Page 28 - Knit Now - Issue 112 (January 2020)

ventures wasn’t going to be fulilling long
term. Eventually, she recognised that her
real passion was natural dyeing, and she
gradually transformed her kitchen into her
laboratory, using the knowledge she had
gained in India as a starting point for a
deeper exploration into this ancient art
and science. First, Kristine sold her yarn
at pop-up shops, then she opened a small
storefront, and inally, in 2011, she moved
to Verb’s current location in Oakland,
where she has been growing the business
ever since.
Verb occupies 1,700 square feet of
space on a quiet block of San Pablo
Avenue bordering the city of Berkeley.
In the retail area of Verb, there is the
store’s own lines of yarn, dyed in the two
studios on the premises, one indoor and
one outdoor, plus a curated selection
of natural yarn and fabric from other
companies with similar ethical ideals.
For a product to make it into the store or
an event to be scheduled there, Kristine
prefers that it in some way supports the
continuation of a hands-on tradition and is
traceable to its source.
By providing customers with the
opportunity to learn how to create their own
textiles and spend time with other makers,
Kristine hopes to encourage important
conversations. Among the questions,
she would like people to consider and
converse about: how does what we choose
to consume affect others? How can we
redistribute money to those whose work
we believe in and who treat people, the
Earth and their animals kindly? How can
we work with our hands and be healthy and
inancially stable? And, particularly relevant
in the Bay Area, where the computer
companies of Silicon Valley so drastically
impact the cost of living: why are we willing
goods available in such profusion in stores to pay computer programmers millions of
are actually made. While struggling with dollars but not the people who grow our
debilitating panic attacks, which led to a food and ibre?
fear of lying and then of crowded spaces Kristine says, “Through Verb I reclaimed
and bridges, then depression, Kristine my normal life.” By ‘normal’, she is referring
began to understand, with to the time she spent as a
the help of a therapist, “The world child with her grandparents
that not seeking out and in Sterling, living in a
following her true passion was so big, comfortable, safe community
was harming her. “I thought where the residents know
I could make a bunch of and I had no each other by name and care
money and buy a house and about one another and the
be semi happy,” she says, idea who I quality of their environment,
relecting on that time, but and where stitching is an
semi happy wasn’t cutting it; was supposed integral part of the social
instead, she felt lonely and structure.
isolated, and her body was to be in it” Kristine learned from her
setting off an alarm. grandmother, her friends in
Kristine left her job, Sterling and from the Rabari
unsure what to do next. She had already in India that making textiles is a way to
begun to sell cloth bags she sewed, and connect and share, tell one’s story and,
hats and other accessories she knitted in the process, possibly make the world a
out of her hand-spun yarn, but she knew better place – that is exactly the normal life
that investing more of her time in those Kristine is striving to lead today.

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