Meet Maria, a Fiber Artist in North Carolina, with a passion for Nature. Maria’s skills include natural dyeing of her yarns (from her garden), knit pattern design, as well as exploring nature. I have loved seeing Maria wear P&S dresses in the beautiful outdoors, or working on knit projects.
Maria has a podcast that documents her fiber creativity, and I love her Instagram feed for beautiful, inspiring photos!
You can also see more of Maria’s work on Ravelry (look for WoolenForest) or over on Instagram.
Tell us who you are, what you do, and a little background info about yourself.
I'm Maria, a dreamer and maker obsessed with the fiber arts. I currently live in Western North Carolina with my husband of almost nine years. I learned about hand crafts at an early age from my mother, but lately my interest in knitting has grown tremendously and has turned into an appreciation for slow fashion, creating my own knitted garments, and has become intertwined with gardening to result in botanical dyeing experiments.
The process of creating with my own hands is something that I truly cherish and want to spread to as many people as possible. I see it as a way to celebrate and honor the differences and individuality of us all.
I am very much in a transitional stage in my life, something both terrifying and exciting. I recently left my steady office job and am in the process of moving closer to family to help take care of my parents. As my role shifts, I am also exploring my own creativity and hope to share it with others through my own small business dreams.
What’s a typical day in the life for you?
My day always seems to start with gentle cat paw to the face, a signal that it's time to get up or at least time to feed the cats. After they're satisfied, I'll try and wake myself up by diffusing some essential oils. My favorite refreshing combo right now is lavender, lemon, and peppermint! A quick breakfast for myself is usually toast or a smoothie while scrolling through emails or Instagram. Lately, all of my emails seem to relate to getting the house ready to sell, and that's where I start my to-do list. Even with all of this technology, I'm still a firm believer in hand written lists and journals.
My afternoons vary quite a bit, but lately they seem to include lots of cleaning, packing, and de-cluttering. I'm not sure if anyone actually enjoys the whole process of moving, but I must say that parts of it are very satisfying and freeing. I try to keep things minimal where I can and have begun to seek out better quality over lots of inexpensive things that will need replacing.
Once things are a bit under control, I really like to carve out some time for myself to do some knitting and have some tea. Right now I'm working on a test knit for a wonderful independent designer and am at the part where I can really see the garment taking shape. Stitch by stitch, the rhythm allows me to slow down and think. This time to clear my head has done wonders for my mental health and productivity. As I get a bit lost in the knitting, this is when I start to dream about fiber and natural dyeing and any ideas that come to mind get quickly written down in my journal.
My husband usually gets home early to mid afternoon and we'll start cooking a meal together. Music on, sounds of chopping and sauteing, this is how we like to wind down and catch up with each other. On this particular day, we took the time to drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway before getting groceries and running errands. As we drove further, I did my best to take in the sunshine, fresh air, and scenery that we treasure. Life is changing a lot for us and very quickly, but taking time to appreciate the simple joys and little things that make us happy goes a long way.
