Vanishing Fleece by Clara Parkes

Author:Clara Parkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2019-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE MADDER

Long before the invention of Kool-Aid or Rit Dye, we had plants. Lots and lots of plants, whose bark, branches, leaves, berries, blossoms, and roots—not to mention the bugs that feasted on them—provided a rainbow of color when properly coaxed. It’s called natural dyeing, and we still do it today.

Some learned their skill from modern-day pied pipers such as the late Luisa Gelenter of La Lana Wools in Taos, New Mexico, or the photo-chemist and botanist Michel Garcia. Others come from cultures that have been competently and unselfconsciously carrying on the tradition for millennia, for whom natural dyeing isn’t as much a textbook process as it is an ongoing part of life. Nothing is written down; it is simply known.

Kristine Vejar met these kinds of people when she traveled to the Great Rann of Kutch, a desert region in the northwest corner of India, to study during college. She returned to India on a Fulbright to learn everything she could from these nomadic people about how their culture intersected with their textile and natural dyeing traditions.

Once back in the United States, however, the lack of suitable graduate programs in textiles led Kristine down the business path. For several years she worked with a company that made high-end mattresses out of ecologically responsible materials. She learned about the business side of textiles, from sourcing to application to marketing with integrity. She and her partner, Adrienne Rodriguez, settled in Oakland, started saving to buy a house, and figured they had their path figured out.

Then, on a lark, she took a three-day dyeing workshop with Bay Area fiber artist Claudia Hoberg. It was an aha moment. Suddenly all the things Kristine had observed in India made sense, things that she’d only partially understood in her halting Gujarati or in others’ English as a second language. Soon, another purpose called to that nest egg. What if she used it to start a business instead? She would specialize in naturally dyed yarns.

Kristine quit her job and leapt in headfirst, renting a roll-up garage space within a business incubator. She soon needed a second space with the incubator, this one for a storefront—and then a third, which she used for a classroom and more yarn production. At this point, she knew it was time to take the leap and move into a larger space that could hold all the branches of her business.

She signed the lease on a retail space she’d had her eye on for some time in Oakland. Its high ceiling and spacious back patio called to her, and it had enough room for classrooms and community events. An architect friend drew up detailed plans and helped her navigate a multitude of building codes. It took three rounds of signing off before the space was approved. Then came the challenge of finding a contractor. At first they wouldn’t talk to Kristine. “They’d just ask, ‘Where’s the man?’” she told me. But Kristine is nothing if not persistent, and on November 10, 2010, A Verb for Keeping Warm opened its doors.

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