Introducing Brooke of ThePaintedTiger

Hi! I'm Brooke at ThePaintedTiger. This year is my seventh in business and my fifth year of creating hand dyed yarn and fiber. I'm a full time mom, homeschool teacher, and fiber artist. We live along the Mississippi River in the 'nose' of eastern Iowa. My other talents include music, and I greatly enjoy singing in our local choir and playing trumpet with the symphony. In my former 'life' (before kids), I taught 8th grade Science. Don't groan....I actually like 13-14 year olds!

Oh, you want to see some yarn?

Yes, I know....there are quite a few rainbows in there. Apparently they are pretty good, since I can hardly keep them in stock in my shop, and they were even 'Harlot-ed'....to my great 'squee-ness'!! Over the last two days, I have dyed 7lbs of rainbows, and have a couple more to go.

When I'm not painting rainbows, I create quite a variety of variegated and semi-solid yarns, both mild and wild. I dye on lace, several fingering/sock yarns, worsted, and bulky. Fibers include Merino, BFL, Bamboo, and domestic wool. I pride myself on supporting yarn mills located here in the United States. I also have an exciting line called 'Fillet of Sole' which are double stranded sock blanks that you unravel as you knit. The rainbow socks in the mosaic were from this process.

This year, I succumbed to the lure of the spinning wheel. I'm very much enjoying learning to spin, and also love the interesting effects you can get by dyeing on wool top. I have two varieties of wool currently, and will be adding more soon. I've also just ordered a drum carder, and am rubbing my hands together in true mad scientist style!

Fiber Baristas is very special to me. I was so glad to 'meet' the dyers in this sock club. Everyone is a fantastic dyer, business woman, and friend. I hope you will join us on this journey as I look forward to bringing you a postcard of Iowa!