Celebrity Interview: Kristin Nicholas

YMN’s Karin Strom recently visited the veteran designer at her picturesque New England farm to talk about everything in Nicholas’s life—from her blog to her new book (Color By Kristin, Sixth&Spring Book) to her everyday busyness and business-savvy advice.

KS: Your fans can read about your creative life on your blog (getting-stitched-on-the-farm.blogspot.com), where you share some very personal and poignant aspects of your life. What made you decide to write a blog, and how do you draw the line with regard to not being too “public” about your private life?

KN: My family and I live on a sheep farm in rural western Massachusetts. I feel about as removed as anyone can be from typical American life. I grew up in northern New Jersey and lived in eastern Massachusetts for almost 20 years. But my heart has always been in the countryside, living on a farm. I remember, as a child, being so envious of all those pictures I saw in magazines and books of farm animals and families living in rural settings.

Even though we are living where we really want to be (5 miles from the dairy farm where my husband Mark grew up), I do feel isolated from what I have always thought of as normal suburban life. The differences are great—I talk to my friends and tell them the things my family and I do on our farm—feed the chickens, care for sick lambs in the kitchen, build scarecrows, sell our frozen lamb at farmers’ markets. It’s not the way most Americans live in the modern world.

I thought the blog format would give me a way to connect with people out there in the real world while also sharing what we do here. I’m surprised by how many people are interested in our rural farming life. Getting Stitched on the Farm is a lot of work for me—but it’s work that I find interesting and rewarding. Sometimes writing a blog post and taking photos is the last thing I have time for, but I know my readers care about what goes on here, and so I keep going. I think that sharing our life on the farm helps many of my readers think more about where their food comes from (plants and animals) vs. thinking that food is born in a shrink-wrapped package.

As for being “public” about our private life, I only show and write about the things we do that I feel comfortable sharing with the world. The few times that I have written about extremely personal things, I did think very long and hard about posting them. Usually I decide to include personal things on my blog because I think the experiences I have had can help other women in their own life situations.

My daughter Julia has hydrocephalus. It is a treatable birth defect (she has a shunt), but it has caused her to have learning disabilities that are very challenging. She also has juvenile diabetes. We struggle with a lot of health issues here on this farm. I think it is good for people to know that it isn’t all pretty pictures around here, that there are real-life challenges every day.

Because I show so many pretty pictures on my blog—it is quite beautiful here—I sometimes think that my readers believe we are living an unreal, perfect existence. That is so untrue. There is a lot of life, death, hard work and dirt on a farm, and I have always tried to be completely honest with my readers. By sharing the challenging aspects of our personal lives, it helps people understand that we are just like them, dealing with our own family’s challenges every day.

KS: You’re something of a renaissance woman—knitting, crocheting, embroidering, painting, writing books, decorating your home to great acclaim. How do you manage to find the time to do everything you want to do?

KN: I just can’t help myself—I am interested in way too many crafts, art, gardening, nature and aspects of what the world has to offer. As far as finding time for it all: It’s a real challenge. My family and our farm come first. Sometimes I feel like I’m never getting anything creative accomplished. I feel frustrated and uninspired because daily life constantly rears its boring head.

But then, when I sit back and look at it all as a package, I realize that each little project builds upon the whole. I relax and feel better again. Something as simple as painting a door a new color can make me feel good and creative and ready to tackle bigger projects.

Writing books forces me to stick to deadlines so that I actually have the goal of a time to complete a project. Deadlines are fabulous! They really help me start and finish projects.

I must admit, I am not a very good housekeeper. I have no interest in keeping things clean and tidy—it’s the creative chaos that stirs me on. Just ask my mom and sisters.

KS: Is knitting your favorite technique?

KN: No, absolutely not. I like all of the arts I practice, each for a different reason. Knitting is great to take with me, and because I have been professionally involved with the yarn industry for so long, I keep at it. I like that I have interested followers who make my knitted projects. I keep designing for them. I enjoy embroidery and sewing just as much. I love to decorate my house with new paint colors and decorative techniques. I really love to paint pictures with oils and gouache but don’t have enough time to fit much of it in right now. And I would love to get back to my ceramics—one day.

For me, all of these crafts and art techniques are about designing, creating and making something that is totally my own. It’s a plus when someone wants to publish the ideas in a book or to knit one of my designs. But for me, it’s all about the creation of something new and different—mixing patterns and colors together uniquely so that they become my own.

KS: Your home has been featured in several shelter magazines. It appears that your décor is an homage to things you love—the fabrics, the pottery, the sheep prints. Have you always been a collector?

KN: Let’s just say, I got the bug young—and not from my mother. When I was about 10 years old, my dad’s boss passed away, and my mom took my sisters and me to an auction of his things. He was a wealthy man and his family had been wealthy before him. They had a big, big house with a barn. I had never been to an auction before, but I was intrigued. I spotted an old handmade quilt in the barn and I bought it for 50 cents. I remember my mom’s face as I bid on the dirty old thing. I took it home and washed it in the garage in a pail of water until I got all the dirt out of it. It was my first purchase and I still have it. So you could say I started young, much to my mother’s chagrin. There are still relics of mine collecting dust in her attic! Besides textiles I also like to collect ceramics, porcelain and old dishes. But my house is getting full and space is running out. Now I really have to want it…

KS: So many of your designs seem to be inspired by nature. What else gives you color, pattern and texture ideas?

KN: Living where I do, nature is all around me, so it is the easiest place to start. From nature, I get color ideas, and some shape and texture. It depends on the medium I am working in. Finding inspiration from other places is a bit tougher. When I go to Boston or New York, I try to fit in a museum visit or do some shopping. Out here, I rely on magazines (shelter magazines are my favorites; sadly they are disappearing at an alarming rate) to keep up with fashion and trends. I also get ideas from art and textile books, which I can easily order and get shipped here. Again, I am running out of room on my shelves and books are spilling out onto the floors.

I have dial-up service here—yes, there are still some people with dial-up—so I do very little surfing around on the Internet. I’m sure I am missing a lot, but it just takes too much time to search for something online. Hopefully, one day that will change.

KS: How do you stay connected living in such an isolated area?

KN: To tell you the truth, I stay as connected as I want to be. I’m at a point now in my designing career where I only want to design the things I want to. I don’t care whether I fulfill a magazine’s latest trend request and get published. I am really so over that. I like to design projects that are fun for knitters to knit and that have a timeless, folkloric quality that will look good 20 years from now. Some knitting techniques will just never go out of style, no matter what fashion trends are tell us.

KS: You spent 16 years as creative director at Classic Elite Yarns. What was your biggest takeaway from that experience?

KN: Oh, boy, that is a tough one. I started working there when I was 25 years old. I grew up there, professionally. I loved that job so much. It wasn’t until I just couldn’t do it anymore creatively that I decided to move on. My family life became more important, and taking care of an infant who needed many surgeries, as well as other projects, took center stage. I just had to stop! I did love the challenge of coming up with a collection twice a year, even if it was grueling. I loved thinking about the shop owners and how they would sell a particular yarn. And I loved thinking about how an individual knitter would actually turn a yarn into a finished project.

KS: Drawing on your experiences, do you have any tips for what shop owners should do to weather these challenging economic times?

KN: I’m sure this is hard for new shop owners to believe, but for much of the time I worked at Classic Elite, the times were challenging. I think a yarn shop’s main focus should be to keep new products coming in and to keep coming up with new ideas to inspire their customers to keep coming in the door. It can be something as simple as making a swatch for a featured design in an alternate colorway or running a class about creativity. For many knitters, their knitting is the most creative thing they do. They like to feel stimulated and challenged to learn more techniques. Besides magazine and book publishers and the Internet, it is the yarn stores that can really inspire knitters to new heights.

I also think it is important for shop owners to get away from their businesses, to see a new place, shop in a new city, take a knitting trip—even if they have to close their stores for a few days. By doing this, they’ll be better ready to deal with the ho-hum everyday-ness of a shopkeeper’s life.

KS: How has the yarn industry changed since your days at Classic Elite?

KN: Oh, my goodness, there are so many new faces! That’s the most remarkable part of it all. I missed only six years of trade shows and, oh, how the faces have changed. But it is still the same, just different players. There was always competition between yarn companies, but I think it is more intense now that there are so many more newish companies competing and scrambling for dollars.

KS: Where do you see things going in the near future for the industry?

KN: I think that as long as companies can keep bringing out fresh and creative products and keep stimulating interest in knitting and crochet, the yarn industry will survive. It’s not always going to be gangbusters busy, but that is a normal business cycle.

This period in time is really important for our industry. We picked up so many new customers eager to learn a few years back. We have to keep them interested and wanting to learn more and more about our crafts. I would like to see more cross-pollination of all the different needlearts—combining crochet, knitting, needlepoint, embroidery and sewing together. Unfortunately, so many knitters and shopkeepers want to focus only on knitting. It’s too bad, because mixing it all up is so much fun.

KS: You have a yarn line with Nashua. Do you see that developing into a bigger range of products?

KN: Actually, Nashua did just add a second Kristin Nicholas product line to its collection. It’s called Best Foot Forward, and it is a self-striping sock yarn. When you knit it, it makes a faux Fair Isle/striped pair of socks. It’s quite fun—especially for those knitters who are afraid of carrying more than one color yarn in a row. As for other products, I would love to do a fabric line. Maybe one day.

KS: You have 300 sheep. Any thoughts on doing a handspun?

KN: No, not now. Just keeping all the sheep alive and reproducing is enough work for us. And we don’t have a lot of extra space at our place to house more yarn.

KS: You’ve added workshops at your farm to your repertoire. What prompted that?

KN: My husband and I are extremely committed to agriculture and helping to keep the rural character of our beautiful area alive. It is also very difficult for me to leave the farm and teach, even though knitters and shop owners ask me to continuously. My Get Stitched on the Farm classes combine our lovely natural area, our life on the farm, my art, my love of color, and knitting and stitching. And to top it all off, we serve fabulous food. What could be better—knitting, a beautiful setting and good food.

KS: What’s next for you?

KN: I have no idea. My new book (Color By Kristin, Sixth&Spring Books) is just coming out, so I perhaps I’ll do a bit of promotion for that. I’m looking for the next project/idea to hit and then I’ll figure out how I can get it done. I’m not much of a planner, but that makes it more fun.