Today we’d like to introduce you to Caitlin Cieslewska.
Hi Caitlin, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve been a knitter for my entire adult life. I had recently gotten into knitting socks and was discovering an appalling lack of the bright, neon, insane kinds of yarns I was looking for. Especially something that striped on its own. At the time (circ 2008), the only self-striping yarn you could buy was workhorse German brands, which came in very workhorse colors (greys and browns), or cheaper big box yarns that suffered from a quality problem. I had fallen in love with soft, hand-dyed merinos and blue-faced leisters and wanted some of that in a yarn that striped for my sock knitting needs. I had recently taken a dyeing class at my (sadly closed now) local yarn store, Hanks Yarn and Fiber, and turned to my husband and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could dye our own self-striping yarn?”
Now, my husband is an engineer, and this kind of problem-solving is right up his alley. Within a few days, he’d taken the bobbins from my spinning wheel, my spinning wheel, a step ladder, and the entire length of our three-bedroom apartment and turned them into a Rube-Goldberg winding machine.
After dyeing my first few skeins, I was hooked. I could have whatever crazy bright stripes I wanted!
My husband was working on his Ph.D, so we didn’t have a ton of money, so I decided to open an Etsy shop to sell the extras I dyed up, just to fund my new hobby. Within a few months, I got my first wholesale order (which was bigger than any amount of yarn I had dyed to date), and everything took off!
After that, I was working full time on the yarn business AND had a full-time job at a food testing lab, and ended up taking the leap into dyeing yarn as my sole income stream. It was terrifying but with the support of my husband, we made it work!
As I grew, I ended up moving onto my own website to have more control of sorting and to make it easier to upload products.
Now, I have over 400 colorways and have expanded into making stitch markers and 3d printing knitting and crochet accessories as well, all from inside the garage in my house in the outskirts of Orlando.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Taking the leap to dyeing yarn full time was a struggle. I had a lot of people questioning why I had gone to college and gotten a bachelor’s in animal science if I was going to “waste” it in a creative pursuit.
However, that degree made itself useful in another challenge that happened when we spent a few years in New Mexico. I had set up a new studio in the garage of our starter home and was attempting to dye for the first time when my dye pot turned into a science fair volcano the moment I added my acid (used to chemically set the dye). Between the internet and my chemistry books, I figured out that the high concentration of carbonates in the groundwater was creating excess CO2 when it reacted with the acid, and I had to develop an entirely new dyeing routine to get around the problem. Safe to say, I am happy to be back in Orlando where the water isn’t so hard it could be classified as liquid rock!
I have also struggled with being the sole producer of my product while trying to navigate a pretty saturated market and dealing with wholesalers. I have had more than one yarn store take advantage of me, trying to undercut my prices, refusing to pay, or ghosting me altogether. It’s incredibly frustrating.
COVID has had a huge impact on my business as well. Not being able to attend yarn shows or other events has dramatically reduced my ability to reach new customers. Also, having my two small children at home has made finding time to actually work difficult. But we muddle through!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I hand dye self-striping yarn with a science twist. Each of my colorways will knit or crochet up into stripes when made into small circumference objects (think socks, hats, scarves worked from the narrow end). I lean hard into my business name, String Theory Colorworks, by having all my base names and my color names draw on a science background.
I specialize in highly saturated, unique color combinations, and I don’t stray away from color!! Neons are my favorite, but a good jewel tone is also on my list.
I’ve also began 3d printing yarn boxes (it’s like a yarn bowl, but it’s square, with a lid) since between three cats and two kids, I can’t keep ceramics from being shattered, and this was a solution for my craving for a yarn bowl that couldn’t be destroyed.
How do you think about luck?
I’m incredibly lucky. Lucky in my choice of life partner, without whom I never would have been able to make this a reality. Lucky in my customers, who have gone to bat for me with their local yarn stores and sharing my products.
Pricing:
- Yarn ranges from $26-32 per skein
- Yarn Boxes are $25
- Notions Boxes are $25
- Stitch Markers are $2 each
Contact Info:
- Email: caitlin@selfstriping.com
- Website: store.selfstriping.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stringtheorycolorworks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StringTheoryColorworks
