Living Dreams Yarns & Fiber Keeps Ancient Craft Alive in the Digital Era

living dreams yarn
A felted Easter Egg basket is made with Living Dreams' hand-dyed roving.
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By Heidi Smith

hanson motors sponsorWhat happens when a timeless art meets the accelerated world of cyberspace? Ask Tanja Baucken. Her Rainier-based online business Living Dreams Yarns & Fiber is taking a distinctly 21st century approach to the art of spinning, felting, knitting and crochet.

All of her yarns and fibers are locally milled and either hand-dyed or made in really small batches to unique specifications.

living dreams yarn
Living Dreams strives to keep fiber arts alive by supporting artisans.

“We have a whole network of small privately owned fiber mills, independent dye artists and local farms that we commission to produce our products,” she says.

“Basically the whole idea is to keep the fiber trade alive, to support the local artisans. Most of our things are made here in the Pacific Northwest.”

Once a month, Baucken meets with the owners of local fiber mills and dye artists to place orders and deliver her specific requirements. “I’ve met so many talented fiber artists,” she says. “They’re raising the goats, sheep and alpacas. Their products come directly from the farm. They shear the animals and in their spare time, do the dye themselves.” Other suppliers buy commercial yarn, but then hand-dye it with “spectacular colors,” she says. “By dying one skein at a time they can produce results you just don’t get in mass production.”

Working directly with the suppliers has given her more control over the end product. “You can say, ‘I want it this thick,’” she explains. It also allows her to experiment. “I started developing more and more colorways and other fibers, exploring silk, tencel, mohair, alpaca and merino.”

living dreams yarn
Knit and crochet kits are sold by Living Dreams and include all the materials needed to make a project.

Once production is finished, the real work begins. Because she has no in-person contact with her clients, “I have to convey as much as I can through the words and pictures online,” she says. “I take all the pictures myself and also the photo editing is done in-house. Since our customers cannot touch and feel and cuddle the yarns I have to make them fall in love with the fiber through the pictures,” she laughs. “The reality is that they spend $60. Our products are not cheap. They’re high end, handmade. Customers have to have the confidence that once they’ve made the purchase, they will be able to succeed at making a scarf or sweater.”

To make it easier for her customers, Baucken has developed knit and crochet kits that include everything her customers need: the yarn, knitting needles and patterns with step by step instructions and lots of photography. “In order for (customers) to feel confident, you have to do a lot of work to make something that they understand,” she says.

Living Dreams currently sell their products exclusively in their three online stores on Amazon, eBay and Etsy.  The company also maintains a presence on Facebook. “We have over 1,000 product listings out there on the world wide web that constantly need to be updated and maintained. On a typical day there are people in the office taking care of customer service, marketing, advertising and shipping.”

living dreams yarn
Tanja Baucken, pictured here with many of her products, enjoys being able to operate a home-based business with Living Dreams Yarn & Fiber.

Customers order from as far away as Norway, Malta, Australia and Dubai “and we usually ship within 24 hours,” says Baucken.

Originally, she didn’t start out to create a yarn and fiber store. After years of running a landscaping company with her husband, a former creative director from London, she wanted to do something different. “We like to be creative and artsy,” she laughs. “We’d spent all these years building our house and we really wanted a home-based business. We were excited about the idea of selling but we had to learn how to sell things online.”

Their first attempt provided a lot of learning but not much income. “We were selling mass-produced party and wedding products that we were importing from China,” Baucken explains. ”We knew absolutely nothing about sales or computers or the internet, so eBay seemed as good a place as any to start. This totally is one of those things we would have never started if we had known what we were getting into.”

Sales were “meager at first” in her words but this was “kind of a do or die situation,” she says. “eBay allowed us to cut our teeth on this whole online selling thing and we slowly got more savvy and started to expand into more platforms. That was all wonderful but as the years went by I began to yearn for a more meaningful product. I knew that wedding and party items just wouldn’t do it for me on the long run.”

At that point she ran into a friend who was dying fiber. Growing up knitting in Germany, she used to make all of her own sweaters. “When I saw his stuff, I wanted my own needles again.” The inspiration for Living Dreams Yarns & Fiber was born.

living dreams yarn
This unique Hugs & Kisses cowl is made from Air Merino locally milled in small batches.

Today, she loves the creative aspect of her work. “You can steer this boat in pretty much any direction you want,” she says. “It’s constant problem-solving. Mostly what I love is new development. There are so many things in the works, so many yarns that we don’t even carry yet. That’s all projects to come, patterns that need to be written or new dye samples.”

The next step will be to expand her business to include more people. “My goal is to unload more of the administrative side,” she explains.  “I’m looking for more support on the business side so that I can be freer on the creative side.”

In the meantime, she continues to be inspired by the feedback she gets from around the world. “I often get pictures from happy customers of hats, scarves, blankets or cowls that they knitted or felted for themselves from our yarns,” she says.  “That’s the highest praise I can think of.”

You can find Living Dreams Yarn and Fiber online at Facebook, Pinterest, Ravelry and of course Etsy, Amazon and eBay or at the Living Dreams blog spot.

 

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