It was a nice change to have a guest speaker at Yarn Club this month, and Chantelle from coriand3r knits was a perfect burst of COLOUR at our spring meeting with her long colour change gradients. Chantelle broke her talk into two parts, discussing social media for fibre enthusiasts in the first part, and details about her business and dying techniques in part two.
One of the best pointers Chantelle shared about social media was using it as a way to support your favourite small businesses. Speaking as an indie-dyer, Chantelle LOVES when her customers tag photos of things they've made with her yarn. What a wonderful way to let a business know your support them and love what they do. Don't be shy about tagging a business in your next Instagram post; they get the notifications and it can help build their business.
Chantelle spoke to us about her experience with Instagram as the voice of the promotional campaign for the 2017 KW Knitters' Fair as well as for her own business. She spoke about using hashtags to make your posts searchable, and to join in on trends on social media. Think of hashtags as tags for your posts, and make note of any 'official' hashtags for events so you can be part of the feed of searchable tags.
Part two of Chantelle's talk was about her dying process, which was originally inspired by her long search for red an black variegated yarn. Frustrated with the search, she set out to make her own! Her original introduction to dying was at Dye Camp by Indigodragonfly, and she hasn't looked back since. Chantelle was very open to discussing her dyeing process and techniques, and shared loads of pictures. My favourite details from her talk were her recent investment in an employee - a electric ball winder - and the Nina Soft Sping Dryer she uses to spin almost all of the water out of her skeins before drying.
Connect with Chantelle at a number of upcoming fibre festivals and events this year, details about her scheduled shows can be found on her website.