The Changing Face of the Yarn Industry

Introduction:

For many, knitting may still conjure an image of a grandmother in a rocking chair, her cats sleeping and her doilies taking shape. In recent years, however, the quiet industry of tiny neighborhood yarn shops scattered across the U.S. has become an unlikely cultural battleground. It’s been divided by charges of racism and cultural appropriation that have erupted in a series of social media firestorms, prompting some owners to close, sell, or rebrand their businesses. It may seem surprising that such a quiet pursuit could produce so much conflict, but it’s really not all that different from the fissures afflicting the country as a whole. In this conversation, we meet three women who were not content to stick to their knitting: Adella Colvin, whose business, LolaBean Yarn Co., is a prominent independent dyer based in Grovetown, Ga.; Gaye “GG” Glasspie, a leading yarn industry influencer whose signature color is orange and who is based in Clifton, N.J.; and Felicia Eve, who owns String Thing Studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the few Black-owned yarn shops in the country. The video offers our entire conversation. You can also listen to a slightly edited 21 Hats Podcast version of the conversation wherever you get podcasts.

— Loren Feldman

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
I want to start by going through a little bit of the background of Adella and GG and Felicia, kind of how they got where they are. And then we’ll talk about what’s going on in the industry—why there is, of all things, a culture war in the yarn industry. We’ll try to make some sense of that. Adella, let’s start with you. How did you discover knitting?

Adella Colvin:
My next door neighbor, Bonnie. She was a retired principal from Battle Creek, Michigan. My husband had to go to Afghanistan to teach, and I was home by myself. Miss Bonnie was aware of that fact, and we happened to run into each other checking our mail. And she looked over at me, and she wanted to know how I was doing. “I’m fine.” “I don’t think you are,” she says. “Why don’t you come over for some coffee?”

And I think we all have like those internal biases and preconceived notions about people, and I said to myself, “What do I have in common with a 70-something-year-old, white, retired principal from Battle Creek, Michigan? But I guess I’ll go. What else am I doing?” And I went over, and I walked in and she had some of the most beautiful afghans, throws, curtains she sewed—little knick knacks and things all around her house—and I asked her, “Where do you buy your furnishings?” And she says, “Buy? I don’t buy these things. I make them.” “What? You made this and that? And this?” She knit, she crocheted, she sewed, she baked. You name it, she did it. And I expressed interest. I said, “I would love to learn how to do this.” And she gave me a crochet hook and one ball of white Red Heart yarn. And she said, “Read this little book, practice with this yarn. Any questions you have, you come knock on my door.” And that’s how it started.

Loren Feldman:
Do you remember the first time you went into a yarn store by yourself?

Adella Colvin:
Boy, do I. And it’s actually the catalyst of what started at the time as Adella’s Crochet Cottage but is now LolaBean Yarn Co. I was looking for my local yarn store—and please, let me say that the store that I’m talking about is closed, because we have a new shop. And you have super sleuths online and people are like, “That has to be the shop she’s talking about,” and they reached out and they’re like, “Please, people are calling in here. They’re saying I was mean to you.” The shop I’m talking about is now closed.

But I walked in with the intention of buying some yarn, and as soon as I opened the door, the person who was working in the shop looked me up and down and said her bathroom was for customers only. And I turned around, and I got in my car, and I drove home. It was so obvious that she saw a plus-size Black woman with natural hair. And I think I had a hoodie on and converse and jeans. And she made all of these assumptions based on those things. And to her, I couldn’t possibly be there to purchase anything for crafting because crafters don’t look like I do.

Loren Feldman:
And yet, you kept going. How did you wind up getting yarn?

Adella Colvin:
Well, I did a lot of ordering online. But I said, “I could probably dye yarn myself.” And you see people doing it or showing it, so I’m like, “Well, if people around me are doing it, maybe I can.” And I went on a YouTube University, and I watched a couple videos. I grabbed myself some Kool-Aid packets and some cheap wool that I found, and I dyed yarn. And I put it in a crafting group. I’m like, “Look what I did today.” I was so excited. Looking back at that yarn now I’m like, “Oh, that was just awful…”

I put it in the crafting group, and somebody commented. And they said, “Oh my gosh, that yarn is beautiful. How much would you charge for it?” And the light bulb—you could probably see it—”Wait, you’ll pay me for this?” And that was all she wrote. I mean, full speed ahead. Equipment, acid dyes instead of Kool-Aid. I mean, I wasted no time, played no games whatsoever. And I just kept going.

Loren Feldman:
You told us that you started under one name, and then you rebranded. Why did you rebrand your business?

Adella Colvin:
The birth of my daughter. For a long time, I wasn’t very active, in terms of showing my face and talking about the person behind the brand. And I brought this little girl into a world that was so chaotic. And I said, “I want to leave this world a little better than it was when I came into it, for her sake.” And in order to do that, you got to show up. You got to show up. You got to tell your story. You have to let people know what’s going on so that they can, in fact, help you to make these changes. So it was definitely for my kids.

Loren Feldman:
Tell us the difference, though. Initially, it was called Adella’s…

Adella Colvin:
Adella’s Crochet Cottage.

Loren Feldman:
And then you went to LolaBean Yarn Co. with a very different logo. What was the thinking?

Adella Colvin:
My first logo was very much craft centered—but it could have been a white person behind that brand. You wouldn’t know who was behind that brand. Whereas my new logo is a caricature of my daughter, so it’s a little Black baby. And I thought that that would be a wonderful way to show her, to have something for her as she gets older to see and be proud of—but also for people who look like me and who look like her who walk into these different yarn shops to see, “Wait a minute. There’s a Black baby, there’s a Black person, there’s somebody Black here”—maybe not physically, but represented through her yarn. And hopefully it would welcome people and let other people know that Black people: we dye yarn, we’re here, we craft.

Loren Feldman:
Did that rebranding have an impact on your business?

Adella Colvin:
Huge impact. First of all, who doesn’t love a baby? That was very smart, right? You know, a baby, come on. Babies, they’re perfect. But also, I was very intentional, because sometimes it’s hard to reach certain people. But with a baby, because everybody loves babies, it’s, “Okay. It’s a Black baby. So this is a Black woman.” But I mean, I could have easily used a Black power fist or something else.

Loren Feldman:
Babies are a little less threatening.

Adella Colvin:
Yes, a little less threatening. And, I might be biased, but I think my kid is adorable.

Loren Feldman:
She is.

Adella Colvin:
She’s gorgeous.

Loren Feldman:
For those who aren’t familiar with the industry, you’re considered an independent dyer, I believe is the term. What exactly does that mean? And how does the business work?

Adella Colvin:
It means my back is always hurting. My shoulders are sore. What I do is, I take natural fibers: wool, alpaca, angora. And I use different types of dyes, and I add pigment, and people then buy them and make things like—that’s not my yarn, but—the sweater GG has on is hand-dyed yarn.

Gaye Glasspie:
Do I need to change?

Felicia Eve:
I have to say, I was surprised. I was surprised.

Adella Colvin:
Yeah, because most of GG’s wardrobe, it feels like, is LolaBean.

Loren Feldman:
Don’t go anywhere, GG. You’re next.

Adella Colvin:
People, they buy it. And they then, in turn, make all types of creations for their own personal use or for loved ones. So that’s what I do. Every day.

Loren Feldman:
Is it just you? Do you have employees?

Adella Colvin:
I have a “sous speckler,” I call him. My husband. The washer of the pans. And every now and again, when my kids want to make a couple bucks, they’ll come in and help me out. But every skein of yarn that I have ever sold has only been dyed by me and has passed through these hands. My husband is a great support system. If I need a labeler that day, that’s what he is. If I need a pan washer, that’s what he is. If I need somebody to sit next to me and tell jokes to keep me going throughout the day, that’s what he does. And he spends a lot of time with the kids because he works from home, and his job isn’t as physically demanding as mine. So he’ll do that part of it, so that I’m able to go into the studio and do my work.

Loren Feldman:
Got it. GG, how about you? How did you get into yarn and knitting?

Gaye Glasspie:
Mine is… kind of sad. I call 2012 “my storm.” And in 2012, I lost a dad suddenly, my mom suddenly, and then my job—my 22 year job—all at the same time. And maybe a year or two prior to that, I taught myself to knit. Like Adella, I started out with crochet. I learned to crochet at summer camp, as a kid. I could make a chain, I made a few blankets, but it was no big deal. Knitting always seemed very difficult to me because of the material that was created, so I automatically knew that that wasn’t something for me.

But I ran a call center for Verizon, and we had yarn. And I was like, “What is this?” And the little pattern was in the box. And I’m like, “This is Greek.” So I went on YouTube and figured out the pattern and made my first little holey scarf, and then I was done with it. I’m one of them, if you want me to do something, tell me I can’t, and then get out of my way. So fast forward, a friend was making a hat. She was knitting. It was beautiful. And I was like, “Can you make me one?” And she gave me a list of materials to get, sent me to Michael’s. I got my stuff, I ran back, I put it on her desk, and she slid it back.

And I’m looking at her, because she was on a conference call. She writes on a sticky, she says, “No, you’re gonna do this.” And I’m like, “Okay, I can’t do that.” She said, “You said you know how to knit.” “I do. But I can’t do that.” So that day, she taught me how to knit in the round. I made an entire hat. So she started me off on it.

But when my world fell apart, I turned to knitting. I tell people that I wrapped my heart in yarn, and my yarn captured my tears. My yarn didn’t have any questions. At the same time, I discovered Instagram. I discovered that there was a whole world, a community out there. And I was just like, “Wow!” It’s funny, people to this day are like, “Oh my God, GG.” I said, “Would you stop? I used to make your patterns. I used to chase behind you.” They’re like, “But you’re GG!” Uh, no, I’m just a knitter.

Loren Feldman:
But you’re not just a knitter. Tell us about being—I guess the term that’s usually used is “influencer.” Do you like that term?

Gaye Glasspie:
I don’t.

Loren Feldman:
What are you then?

Gaye Glasspie:
I guess I do influence people’s purchases, influence their thought processes. But…

Loren Feldman:
I think I know you do that, GG.

Gaye Glasspie:
Yeah, but you know what I don’t like. I think, to say to somebody that I’m an influencer indicates that there’s some sort of payment involved with what they’re doing, therefore taking away the validity of what they’re saying and doing, and I am so not that. I have turned down payment for things that I don’t believe in. So I guess I don’t like that term for the negative concept of it, but Adella made me realize my influence.

Adella Colvin:
Someone called you a “knitfluencer.”

Gaye Glasspie:
Okay, I like that. I’ll take that. But I think it’s my passion. You know, I get so excited to this very day when I do something, when I get a color that I’m really—a color?—a shade of orange. One of the other shades that I love. That’s just me. I’m not doing that because somebody is paying me to do it. That’s just who I am.

Loren Feldman:
How did it happen? How did you become so influential?

Gaye Glasspie:
I have no idea. I can’t say that I set out to do that. One thing I can say that was in my mind’s eye: I would watch and see people go to these different events that I had no idea existed and traveling, even internationally. I was like, “That would be the perfect job for me.” I would love to be paid to travel to all of these places. I love having my camera. I love recording stuff and bring it back to the people who don’t have an opportunity to do those things. But when I realized the power, when I realized my influence, was the first time that Adella dyed yarn for me.

I put out a call. I saw a pattern, I wanted to make it, and I said, “I need somebody to make me three different shades of orange.” And I think Adella was the first one. She said, “Take that post down, because I’m gonna do it.” We argued about speckles, because at the time I wasn’t big on speckles, but she was like, “Okay, I’m gonna do this.” She did it. And I was like, “Adella, how do I pay you?” “Nope. Only way I’m doing it is if you allow me to dress you,” is what her exact words were. “I want to dress you.” So, I got the yarn, did a video, because it was absolutely beautiful. I made my pattern. I went outside. I took pictures. And I posted the pitctures, and everybody went bananas: “I’m on her website. I can’t find the yarn.” “Okay, she kinda sorta only made this for me…” They were like, “GG, but she can’t…” “Okay, hold on. Y’all be quiet. Let me go over here and try to beg.”

Because at this point—you know, Adella is family to me now—but then we didn’t really know, know, know each other, right? So it was still a business transaction, if you will. And I’m like, “Guys, easy. Let me go talk to her and see.” So we talked, and she said, “Okay, I’m gonna do one pre-order.” I said, “Okay.” Twenty-five pre-orders later, I was sure she was never gonna dye orange again. But what people don’t know, and what I don’t often say—because I don’t want to make Adella so uncomfortable—but it was in the midst of all of that, that I used to have an Etsy shop, and I closed my shop. I used to sell things that I made. And I’m doing something, and I hear the cha-ching, which is somebody giving you money on PayPal. And I’m like, “Who’s sending me money?” Because I don’t have anything for sale. I shut my Etsy down.

And I looked, and it was a lump sum from Adella. Something’s wrong with this picture. I got the yarn, right? Why are you giving me money? So I reached out to her, and she said, “Listen, I sat down, I talked to my husband.” She was like, “You don’t understand the amount of money that I made because you. You don’t know how much traffic you drove to me.” And it was her that made me realize that I was influencing the sale of orange yarn. And I was just being me. And I’m still just being me.

And that’s when I realized that there could be something in this. Now, was I confidently going to companies and saying, “Listen, you need to dye some orange and give it to me”? No, I wasn’t, because I didn’t feel confident in that. I was just doing what I do. The majority of the yarn that I had was not from Adella. I bought it. But then that quickly shifted. Companies quickly were like, “Oh, we need to put our yarn in GG’s hands.” So I can’t say that it was something that I actively pursued. It just kind of happened, and I give Adella the credit for that. Because she was the first one to say, “Listen!” And she didn’t send me $10. She sent me money. I’m like, “What? Hold on, what is happening?” So again, you don’t see many people who look like me doing this.

Loren Feldman:
How many followers do you have?

Gaye Glasspie:
Now I’m close to 60,000… 57,000?

Loren Feldman:
That’s on Instagram.

Gaye Glasspie:
That’s Instagram, yeah.

Loren Feldman:
And is there anybody else in the industry in that neighborhood?

Gaye Glasspie:
Individually, just a single person like me? I don’t know. I look at those who I aspired to be, and I look now, and I’m like, “Wow, I passed them by leaps and bounds.” And I thought they were the thing. But I think the difference between me and those who I aspired to be is something that you said in the title. It started out with the knitting, but it’s more of me than it is anything else. So you get my orange passion about whatever I’m thinking about, feeling about. So I think where I will take the term influencer is, I like to influence thoughts on purpose. So it has kind of shifted a little bit to that.

Adella Colvin:
I think that what GG didn’t say is the reason why she has the influence that she has, because you see other influencers out there. They’re selling you shoes, they’re selling you toilet paper, they are selling you all types of things. GG is very intentional, and she is very careful with what she shares with her audience, because she respects them. She respects their dollar. And she’s not trying to just sell them something quickly to make a buck. And I think that’s what sets her apart from a lot of the other influencers who you see out there on social media platforms.

Felicia Eve:
Yeah, I will also add that she is very genuine, just as a human being, and she shares her emotions and her feelings about things in a way that is so refreshing and genuine, and you get that through the screen. You get that through newsletters, the blogs, the posts, and all of the ways that she touches our industry. You get that from her, and I always say to her when she posts a picture angry or laughing or whatever, I’m like, “You give a lot of yourself to us, to people who may not necessarily be deserving of it, but thank you for that.”

Loren Feldman:
So let me ask you this, GG: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense that you may have been at times a little conflicted about your role, especially in terms of whether you should get paid for what you do. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you’ve thought that through?

Gaye Glasspie:
It was conflicted more so than it was low self esteem, a lack of belief in self, basically not feeling like I deserved it. You see what Adella and Felicia did, and they often do: When they see my little insecure GG pop her head up, they push her aside and they step in and remind me. I’ve gotta learn to take my flowers. I have to learn to appreciate.

Felicia Eve:
She says that to us all the time, in a finger-wagging kind of way. I can’t tell you the number of times I have received a FaceTime with eyes really close to the screen, like, “What did I tell you?”

Gaye Glasspie:
And they’re right. And there have been times when I’d be like, “Okay, Adella, I’m gonna tell them, they’re gonna have to pay me, and blah, blah, blah.” And I will lowball myself. And the people that’s offering me money will say, “No, GG, we think you deserve this. We’re offering you this.” I’ll be like, Adella, they said they’re gonna pay me [such and such].

Felicia Eve:
Take it all!

Gaye Glasspie:
Yeah, because I’m still that insecure little girl who was always told I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough. And she still exists in me. So, yes, I am getting paid. Yes, I get paid to speak in person, virtually. Like all of that is my reality now, but I still am always shocked. I mean, I’ll be like, “Adella!” She’ll be like, “What?!!!”

Adella Colvin:
I get so annoyed. She’ll be so excited. And sometimes I have to remember, like you said, she talks about that little girl inside. And so I have to remember that little girl. Because, to me, I’m like, “Okay, so they see what I’ve seen.”

Felicia Eve:
Exactly, exactly.

Adella Colvin:
She calls me. She’s like, “Oh, Adella, you don’t know such and such, and they’re gonna pay me.” And I’m like, “They should be.” And then I have to remember, that’s that little girl inside of her. And we will talk about it, and I express the joy and the happiness. But on the inside, I’m like, “I knew it all along.”

Loren Feldman:
All right, Felicia, your turn. I’m eager to hear how you got into this business, but let’s start—you had a couple of previous lives.

Felicia Eve:
I learned how to knit as a little girl, and at the time, I was blessed enough to be old enough to remember both of my great grandmothers, and one taught me how to knit and one taught me how to crochet at six or seven. Whenever it was, it was a punishment, as far as I was concerned, because that meant I had to sit down and shut up and not do whatever it was I wanted to do. And so I did it, and I learned. And it lived in some little spot in the back of my head.

So I tell people now when they meet me, “When I was a little girl, I didn’t say I wanted to grow up and own a yarn shop. I said I wanted to grow up and be a doctor.” And that was what I did. I grew up. I was a podiatrist. I am a podiatrist. I practiced for 10 years between Buffalo, New York and the D.C./Maryland area before I moved back to New York City, probably 16 almost 17 years ago now. And even then, I was still crocheting and I was still knitting—mostly knitting.

I did surgery, and knitting I found helped me keep my dexterity up. So when I wasn’t knitting, when I wasn’t doing surgery, and after I started having kids and shifted my career from being a full-time doctor to being a full-time stay-at-home mom, when I moved back here to New York, knitting, crafting, became a big part of my daily living. When I was in Maryland, I met one of my best friends, Beverly, and her cousin, Nicky. And I feel like as soon as you find another person who knits or crochets or crafts like you, you suddenly have a coven. Like, it’s real. You become this little forest. And we did everything. We went to the festivals, we traveled. Everywhere we went, we found a yarn shop. Everybody, every yarn person, the four of us, the three of us on this screen, and everybody else in the chat will tell you, after you book your ticket and your hotel, you figure out where the closest yarn shop is. So we did all of that.

Long story short, my mom went in for what should have been an uncomplicated procedure. And it was complicated, and she never woke up. So like GG, my knitting held me together during that grieving period, which was and continues to be difficult. You know, it comes in waves. The waves are not as frequent as they used to be, but they used to be pretty bad. And I used to say to people, “I would get up in the morning, I would get my kids ready for school, and I would get them out the door. And then I would get on the couch and I would knit and cry and watch TV and maybe take a nap.” And I did that for a while, and my two girlfriends, Beverly and Nicky, were like, “You’ve got to get up off the couch and you’ve got to do something. Your mom would not want you sitting here like this.” And I knew they were right.

And so one of my favorite local yarn shops was closing unexpectedly—for those in Brooklyn who know, La Casita was closest to me here in Cobble Hill. I remember being on summer vacation and calling them up and saying, “What do you mean?” And they were like, “Somebody bought the building, so we’re out.” One of my girlfriends saw the same email. She didn’t call the store. She calls me and is like, “You need to call them and tell them you’re gonna buy that yarn shop. Yes, you need that yarn shop.” And I was just like, “Well, it’s not like that. It’s not like they can’t keep it. It’s just not going to be a yarn shop.” But the seed was planted.

I can remember speaking to a mom. My oldest son and her son played soccer, and she said to me one day, I remember I was having a conversation, like what our dream job was, and what that entailed. And she said, “You described a place that, I don’t even know how to knit, but I would want to go to that place. That’s what you should be doing. That’s what you should open.” And so she and I, for a minute, tried to do it together. She was gonna do a baking kind of DIY thing, and I was gonna run the yarn shop. Eventually, she dropped out, she wasn’t able to stay with it, and I stuck with it. And that’s what eventually turned into String Thing Studio.

It’s not far from my home, and the feeling I wanted for it was to feel like an extension of my living room, my kitchen. And when you come in, you grab a plate, have a seat. At the shop, you have to touch everything. When you come in, that’s the rule. I intentionally didn’t call it String Thing Studio Yarn Shop, because I wanted it to be a space where all types of creatives would come in. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to come in and think that I was an expert on everything, because I certainly was not. But you should feel comfortable coming in.

And if you wanted something, and we didn’t have it, I was happy to get it for you and get an expert to help you with that. And over the almost five years—it’ll be five years on June 17th—that we’ve been open, this incredible, loving, crazy community has developed at the shop that is a family in so many ways. The family you choose.

Loren Feldman:
Felicia, if I understand correctly, that didn’t just happen. That was kind of a deliberate strategy on your part to involve the community and pull people in with different kinds of events that other shops traditionally haven’t done. Give us a taste of that. What did you do?

Felicia Eve:
Yeah, like we have a backyard at my shop, which also makes us unique. And because of that, I wanted to really build a space that, like, I remember the spot in my neighborhood when I was supposed to be coming home from school and I knew nobody was home, it was okay for me to go there because it was safe. I wanted to be that spot in our neighborhood, and where my shop is in Park Slope, there are tons of kids. If it’s not three kids, it’s two dogs. It’s just tons of space, and that type of community. And we built that. So we have pop-up shows. We had a pop-up cafe in the backyard last year. We do installations. We invite other artists to come in—not even just fiber artists, but artists—to come in and do things in our shop.

I hosted writing workshops, where an organization that gave workshops rented out space and had their classes there weekly, like five out of six days out of the week. They were coming to the shop, and so many of those people who were not knitters but were writers have come back and said, “I started knitting because this place just emits so much energy and good vibes that I just felt like I needed to learn how to knit.” There was a girl, she had to defend her dissertation. And she was like, “I want to do it in your backyard.” She literally brought her entire class, her professor, her family to sit in the backyard of my yarn shop to defend her dissertation. So it just feels really good to reserve that space in people’s hearts and their lives as a yarn shop and be able to do that.

Loren Feldman:
All right, so we have just heard three, really moving stories from three smart, delightful, passionate women, which leads to the obvious question, which is: Why is there a culture war in the yarn industry right now?

Felicia Eve:
The yarn industry is a cross section of the world. So it is unrealistic to think that the issues of the world would not find their way into the yarn industry. Differences frighten people. People who are different, things that are different, make people uncomfortable. I’ve experienced it in good and bad ways, because I’m one of the few Black-owned yarn shops. I’m the only one in the city of New York, and there are only a few of us in the country.

And I think so many people come in, making assumptions, like Adella says. When people walk into the shop, they assume my employees are the owners. We went through that for a number of different years. And it used to be that my employees would be so offended on my behalf. And I was just like, “I’ve lived a life where I exist in that role all the time. Like, ”You couldn’t be the doctor, you must be the nurse. You couldn’t be the owner, you’re Black. You couldn’t live in Park Slope, you’re Black.” It’s all of those assumptions that people make.

Gaye Glasspie:
I agree. Like she said, it’s just a very tiny intersection of the world. There are assumptions that are made about Black people, that people truly in their heart of hearts feel are real. So I would explain situations that happened to me in yarn stores, and my following would always say the same exact thing: “They didn’t know it was you, GG.” What does that mean? I don’t get that. They saw a Black person, and they instantly felt, “But why are you in my yarn shop? Like, one, you can’t afford the yarn.” They’re assuming, right? “You can’t knit. Black people don’t knit.”

But something that Adella said I can tell you is 100 percent true, is because, as a Black person, you expect rejection. We protect ourselves. So those who were in the industry, you didn’t know they were in the industry, because all you saw was the yarn, or whatever they were making. They never did a picture of their hands, or themselves, for the fear of the backlash. Because you’re Black, you’re not supposed to be here.

So many people did it, do it. I have a board on Pinterest about knitting in Black history. You can go back and find people knitting, Black people knitting, but there was just this assumption that hand-dyed yarn was more expensive. Black people are poor. They can’t afford it. And apparently, our hands don’t work like everybody else’s, because we can’t possibly knit. Like, that’s just not a thing.

I even had a situation where an older woman, they were complimenting me on something I had on. And I said, “Thank you.” And they said, “Where’d you get it from?” And I said, “I made it.” It was an older woman and her daughter. And when I say an older woman, the woman could have been my auntie, or my elder. And the lady put her hands on me and said, “No, this.” And I said, “Yes. I made it.” She said, “That looks like it’s knit.” “It is. I made it.” She was like, “Oh, because I didn’t think you people—” and her daughter pulled her away.

And the concierge was—and I used to travel for work, so I was in that particular hotel probably two months—he was mortified. He was a white man, and he was looking at me, and I said, “Did that just happen?” He said, “It did.” I said, “Did she just ‘you people’ me?” He said, “She did, and I’m so sorry.” He’s like, “I didn’t know what to say. I tried to break it up.”

But you have the people who feel that way, and for whatever reason, they keep it to themselves. But let something happen, and like Adella and I often say, “The Great Divide happens.” So now, I’m gonna stand up from my side of the whatever. And we stop being people, makers, crafters, because that’s what we all have in common. And now it becomes the issue of race. And then it just gets ugly. But I think it’s always been there.

Felicia Eve:
I did exactly what GG said. When I first opened my shop, it was only pictures of the shop. It was only pictures of the yarn. I had no pictures of myself. And it was intentional, but not for the reasons that I thought initially, but maybe subconsciously it was. And it was a white woman who said, “I never see you in any pictures of your shop.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m not important. People want to buy the yarn.” She was like, “Yeah, but you know, you’re kind of cute. You should be in the pictures.”

And we did this thing, where it became like “Super Sleuths.” There was something that happened in my backyard. There was a documentary, and there was a photograph taken. And we posted it, and we were in the photograph. And people literally went through, and it was like, “I know that person. I know that person. I don’t know her. She’s the owner of the shop.” And that was kind of like my outing.

Loren Feldman:
I used the term “culture war” before, and maybe “war” isn’t the right word. But there’s certainly been back and forth and friction. People have had to rebrand, people have closed shops, bloggers have shut down their blogging. A lot of it’s been political. It has kind of come in waves. There was a period, I guess, maybe it was 2016, there was a cultural appropriation issue that was raised by a blogger who took a trip—

Adella Colvin:
2018, 2019.

Loren Feldman:
So there was a wave then. There was another wave after the murder of George Floyd. And my understanding is that each of those waves has presented a complicated situation for each of you.

Adella Colvin:
I call them the “Black waves” when something traumatic happens within the Black community, and you have this rush of people who want to genuinely support you and then those who want to exploit you so that they look and seem inclusive and diverse.

Loren Feldman:
Which puts you in the position of trying to figure out who’s genuine and who’s not.

Adella Colvin:
I’ve been in situations where a shop owner has reached out to me because they want to carry my yarn. And they’ll say things like, “Oh, attached, you’ll see a donation I’ve made to the NAACP.” These are like real situations that I have. It’s difficult. It is really difficult to maneuver that. It’s painful. I think when I say “difficult,” people just think from a business standpoint. But from a personal standpoint, it is extremely painful to break your back to make a product that you feel is superior and to send it out to people who will then sell it, but they don’t care about the person who’s doing all of this work. So ultimately, where that has put me today is, I no longer wholesale.

Loren Feldman:
Well, let’s step back for a second. There’s been a more recent incident, which remarkably was triggered by…

Adella Colvin:
My mouth.

Loren Feldman:
That’s not what I was gonna say. I was gonna say it was triggered in part by Vogue Knitting putting Michelle Obama on the cover of its issue.

Adella Colvin:
That was the trigger, but that’s not even the main point. The focus of that was basically the exploitation of Black women, and people not standing up for supporting and protecting Black women was the bigger conversation that came from that. And because of that whole situation, and the silence that was deafening from so many people who were making money off of my hard work and my product… If you’re going to carry products from LolaBean Yarn Co. and other Black makers within this industry, and you see that Black women are coming under attack, I’m gonna need you to stand up and support Black women.

You might be placing a wholesale order, but I can sell that retail in my shop. I can give myself a raise and make all the money, right? But this is a system where we help each other. You’re a yarn shop. I sell you yarn. We keep each other afloat, support one another. But when it comes to Black makers in this industry, we are treated differently still, and we experience a lot of unfairness. And when those situations and things happen, when those things arise, you have to speak up. And if you’re not going to speak up, and if you’re not going to defend these makers that you’re carrying and making money off of, then you don’t deserve those products. So I took all of my product back.

Loren Feldman:
You had been selling wholesale to shops…

Adella Colvin:
Around the world.

Loren Feldman:
…around the world. And you closed down all of those sales?

Adella Colvin:
I have a queue, where people will give me half of the money upfront, so that I can secure their base. And once they come up on my schedule, I dye it, they send me the rest of the money, and then I ship out their yarn. I gave back $40,000-$50,000 in three days in deposits. Peace of mind is priceless. Me giving that money back was absolutely… Just the peace that I got from that and the heaviness started to lift, I’d do it all over again if I had to. Because what I want to do now moving forward is, I want to—not that I wasn’t thoroughly vetting—I don’t think I was doing enough.

Loren Feldman:
Vetting the people you were selling to?

Adella Colvin:
Yes. I want to see where you stand. I want to ask you hard questions. I want to know that if Black makers in this community are being mistreated, or they’re not getting the same opportunities and offers that white makers are getting, I want to make sure you’re gonna say something. I want to make sure that you are doing everything you can to help, because Black makers in this community aren’t asking for more than anybody. I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions. They think we want more, we want more than you. No, we want the same.

Loren Feldman:
So what aren’t you getting that others do get?

Adella Colvin:5
Oh my goodness. We can talk about opportunities at events—yarn events—where I’ve gone to events where I didn’t see a single Black vendor. And they’re there. So you don’t get those opportunities. When you talk about Black influencers who don’t get paid the same as white influencers, where they’ll give a white influencer $1,000 for a post, and then they want to give the Black influencer a sample. “Here’s a free sample.” Things like that.

There are so many different ways that we are mistreated. Charging us for things that our white counterparts are not charged for, because we might be newer, because you’ve never allowed us in. Now you’re allowing us in, but then you’re taking advantage of us as we’re coming through the door. So I need to make sure that the people who I am aligning myself with are going to help me level the playing field. And if you’re not going to help me level the playing field, that’s fine. But please do not look for LolaBean Yarn Co. to be in your shops, to be at your event.

Loren Feldman:
GG, can you tell us how you think about that?

Gaye Glasspie:
Listen, Adella calls it a wave. There were some times, like this last time, we said it was a tsunami. Because you just get blown away by the number of new followers, which is fine. Welcome. But I always felt like I had to stand at my virtual door and say, “The only color I have for you is orange. Don’t follow me because I’m Black. That’s not fair, okay?” And it went from that to everybody wanted—”GG, can you speak?” At that point, I had never spoken anywhere. “Speak about what? What are you talking about?” “Can you do this? Can you do that? GG, we want—” And I didn’t even know these people. Adella can tell you. I’m like, “Who is this? You ever heard of this? Felicia? What’s this yarn?” I don’t even know these people.

And like Adella said, I’ll go on their page, and the only thing Black on the screen was the ink. I’m like, “Yeah, no, thank you.” I’m not your token Black knitter. At that point, I was very solid in the fact that my followers pay attention. So if I go do something with company XYZ, my followers are going with me. Now here you go, you aren’t really fond of Black people really, but you need somebody to make you look like you are. But on that same note, where I know for a fact that other influencers have been paid—“Oh, GG, we can send you some free yarn.” I’m like, “Do you know Adella Colvin? I’ll never need yarn the rest of my life.” If you want me, you’re gonna have to pay for me.

And I confidently say that now, not because I feel like I’m all of this, but I know you would pay my white counterpart! And you wouldn’t even dare ask them without already having money in your pocket. So I get a lot of emails: “GG we’ll pay you $50, and we want a post in your feed. We want a story. Can you write a blog?” “What? No, thank you. No, thank you. I should charge you for even reading this email. No, thank you.” Because I know the power of my audience.

Clearly, we have all seen the differences in how we’re treated, and that’s why we do things on our own. When I met Felicia and I met Adella—again, the love affair with the three of us had not started—but the first thing I said to Felicia, “I don’t know if you know Adella Colvin, but you need to meet her.” I said to Adella, “I don’t know that you know this Black woman in Brooklyn who’s got a shop, but we need to—”

Adella Colvin:
That’s that Black doctor, right? Call me when you get there.

Gaye Glasspie:
In one space, we said we want to be diverse, and we want to be included, and don’t block us out. But if you want to block us out, we could do things together ourselves. We have amassed a following on our own, but we’re not those people. And we love people. We love makers, whatever shape, form, or fashion you come in, but we still get… And it’s getting better. But how many times do we have to climb uphill, an icy hill, on skates, every time to make people see? Stop.

Felicia Eve:
The first time we all met was at Adella’s first trunk show at my shop. And we were like, “It’s gonna be three days long, and we’re gonna do X, Y, and Z.” And it was funny because a woman worked for me, and she was just like, “I don’t think you understand. This is very special that this is even happening.” And I’m like, “It’s yarn.” They were like, “No, you got a Black dyer, a Black influencer, and a Black yarn shop owner. Like, that doesn’t…”

Gaye Glasspie:
We really weren’t thinking that way.

Felicia Eve:
We had no idea, and we had no yarn. By the end of the day, we were like, “I guess we’re just dancing tomorrow.” It was like a family reunion. The backyard was packed for three days. People were driving from two hours away to get there. It was just beautiful. Like, it was really…

Loren Feldman:
They drove for two days, and you didn’t have any yarn for them?

Felicia Eve:
It sold out before the end of the first day! It was gone. Some of the special dyed yarn, I didn’t even get any. I didn’t even get to put it aside. We were putting it on the wall and people were walking in and taking it…

Gaye Glasspie:
And snatching it out of our hands. I went to Adella. I was like, “Where’s the bag?” She was like, “Bag of what?” I said, “Yarn.”

Felicia Eve:
It was gone.

Gaye Glasspie:
I said, “Wait, no. But it’s only been three hours. We’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow.” So I guess my point in sharing that is, we’re powerful on our own. We’ve figured that out, but we shouldn’t have to be on our own. We shouldn’t have to be separate in an industry that’s for makers. It doesn’t say, “You’ve got to be a certain race, creed, financial background in order to knit.” It’s just knitters, and we shouldn’t have to be not showing our pictures. And that’s why on my feed, people who don’t know me, they probably think, “She’s full of herself.” Nope, I need you to know this is a Black corner of the orange world. I need you to be clear.

Loren Feldman:
In getting to know the three of you, I have the sense that each of you has incredible potential to build the businesses that you are building. And I’m not sure you’re nearly as far along as you could, or possibly should be. And I’m wondering—I hope I’m not offending you by saying that—but I’m curious how you think about it. Adella, let me start with you. I talked to you over a year ago, and you were all sold out for months and months to come, and you still are. Why haven’t you hired employees? Why aren’t you making more yarn? Do you feel something is holding you back from doing that?

Adella Colvin:
I think I’m a risk for some people. Because I very much say what I want, when I want, how I want. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s gotten me in hot water. The bigger you get, one, it doesn’t seem as personal to me. And I really think that a lot of people who support LolaBean Yarn Co.—do I dye nice yarn? Yeah, the people say I do. Okay. But I think they’re here for me. They are here for what I stand for. That piece of that is what keeps people supporting me, not necessarily just the yarn. And I struggle with losing that. I don’t want to get so big that I lose that. That’s one thing.

And then from the purely business side of it, COVID happened. And not that it hurt me in any way, because that was probably my best year ever when COVID hit. My family was living in what is now my studio. That was our home. So I was working with my family there. I didn’t want to start bringing people in because of my kids. And then, somebody comes to work for LolaBean Yarn Co., and then when they leave, they’re going out maskless to the club at night with their friends. There were just too many risks and unknowns, and I wasn’t comfortable with taking those chances. We’ve now separated the studio. We now have the new house where we live, and I work over there by myself.

Ultimately, I do want to grow, but I want to grow at a pace that works for me, that I am comfortable with, that it’s safe. And believe it or not, I’m not braggadocious. I try my hardest to stay humble. I like to help people. I like to spread money around that I make. But I think a lot of people would be very surprised if they saw the numbers now and what I do behind the scenes. Like people say, “Don’t you want to grow? Don’t you want to grow?” And they have no idea how I’m growing. But that’s not for everybody to see.

Loren Feldman:
GG, we’ve talked a little bit about what’s holding you back, some of the issues in the way you are treated, as opposed to other influencers. You do work a day job. Is it your goal to be able to stop working that day job and be able to do—

Gaye Glasspie:
My dream job, right? Yes. It’s like a comfort thing for me now, because if I look at the dollars—Adella and Felicia can tell you—I was shocked when I did my taxes last year because my tax lady was like, “Chick, this is more than a side thing here. What is happening?” So because it comes in drips and drabs, it’s not, I get paid every week. And in an environment like this, I might get lump sums here and there. So it’s that security blanket.

The good part about my day job—although, yes, I do have a traditional nine to five—I work for a former boss. He was vice president of Verizon while I was there. And as much as I am one of his biggest fans, it’s reciprocal. So when I was like, “Bob, I know I only get X amount of weeks for vacation. However, I’m supposed to be on a plane pretty much every month from February to October.” He was like, “Do they have Wi-Fi where you’re going?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Just take your laptop with you.” I swear, I love you. So it’s like, there’s really no big rush to get out of this job, because I can do it in my sleep. Something that you said, the potential for the three of us to be bigger than what we are, again, you have that culture difference, right? It is assumed that white people go into business and are automatically successful. And it’s the opposite.

Loren Feldman:
I know a lot of unsuccessful white business owners.

Gaye Glasspie:
No, yes, I agree.

Felicia Eve:
But they do it, and they do it again.

Gaye Glasspie:
Right, because they grow up thinking that, “I should have my own business.” They grow up thinking, “I should have my own home.” And if that’s not something you grew up around or something that you saw, you can’t see yourself there. You hear the term often, “Representation matters,” right?

So my logo is probably when I really exploded, because other Black people could see themselves knitting. People would stop me if I had a shirt on or if I was carrying one of my bags, “Where did you get that from?” And I’m like, “It’s mine.” “No, no, no. Where’d you buy it?” “No, on my website.” “Because I’ve never seen Black people knitting.” And I’m like, “Where were you looking?”

So there are just those expectations that still are very powerful in our minds. Yes, now you see more people in business and more people being successful and more people making a lot more money and doing risky things. But still, even that, the stairs that we’ve got to climb to get there where somebody else, “Oh, sure, come on in. We’ll do whatever you want to do. What? You need money? You need a grant? Here, here, here.” Us? We’ve got to fill out a dissertation and have it notarized and sealed and God kiss it. “Did he kiss it on a Tuesday or a Wednesday? Because if it was Tuesday, then we can’t take this.” There are so many different hoops, as a Black person, that we have to go through. Sometimes, we’re just like, “Ehhh…”

Adella Colvin:
I also think that, for a long time, when you talk about racism and white supremacy being embedded and ingrained in the very fabric of this country, the society, the world, that for so long, Black people were raised to be model employees. White people were raised to be the owners and the bosses.

Gaye Glasspie:
Tell it.

Adella Colvin:
We’re now breaking free from that. We’re breaking free from those stereotypes. And people will see you. And that’s why when they go to Felicia’s shop, she’s not the owner. The white girl who she hired is. I’ve had people come to a fiber festival and literally pushed me out of my own booth to talk to the two white girls I had working in my booth, because obviously they’re the dyers and the owners—not the Black girl they just pushed out of the way. I get that question that you asked, like, “You could be so much bigger.” As a Black woman, I’m huge. I am. Right? Because we don’t do this.

Loren Feldman:
I hear you, I hear you. Felicia, let me ask you. You have a yarn shop in Park Slope in Brooklyn. That’s a prosperous neighborhood. You have a shop that’s been around for five years now that’s an integral part of the community. And yet, when I talked to you, a little over a year ago, you told me that you didn’t really count on your shop to pay your rent.

Felicia Eve:
I think it was, you don’t say, “I want to retire.” You don’t say, “I’m gonna own a yarn shop so I can retire from being a yarn shop.”

Loren Feldman:
Why not?

Felicia Eve:
Well, we’re trying to change that, right? Like we’re trying to change that notion. Owning a brick-and-mortar store is a completely different beast than just having a product to sell. You’ve got rent, you’ve got overhead, you’ve got employees—and you have to have employees. It’s so funny, I was talking to another small business owner who just opened, and her and her partner [go]: “We’re open seven days a week, and we’re always in the shop or whatever.” And I told them, “Stop doing that. Like, just stop. Because you’re gonna be sick, because I did it.” It was like, nobody else could be in there. People walked in, and they wanted to see me.

And people still want to come in and see me, but I have learned over the five and a half years that it’s okay for them to walk in and somebody else takes care of them. And you’re supposed to hire people who think and act and can imbue your spirit, even though it is not you. They can be your ambassador in your space. That is a requirement of the job, right? They work with me, they understand what I do and how I welcome people in the shop. And that is my expectation that the same welcome should happen when I’m not in the shop.

People come to Park Slope. We’ve become a destination. We’ve become a destination shop. I can’t tell you how many people went, “As soon as I can travel, I’m coming to New York City, and I’m coming to String Thing Studio. I want to come to your Knit Night. I want to sit in your backyard. I want to do that.”

We have created a space—and when I say “we,” it’s me and it’s my community who work along with me—have created this space for people. I don’t care what color you are. I don’t care: Man, woman, dog. I don’t care what it is, they want to come. They want to hang out. They want to sit in the backyard. They want to eat the bagels from across the street. They want to do all of that, because that’s what we’ve created.

And it took time to learn about that—having to rest, and when to say no—to get back to where you put your money—what companies that you choose to spend your money with, to stock your store with. There have been brands that I have chosen, I’m not gonna buy from them anymore. There’s one now that people constantly come in and ask me about, and I’m like, “I’m not really into the distributor anymore, so I’m not really sure we’re going to carry this much longer. So get it while you can.” And it took a while for me to get confident enough to do that, and I think that comes with understanding that we’re more than a yarn shop. People can get yarn anywhere. We can all buy yarn online from Adella. They don’t have to come to String Thing Studio to buy the yarn.

Loren Feldman:
She’s sold out.

Felicia Eve:
She’s sold out, right? When she’s sold out, they come and buy yarn from my store, whatever else I have in there. But we are more than just a yarn store. And it took me a minute to understand that.

Loren Feldman:
Which is why you should be able to retire someday on what you’re doing.

Felicia Eve:
Exactly.

Loren Feldman:
We’ve talked about some of the negative aspects of what’s happened in your industry, and I’d like to finish with one that I think you see as a real positive one—although it was a difficult moment. And that involves your store, Felicia, during COVID, when I believe your landlord slapped a sign on the door saying that if you weren’t going to be paying rent, you’d have to find some other place. And you weren’t sure what you were going to do and how you were going to save the store.

Felicia Eve:
I was on vacation. I had agreed to finally go on a vacation with my family, and then one of my customers—one of my shop moms, I call her—sent me a text message: “I just saw this on the gate of your shop.” And it was a letter from an attorney’s office with this blah, blah. And I had been in conversation with my landlord about, “We need to renegotiate this rent. I’ve been closed for X number of months, business is not the same.” And we had made a verbal agreement about some different things, but then he had decided he was going to go to an attorney and report that I owed him more rent than I actually did, and slap the letter on the front of the gate. So it made people think when they walked by that I was not going to be open anymore. It had my personal business, my personal address, all this stuff on it, taped to the front of my store while I’m on vacation—he knew I was on vacation.

And so it was the last few days, and I was on the phone with—I think it was Adella, it was GG, and it was Louis [Boria] from Brooklyn Boy Knits—and I was texting them. And they were like, “What are you talking about?” I texted them a picture of the letter, and everybody was hot, to say the least. Hot was an understatement. And they were like, “Well, you could…” And I was like, “No, let me just think about it. I can try to figure this out. I can try to figure out how to make this work. Or maybe I just don’t.” But then I got a FaceTime. And all four screens, like all three faces popped up.

Adella Colvin:
Are we doing a GoFundMe or what?

Felicia Eve:
That’s right. It was like, “What do you mean you got to figure it out? We’re just gonna do a GoFundMe.” I was like, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.”

Gaye Glasspie:
And I was like, “Look, I’ve gotta get dressed, because I’m about to go live.”

Felicia Eve:
And I was like, “Wait.” And they were like, “All you have to do is say, ‘Yes.’”

Gaye Glasspie:
And then move out our way.

Felicia Eve:
Just say yes. And I was like, “But…” They were like, “But nothing. Just say yes.” And I said, “But I have to—” Adella was like, “I already have the GoFundMe.”

Adella Colvin:
I wrote it all up.

Loren Feldman:
While you’re talking on FaceTime.

Felicia Eve:
She was like, “It’s already done. All you have to do is give me this information.” GG was like, “I’m getting dressed, putting my face on so I can do it.” And Louis was like, “Just send it to me so I can promote it.” I said, “Well, send it to me. What do you want me to do?” They were like, “Go to the beach. Go to the beach, and sit down and enjoy yourself and enjoy your vacation. And let us see what happens.” And that was like 11:30am, 12 p.m. that morning. And by 6 p.m., we had to close it because we had raised—I think I needed like $17,000 or something like that.

Loren Feldman:
This happened without you even telling your—

Felicia Eve:
I told nobody. It was all of their followers and people who follow them and follow me were like, “What are you talking about?” And so by the end of the day, we closed it at six o’clock, because it was just getting embarrassing at that point. And then when people discovered it and were going back trying to figure out how to give, they couldn’t give, because it was closed. So they were just sending money to PayPal, like sending me PayPal money.

Loren Feldman:
It wasn’t just customers of yours or knitters around the country. You also heard from a lot of people in the industry, right?

Felicia Eve:
Absolutely. Somebody said, “I hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere, because the village said, ‘No, you can’t go.’” It chokes me up. And I did my “thank you” video afterwards, which I got through almost without crying. I had to do it twice. The second one I posted, and I sent it to people. I posted it on my timeline because then all these people started following me. And then my people were like, “Well, wait, what happened? Like, I don’t understand it.” So then it was this whole other wave of like, “We’re buying gift certificates, because there’s no other way. We’re gonna buy gift certificates for you to just have this cash.” And it was the most beautiful expression of support that I have ever experienced.

So I know that this industry is not just a fluke. I know that this industry is not like, “Who does she think she is? Who do they think they are, these brown people doing X?” I know that because I still get people who come up to me at different things or send me messages or show up at my Vogue Knitting Lives or come in the craziest places. I meet people who know who I am. So it’s like, I know in a way that is so heartfelt that I’m doing something good here. And sometimes that doesn’t always equate to cash, though we would love for it to do so. But I’m fortunate and blessed enough to be like, sometimes you just need that feeling. You just need to have that acceptance, that what you’re doing is significant to people. And they showed that to me in a way that was… I’m still overwhelmed by it.

Loren Feldman:
I really want to thank all of you: Felicia Eve, GG Glasspie, and Adella Colvin. This has been a terrific conversation. I’ve really enjoyed getting the opportunity to spend this time with you.