The Knitting Artist, Lisa Urban, prepares to dye a colorless skein of wool yarn in her master bedroom-turned art studio. She lays out the wool in a single skein before getting to work. She is surrounded by plastic squirt bottles, which she uses to control the color application. The dyes are made with powder mixed with water and an acid, usually citric acid or vinegar, which helps to set the color onto the wool. “I score it over the yarn wherever I want that specific color to be in,” Urban says. Once she has stained the entire skein, she sets the color for 10 minutes in the microwave, which allows the color to properly set. After it cools, she rinses the wool and sets it out to dry. Then it is ready to sell on her website and at local art fairs.
Urban began knitting when she was an art major in college. Sometime along the way, her hobby turned into a passion, which then turned into the idea for her small business, The Knitting Artist. “Something in my brain just kind of clicked,” Urban says. “I thought to myself, ‘I really am enjoying this. Let’s see where I can go with it.’” Urban felt that dyeing would be the perfect first step toward owning her own yarn shop where she could carry her own yarn.
Urban’s skeins are rarely a solid color. Because of her art background as a painter, she developed an eye for color, which allowed her to visualize the yarn’s final appearance. “I already knew how to mix the colors and get the colors I wanted because I was already doing it in a different form,” Urban says. “A lot of dyers will take inspiration from nature or from other people’s artwork, and I was like ‘What can I do?’” Since her first love was working with oil paints, she came up with an idea to use her own art as inspiration. Her yarns match her color schemes and are named after the art that inspired them. “People are really impressed with that concept,” she says.
Urban has a booth at the Frame Gallery in downtown Bryan that’s stocked with her yarn, needles, and hooks. She also sells through her website, which offers free shipping, and she delivers yarn locally to clients. “I want to be as helpful to the knitting and crocheting community in this town as I can,” Urban says. “I hate seeing people driving 45-plus miles to get yarn.”
Urban also founded a local yarn club inspired by the twentieth-century Spanish artist Salvador Dali. “I decided on Salvador Dali, because he's one of my favorites, and I wanted an excuse to research him more,” Urban says. “I feel like I’m a bit of a surrealist and [Dali] was one of the artists that influenced me when I first started.” A yarn club subscription includes a skein of yarn whose colors are influenced by that month’s artwork by Salvador Dali. In addition, subscribers receive two extra perks that are not necessarily knitting-related, such as face masks or stitch markers.
For the past few years, Urban has been president of the Brazos Valley Knitters’ and Crocheters’ Guild, which started in 2004. The group met once a month and offered programs, formal classes, and social knits until the start of COVID-19. Since then, the club has held Zoom meetings and socially distanced group gatherings at Tanglewood Park in Bryan.
“I absolutely love the arts,” Urban says, “and I don’t see myself doing anything else besides the yarn business.”
Look for The Knitting Artist on Facebook and Instagram @TheKnittingArtist or visit theknittingartist.com.
