About Us!

Hello there! My name is Caitlin and I am the owner, dyer, and knit pattern designer behind Dreamwood Fibers & Fables. 

If you ended up here looking for Botanic Fiber Shoppe, SURPRISE!, that's still me! We have had a little facelift to better encapsulate what my little yarn shop has become over the past year. I hope you'll love it as much as I do! 

 

I can’t actually tell you my knitting origin story. I mostly just remember being able to do it? I know I taught myself, back before YouTube had a tutorial for everything (but my does it help nowadays when it comes to a tricky or new stitch I want to try!). I’ve also always loved yarn. I constantly find myself wandering into yarn shops, if only just to touch and swoon all the pretty things. This is also me inside of bookstores, in case you were wondering. But I love creating, and knitting was always a wonderful outlet for me to do it through. During the pandemic shutdown, I stumbled upon test knitting for designers online. I have worked with quite a few designers since then, and I always love being a part of the process with them. I truly love everything to do with knitting, it makes my heart calm (mostly) and happy. 

While my time of being a knitter is long, my time of being a dyer is a little shorter. I’ve followed so many wonderful indie dyers on Instagram over the years, and with every passing year my desire to get creative in the world of yarns and dyes grew.

At the beginning of 2022, I started checking out books from my library on natural dyeing. While acid dye is the most common way to work when dyeing yarn, I was intrigued by the route of natural dyes. I love nature and feel inspired by it constantly, and I loved the idea of pulling in the outdoors and putting it into a skein of yarn. 

I love foraging for dyestuff and finding new things to bring to life in yarn. But the reality of living in a populated area is that foraging is very tough. I slowly started experimenting with traditional dyes, and I fell in love with the ability to be able to dye whatever I dreamt up, not only what little I could forage. 

So now we are here. In a place where I dye mostly with traditional dyes now, but you'll see a few naturally dyed yarn skeins pop up on occasion when I can get my hands on dyestuff. 

On the other side of the yarn, I have also started designing my own knit patterns! It has been an amazing way to be creative in another aspect, especially when I use my own yarn to make them. This is the Fables part of my name. I love telling stories (I'm also a writer!) and I love being able to weave tales through my knitwear, as well as through my yarn collections and colorways. 

Thank you for your support, you have no idea how much it means to me.