Name: Stephanie Alford
Business: SpaceCadet
Website: spacecadetyarn.com

I’ve always been crazy about the fiber arts, even when I didn’t realise I was. I saw a woman spinning at a historical re-enactment when I was 11 and begged my mother for lessons (it didn’t stick, she started me off carding and that was no fun). I taught myself to knit at age 19 (from a book, no YouTube back then), then had another go at spinning and fell in love (and still never carded my fleeces), dabbled in weaving, and then tried dyeing. ​ …And ​

that was it then. ​Dyeing just feels right, like it was made for me and me for it. The colours always seem to come so easily, and end result makes me curl my toes with joy. I still love all the other fiber arts I’ve tried but, with dyeing, I really do feel like I’ve found my happy place.

I love our one-of-a-kind colourways. We dye entirely from primary colours, mixing each shade by hand, and so we do a great deal of colour exploration and experimentation in the studio. And that results in a lot of colours that we’ll never repeat again. I adore each and every one, and am always so excited when a customer finds one that is a perfect fit for them.

My fiber arts superpower might be that I can take almost any colour and reverse-engineer it to produce it from primaries. I do it all the time in the studio — find a colour I love, sit and stare at it for a little while, then go over to the dyepots and mix the proportions of primary colours that I think will hit it. And do you know what? If I don’t get it the first time or the second… well, I’ve never had it go beyond the third try. By then, I’ve always cracked it and got the colour I want.