name: Jennifer Gallentine
business name: Willow Mist Acres Farm Boutique
website(s): Willow Mist Acres

What kind of items do you make?
Hand spun traditional and artisan yarns, hand painted tops, art batts, wet felted scarves, Woven triangle scarves, crocheted hats from hand dyed, hand spun, goat milk soap, lavender sachets, felted soaps, crocheted handspun, hand dyed scarves, art yarn hair bands, fiber jewelry, felted wool dryer balls

How long have you been in indie artist?
2 years

What got you interested in your art of choice?
We started an alpaca farm, with the intention of me focusing primarily on the fiber aspect of farming.

What do you most enjoy about what you do?
I like freedom that it gives me to express my creativity, and the ability to work at home, surrounded by our critters and be able to be a stay at home mom to our 2 year old daughter.

What most inspires you?
the vivid colors in nature, the ones that are so vibrant that they almost don’t seem natural…

What makes your creations unique?
My choices of color, textures, and lots of sparkle!

Do you have a favorite item or colorway?
I am really favoring jewel tones at the moment

What is something you strive to offer the fiber arts community?
I strive to make fiber, batts and yarn that make fellow fiberistas SQUEE! I love to share my techniques, I am all about educating when at all possible. Everybody does things their own way, and I am here to help.

Does being an indie fiber artist affect other aspects of your life?
It helps keep me relatively sane!! I don’t need anxiety meds, I need to spin and create!! :-)

What is your fiber arts superpower?
perfect, consistently even, corespun singles, I am a freak about that.

How is the fiber arts world different for you today than it was five years ago?
When I first started, I only wanted to use natural, 100% alpaca. Today, that alpaca is being blended with recycled prison uniforms and plastic bottles along with silk, yak and camel. I love the mix of textures that each fiber adds and how each fiber out there takes color in a different way. I just took my original mode of thinking and went gang-busters.