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Curious Creek Fibers
Curious Creek Fibers was thought about, developed and born in a 1913 craftsman style home in an uptown neighborhood of San Diego California called North Park. Our home is one house away from the edge of Switzer Canyon. There is a huge bramble of blackberries, gorgeous trees and a wonderful assortment of wildlife including raccoon, fox, coyote, red tail hawk, raven, hummingbird and of course, domesticated house cats. Our yard is a very lively jungle that the cats cannot resist and I’m inspired, in all forms, of the art that I produce by my surroundings. An enormous Podocarpus tree shields the back studios on the property from the heat and provides a never ending pre-occupation for me about the color green. Have you ever noticed how all greens go together? Look at nature, in one square meter of space…..you can have a multitude of greens, and they never clash - Kristine Brooks -
Kristine Brooks has been inspired and preoccupied with color all of her life. Her Gran was an incredible gardener, who grew many beautiful flowers and fruit trees in her yard which included lilac, daffodil, crocus, peony, cherry and crab apple trees and an assortment of birds. Her Grans house was painted a soft buttery cream yellow, the perfect color to set off all the beautiful colors of her garden…..this is were it all started for Kristine.
At the age of four Gran taught Kristine to crochet. Crochet is an excellent way to work with color in a larger format. Kristine enjoyed color in her wardrobe too that carried right through into her adult life. This talented gal owned and operated a successful administrative and organizational management business, targeting business owners in the more affluent neighborhoods of San Diego such as Rancho Santa Fe, La Jolla and Coronado Island. She organized their private and personal lives – their home, staff, health care, child care, parties, events and travel. She ran this business for nearly five years before realizing that she wanted to work in a less traditional industry, one of more flexibility. She wanted to get back to color and the fiber arts, thus, Curious Creek Fibers was born.
When Kristine was 30, she met and married her husband Phil. Phils Mother, Lois Boncer, turned out to be an inspiration to Kristine as well as her Gran. Lois is an incredible cloth doll artist who has designed over 500 animal and doll patterns from her own ideas and ideas brought to her by the public. In the spring and summer of 2000, Lois participated in the Renaissance Pleasure Fair in southern California. A couple of doors down from Lois’ booth was a spinning booth. Kristine was mesmerized by this craft and spent a considerable amount of time there, and spinning took hold.
You can see where all this is leading as Kristine learns to create her own yarn, the color process is just a heart beat away. This is the beginning of her fiber arts career. The next step in this process is a knitting lesson from one of Phil’s best friends from college. Now Kristine is knitting, spinning her own yarn, and taking classes on dye methods and color. Kristine decides that she wants to learn to paint…..only not on canvas, but on yarn. The book Handpaint Country was a big help to Kristine in her learning and she quickly figured out that she wanted to start a new business. With the support of her husband and daughter, Kristine developed Curious Creek Fibers and was anxious to test the market.
Suzanne Pineau, owner of Knitting in La Jolla, offered to be the test market for Curious Creek Fibers. Suzanne hired Kristine one day a week to work at the shop; she worked there for three years. Kristine learned all parts of the business and was able to apply a lot of what she learned to her own business. She learned that if the protein based line of yarn was doing well in southern California, then it would do well in the colder climates too. Kristine decided that her company would do wholesale only yarn, so that she would have as much time to do what she liked to do best, which was to paint and dye yarns and spin fibers. This way, she supports her stores and never competes with them.
In 2004, Vogue Knitting contacted Kristine and wanted to feature her yarn in their Fall 2004 issue. It was January when the request came in, and by August, when the magazine hit the stands, she had finalized the naming of the yarn and colorways, had her website catalog photographed and built, and had her yarns in six stores in California. It was a busy year for Kristine Brooks. Curious Creek Fibers is currently in 21 stores in seven states and one store in Canada. They have a total of 18 yarns to choose from and sixteen multi colored colorways called Serendipity and nine semi solids that are called Striations. Seven of the Serendipity and the Striations lines are new this season. Kristine considers herself a crossover fiber artist as she enjoys spinning, dyeing, knitting, crochet, felting and fulling, weaving and embroidery. The yarns used in her line come from mills all over the world and all of the yarns are named after parks and reserves on the continent of Africa. Use the link provided to visit the Curious Creek website. There you will find a list of stores carrying this uniquely beautiful yarn.
I attribute much of my love of the needle arts to the best needle woman I’ve ever known, my beloved Gran, Grace Brooks Leahy. I am ever grateful for Vogue Knittings request because it made me realize that my company and style of dye work was a viable option in the market where there were already at least 20 well known, if not famous hand dyers. Curious Creek Fibers was born from the love and inspiration for color that I have experienced and played with for my entire life AND, I am the happiest in my studio when I am dyeing yarn. Curious Creek Fibers did research and development in late 2002 and early 2003, test market in mid 2003 and early 2004, on the market as of August of 2004. I named Curious Creek Fibers as such because I have always been curious about color and the never ending interactions. Our logo was designed to incorporate the questions surrounding color, the water element, and a twisted skein - Kristine Brooks - |
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