We are so excited to be part of the KCM Ensemble Make-along!! Debbie threw the idea for this event out to our fellow Knit City Montreal vendors last week, and within a few short days we had an enthusiastic team making it into a reality. We're incredibly grateful to have such an amazing community working together to support each other in these uncertain times.
Big news! We’re teaming up with Helios Makerspace to offer dye studio access for members who want to work on dyeing projects without investing in all their own tools and equipment. That means that during studio hours, members can come use our space to dye yarn, fibre, fabric, or anything else you can think of really! More details on membership pricing and studio hours are available here.
This is the fifth year that Debbie and I have been involved in the Indie Design Gift-along on Ravelry as both designers and participants. It's a fun event and it’s a chance for us to take a little vacation from designing ourselves, support our fellow designers by working from their patterns, make connections with knitters and crocheters around the world, and maybe finish off a gift or two or three.
Elizabeth and I have shared our partnership running Sweet Paprika for over 10 years now, but we've been sharing many other things in life for much longer than that - including birthday celebrations!
With my birthday falling on the 16th of November and Elizabeth's on the 22nd, we often had shared parties and celebrated our birthdays together. In fact, our younger sister Margaret was also born on November 16th, so the third week in November has been "Birthday Week" for us as long as I can remember.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of witnessing (and participating in) a public art installation involving - you guessed it - a ton of yarn!
UNITY is an interactive art installation which creates a physical representation of that community, documenting our similarities, differences, and ultimate interconnectedness.
Earlier this spring I got an email from Pop Montreal with a call-out for vendors for the Marché des Possibles, which they organize on summer weekends in the Mile End neighbourhood. I happened to mention to my wonderful dye studio interns that I would love to do it but didn't think I had time to deal with organizing it. "We'll do it!" they said, and so I booked us a booth for the weekend of July 16 and 17.
It's hard to believe that it's more than six weeks now since Elizabeth and I packed up all the Sweet Paprika yarn and patterns and drove our little Communauto car down to Toronto for the Knitter's Frolic (a giant knitting festival, organized by the Toronto Knitter's Guild). There are a number of classes and workshops, and a marketplace full of vendors selling pretty much anything a knitter could want. We've had a booth in the market for four years now, and it's one of our favourite events to attend.
Elizabeth and I had a great time at this year's edition of the Twist Fibre Festival in St-Andre-Avellin, QC. We spent the week leading up to the festival busily preparing ourselves, dyeing a ton of yarn and putting together some new kits for some of our patterns that include beads.
Sweet Paprika Designs offers high-quality materials for knitters and crocheters, with a focus on locally-sourced and sustainable products. Co-owners (and sisters) Debbie and Elizabeth create their own hand-dyed yarns, knitting kits and patterns in their Montreal dye studio and organize knitting and dyeing events in the community.