Meet the Designers
For the 2024 Yarn Tour, we invited local, Tennessee-based fiber enthusiasts to submit their original ideas in a pattern contest. Thank you for your hard work, consideration, and creativity! We are so excited to share this year's selected designers!
If you have bought a ticket for the 2024 Tour, then your Travel Pack will include the Official 2024 Patterns. After this year's Tour has ended, we will share additional options for accessing these patterns.
Amanda Ray
Uniquely Ewe amigurumi
Amanda Ray is located in Burns, TN and is a mother to four wonderful boys. She dabbles in many fiber arts including knitting and cross stitch; however, she has been crocheting for over 13 years and is passionate about creating amigurumi. While amigurumi is her main focus, she likes to throw different crochet techniques into her patterns such as the granny butterfly you'll see on her "Uniquely Ewe" pattern. She has been designing patterns since 2021 and has several best-selling amigurumi patterns on Etsy. Find Amanda and her designs on social media at: @ARSerendipityDesigns .
Janice Krauser
Windows on East Tennessee Scarf
Janice has been doing needlecrafts since she can remember. At 7, her grandmother taught her to crochet, but she held the hook “wrong” so she “attacked her crocheting.” Knitting wasn’t her favorite until she retired from Education. There was a KAL at her local shop in South Florida on Tuesday from 10:00 am til noon. She thought, "I can go to that!" And knitting has become a passion. She even started the Tuesday Knitting Group there.
She now lives in Maryville, TN and continues to knit and crochet at her local yarn shop, joining their Wednesday Knitting Group. Tweaking patterns has become like tweaking recipes to her. She likes to make things for others and to donate to local charities. If she makes something for one person, she has to make it for all her relatives/friends. She is just finishing her 2024 Christmas presents (Hats in Malabrigo Astrological Sign yarn for everyone). Next is designing two Ugly Christmas Sweaters for her best friends, just because they asked.
Julia Insalaco
Pop of color scarf
Julia Insalaco is a long time crocheter, who learned to crochet from her mother, who learned from her mother. Over the years, she’s not only enjoyed crocheting, but she’s also enjoyed sewing (another skill she learned from her mother), embroidery, cross-stitching, and a little quilting. However, her fiber horizons were wonderfully expanded when she discovered the welcoming fiber family at the Clinch River Yarn Company. She has since added knitting, weaving, spinning, and -- of course -- Tunisian Crochet to her fiber interests. She is a lifelong learner of everything fiber who enjoys sharing her love of fiber arts with anyone who wants to embark on their own fiber journey. Julia can be found through Ravelry at Flyingdragon, through Facebook at Julia Insalaco, through email at insalacojw@gmail.com, and most Thursday afternoons at the Clinch River Yarn Company, where her fiber family gathers to stitch and enjoy each other’s company.
Karen Pyne
spiral tam
Karen Pyne first learned to knit while in high school. She paused the hobby just after marriage and children, but renewed interest in order to knit booties and sweaters before her third child -- a winter baby -- was born.
Throughout her adult years she taught herself to do crewel embroidery, crochet, and counted cross stitch, but knitting was always the favored work.
In the early 1980s she opened “The Needleworks Shop” in Knoxville, TN. Yarn was one of three main categories in the shop. The other two were counted cross stitch and smocking. She chose to close the shop several years later to pursue another career. However, she remained a member of a knitting group in Sevierville that was created during the time her shop was open, almost 35 years ago.
Karen resides near the French Broad River in Sevier County, TN. She has three children, three grandchildren and two great grandchildren. ​
Ouisi Hamilton
MurreLl's row striped hat
Ouisi (“weezy”) Hamilton is co-president of the Chattanooga Yarncrafters stitching group. Their stitching journey started in 2003 (after Knitty was founded but before YouTube, during the great eyelash yarn plague). They began with knitting, but the craft creep is real: in addition to learning to crochet, they do a little yarn dyeing and have recently taken up handspinning with spindles and a wheel. Their current passion is designing original stranded colorwork motifs depicting Appalachian wildlife and culture. You can connect with them by joining the CY Meetup group and attending a stitch-in, or by reaching out to OuisiH on Ravelry. See what they’re up to by following their Instagram or Threads account, TheNotoriousWIP.
Teresa Brittain
Yarn tour sampler sock
Teresa learned to crochet from her grandmother when she was a teenager. She taught herself to knit English style in the early 2000’s, working from a book after her children were in bed. A few years later, a friend taught her to knit continental style, and that has been her preference ever since. Teresa has taken classes in knitting, spinning, dyeing, and weaving at yarn shops, retreats, and at John C. Campbell Folk School. She currently owns three weaving looms; two spinning wheels; lifetime supplies of yarn, unspun fiber, and dyes; and too many knitting needles and crochet hooks to count.
Teresa is also a glass beadmaker and popular beadmaking instructor. In her day job, she works to improve literacy in our community as executive director at Friends of Literacy. She and her husband live in north Knoxville, where they are renovating an older home.
