Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Christoph.
Michelle, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We are Carolyn and Michelle, the two ewes behind this place. We met a hundred years ago in our past lives as social workers in a small non-profit agency. We built our friendship over discussions about resources, philosophy, and life and found we both loved crafting. Over time, we found ourselves scrapbooking together into the wee hours of the night and both adored having a creative outlet.
Then life happened and we went our separate ways, each of us building our families and falling out of touch.
Fast forward to just a few years ago, and life has brought us full circle. We got back in touch and found we had developed a mutual love of fiber crafting! The joy of fiber immediately connected us again and we re-bonded instantly! Together, we began dyeing our yarns and quickly decided we wanted to share them with others. Olive & Two Ewe Studios was born.
Both living in central Florida, Carolyn enjoys knitting and writing patterns, reading, and hanging out with her family; Michelle knits, crochets, makes superb cakes, and can often be spotted at various Disney parks with her husband.
Olive & Two Ewe Studios has now developed into a thriving online business that also stretches into the local fiber arts community by hosting various classes and events as well as Yarn Lounge. Before the pandemic, Yarn Lounge was a quarterly event Olive & Two Ewe developed that traveled to various Florida craft breweries to host knitters and crocheters for a limited vendor yarn market with a chance to get together with other like-minded crafters.
Drawing crowds of 250-300 people, Yarn Lounge quickly became the premier Florida fiber event. Post-pandemic, our first Yarn Lounge was just hosted at Brewlando in Orlando, with a crowd of 300 fiber crafters! An amazing community has sprung up around our business and we are so very grateful for community support.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Because of our community and local interest in our products and what we do, we quickly realized the need to bridge the gap between our online community and our local community. The challenge was, how to effectively do that when it was never in our plan to operate a full brick & mortar model.
We’ve worked to leverage technology to help us with this challenge and now have a local community event space where we can host periodic events to meet with folks in the community.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Carolyn hand-dyes all of our yarn. Michelle handles all the customer service, event planning, purchasing, community relationships, wholesale accounts, and the bulk of our social media and online presence.
We offer a weekly LIVE! podcast on YouTube. All past episodes may be viewed on our channel.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
We love our community! Bringing people together is at the heart of what we do and we love seeing how community members support each other.
We love that some of our products support charitable efforts and that our community members/customers give freely of their time and resources to support others.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.oliventwoewe.com
- Instagram: @oliventwoewe
- Facebook: @oliventwoewe
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/thetravelingtwoeweknit
