We are a family-run artisan business, husband and wife team Emjay and Yarnsquatch, behind the scenes Shroomy (our adult daughter who prefers to remain anonymous) helps out with social media and Pepper supervises operations and provides team morale and motivation.
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Special thanks to our boosters and support team, Pam (event retail and customer service assistant), Alexa of Full Moon Knitting (knitting design testing and feedback), and the Discovery Knitters.
Emjay’s Story
It all began when I was just a kid, always fascinated with and determined to make things colourful, and master that knitting or crochet those old ladies were always doing. A creative and precocious child with a drive to experiment, I was motivated to make things from early on, and for most of my life, the thing didn’t really matter.
Fast forward to 2009, when as an adult who has finally learned to crochet, I launched my own project of tutorials and patterns under the brand name Nerdigurumi and shared video tutorials and free patterns with the world.
My work initially began in amigurumi crochet and evolved to be more about love for making yarn than making things out of yarn due to repetitive stress injuries that made knitting and crochet difficult. The volume of production quickly highlighted a need for an outlet for my yarn since I couldn’t knit or use most of it, and wanted to dye and experiment in an ongoing way. JOMA Yarn, a partnership with my mom grew from that initial sprout. Within that sphere of possibility, my creative vision, drive and community building spirit evolved and together we have built this family artisan business which is now Subculture Yarn Co. and Subculture Knits. The brand embodies the greater spirit of yarn and needlework as an element of personal art and culture, a strand in the broader lifestyle we knitters, we weavers and we yarnies on this earth share and joyously celebrate in our every day practice.
A subculture, is defined as a group of people with a single common and generally chosen thread of identity that sets that group of people apart. In this case, we are set apart from the rest and unified by the art that we practice, the art of knitting, crochet, weaving, dyeing, spinning, we yarnie few.
