hello, sweet pea

i’m ash, a textile artist, natural dyer, and educator living on treaty one territory in winnipeg, canada.

i help fibre witches (aka knitters and makers) to create, connect, and get confident in their crafting skills through classes, sustainable supplies, and an online community.

i create immersive worlds for others to enjoy through my textile art, with a heavy dose of help from my devised theatre training. sometimes they exist online, sometimes in books, sometimes in art galleries, and maybe even in your organization’s main lobby?

i’m devoted to educating young and young-at-heart alike, and teach private classes, online, in public schools, and at various organizations. i’m currently developing K-12 public school curriculum for natural dyeing in the classroom.

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my work centres around ritual, storytelling, & sustainability.

i help make slow fashion and engaging with fibreshed accessible and fun, and encourage my students’ confidence as they grow their creativity, no matter their age. i started teaching back in 2005, and have worked in non-profit and arts organizations since that time as well. since shifting to my business full-time in 2018, i collaborate with corporate spaces too. thanks to my theatre background and now my small business life, i am skilled at adapting to ever-changing factors, and at adjusting my offers to best suit the group i’m actively working or collaborating with.

whether i’m scooting between urban elementary schools to rural high schools, building a new art installation for a business’s front lobby, or prepping a new online shop update, i’m skilled at multitasking and adjusting to last-minute changes in plan. through it all, i keep the intentionality and mindfulness of my practice in place, with a values-first approach to all of my work.

interested in working with me? what’s the story you want to tell together?

meet ash

by profession, i’m a textile artist, natural dyer, and educator. by life, i’m a fibre witch, hedgewitch, queer femme, and parent to the resident coven pooch, willow. i spend a lot of time with plants, and they teach me new things every day.

as a genderqueer femme whose multi-disciplinary work incorporates performance and textiles, my focus frequently encompasses an effort to make the practical more beautiful and art more accessible. queer theory is always at the base of my work, with its foundations in deconstructing and destabilizing the status quo, and in tackling the many complex layers of oppression and privilege within society. a history in feminist and queer grassroots activism, as well as sexual health education, has resulted in consent politics being an integral part of every project i undertake. i believe firmly in the artist’s responsibility to create a safer and truly consensual environment for their audiences. it is through this openly presented option to engage or disengage with the artistic material that allows audiences to push themselves safely into potentially triggering topics to create wider social change.

currently, my textile work covers knitwear design and natural dyeing with an emphasis on local northern colour palettes, and an effort to document the juxtaposition of the slow process of my making with its instantaneous sharing on social media. i work with natural locally and/or ethically sourced materials to create colours and textures with yarn and fabric. i chronicle my adventures in the canadian fibreshed over at from field to skin and explore the intersections of ritual and everyday magic with the snort & cackle podcast.

my extensive theatre background expands across performance, playwriting, directing, and design. while not actively engaged in current theatre projects, i trained in collaborative devised theatre, with an emphasis in physical theatre and reimagining folk tales. my theatre history has allowed my current artistic practice to become more focused on the interactive aspects of art, and to assist in collaborations using my experience in tour management, design, and artist/audience interplay.

sunflower knit

if i’m completely honest, i never started a business because i wanted to. it was just the easiest way for me to make my own art on my own terms for the first several years. i released my first knitting pattern in 2014, and went full-time with the business in 2018. since then, i’ve naturally dyed thousands of skeins of canadian farmed and milled wool yarns, released over 200 knitting patterns, and created and published 4 print books. i’ve taught students all over the world through the likes of vogue, knit city, and organizations and yarn stores across canada and the states. i’ve hosted a podcast, an online community, and a youtube channel. i’ve collaborated with fibreshed organizations, large and small yarn companies that share my values, and spent way too much time making content for instagram. i bring my small biz toolkit with me into every project, finding the perfect blend of making great sustainable art that’s delivered on deadline and documented on brand for social media platforms and internal archives alike.

a little about me

fun fact 1

i have two theatre degrees, both in performance, one in classical training and the other in collaborative devising. i left theatre behind about a year after i finished my master’s degree, but use my skills regularly in teaching and the new forms of storytelling i play with now. the interactive installations i create are a direct result from the works i made and saw during my time in london, uk.
fun fact 2

my mum taught me how to knit when i was a kid. because i was (and am) so left-handed, she taught herself how to knit left-handed first because she knew i wouldn’t be able to do it right-handed. i still knit left-handed, and my tech editor commonly has to check my patterns for any leftie slip-ups in the instructions. it’s why you’ll never see me teaching a “how-to” on basic knitting techniques in photo, video, or in-person.
fun fact 3

peppers make me puke. for some reason, dried peppers don’t have the same affect, so i’m working on slowly adding them into my diet that way so that my body has a less…visceral reaction in the event they make it into a dish i’m eating.

passion

i’m a triple-fire sign, born in the year of the horse, an enneagram 7… you get the picture. passion is at the core of basically everything i do.

sustainability

both work and ritual centre around sustainability for me. as long as we’re stuck living under capitalism, the least i can do is make my offers and my art as kind to the earth as possible, and to help others do the same.