This post was written by Bee

Happy Pride, Vancouver! We hope you’re staying cool and colourful out there.

One thing about working at a yarn store? You get to see first-hand how large the middle of the Venn diagram is between the crafter community and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Fibre Arts can be really, really gay (lucky us!)! So, in celebration of Pride, we wanted to highlight some fibre artists who live in our local community and work across three different disciplines. Here are some of your local Queer fibre creatives, in their own words:

Kaya Emiko

Kaya (she/her) is a queer, mixed-race cutie who sews, knits, and makes sewing patterns. Oversized shapes, textures, and the interplay between masc/femme utility/frivolity frilly/sporty are core tenets of her work. When she’s not working with textiles, Kaya is making music with her band, The Shorties, drinking copious amounts of earl grey tea, and hanging out with her two cats. Follow Kaya on ig at @kaya_sews and @softbodies_studio

T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss

T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss is an Indigenous Matriarch of the Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo and Hawaiian people. Through her work as an ethnobotanist, artist, activist and community-based educator, they strive to share Indigenous customs, teachings, and futures and to connect Indigenous peoples. Wyss’s thirty-year career encompasses a vast array of practices, from weaving, making remedies, medicine walks to the realm of Indigenous Digital Futurisms. Ceases’ interactive, community-based work is insightful and informative of their contemporary conditions.

Interweaving their skills as an ethnobotanist and an interdisciplinary artist, Cease maintains a practice to decolonize their life and their art by learning about their culture and using traditions practiced by their ancestors. This is witnessed in their recent exploration of cultural weaving using materials traditionally used by Salish People such as red and yellow cedar, Salish Woolly dog fibre, stinging nettles, and fireweed fluff. Furthermore, their current community teachings and research is focused on restoring and remediating Indigenous species and natural space by encouraging others to build their Indigenous food forests and to nurture local biodiversity respectfully and sustainably.

Wyss is a collaborator, deeply involved in community building and finds dialogue with communities crucial in exchanging knowledge and critical in preserving Indigenous understanding of the land and ecosystems. Wyss has taught these teachings to public institutions and organizations and has participated in creative projects that share different indigenous cultures in stewarding this effort in preservation. Outside the importance of preserving what surrounds them, Cease believes in the importance of taking care of and feeding oneself, in redefining oneself as a way to care for Mother Earth, Chescha7 Timixw, and Ch’iaxw- their sacred protocol.

Huy chew a’ [Thank you]

Erin Guimond

Erin Guimond (@PickyFemme) is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist working primarily with knitting and fibre art. Her colourful, kitschy work combines pattern, abstraction, and nostalgia; using colour and form to create personal, joyful pieces.