are also available through selected yarn shops, including The Wool Shop. Thank you for being here at the beginning. Let’s see what happens in the next row. You can buy her printed patterns here http://thewoolshop.co.nz/pages/purl-foundr and her downloadable patterns here https://www.purlfoundry.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thenextrow.substack.com