Our Story
Back in January 2016, I was feeling antsy and had a deep need to be creative again. I was working in a chimpanzee behavior lab and starting my graduate program in the fall, and I knew all of the free time I had on my hands would soon fade. So, naturally, I took my (very) limited knitting knowledge and opened a shop on Etsy: Ford Explorer Knits. A knitwear company made for the explorer.
The moment I decided to open the shop, regardless of the fact that most of my customers would surely be friends and family, something clicked in me for the first time. Over the next two years, I went to four craft markets (the first one being in May – Ali, what were you thinking?!) and, in addition to knitwear, started experimenting with hand lettering and all sorts of other creative endeavors. Within my little bubble of Ford Explorer Knits, I felt free to let my creativity flourish in whatever direction excited me, and, in contrast to the world of academia, it was exactly what I needed at that time.
In January 2018, I dyed my first skeins of yarn.
From the moment I started mixing dyes to create my own colors and layering them (with reckless abandon) onto bare wool, I fell in love. That thing that clicked in me when I opened my knitwear shop felt like a drop in the ocean compared to what I felt when I dyed those first skeins of yarn. I knew I had no choice but to run with it.
I sold my first ten or so skeins in Instagram Stories(!) that January, and somehow had the confidence, not one month later, to stride into my local yarn shop and offer them wholesale if they'd take me. And guess what? They did (shout out to Klose Knit in Urbana, Illinois)! Brigitte, the lovely owner, trusted me based entirely on my sheer will and an explosion of excitement about dyeing, without even seeing any of my work. Her confidence gave me the confidence I needed to, once again, creatively expand my little bubble.
In June 2019, I completed my master's degree in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology (read: studying stress and social behavior in domesticated foxes in comparison to wild foxes) and moved to Colorado. I decided there would be no better time to take the leap, and took what was now known as Explorer Knits + Fibers full-time.
From that moment to now, seven years later as I write this, it has been the most exciting and fulfilling time of my life.
From using a rain barrel to fill dye pots because I didn't have a sink when I got started, to hiring my first two employees in the summer of 2020 and having them work in my 600-square-foot unfinished basement. From traveling and hurrying home to try to translate every feeling, emotion, and memory I had experienced into yarn, in the hope that I could make people feel like they had been there with me, to our first pop-ups and our growing list of wholesale orders.
In the summer of 2022 came the most terrifying leap I had ever taken: moving from that 600-square-foot basement into an industrial space that was half-office, half-warehouse, with nothing but a dream and the unbridled audacity to make it come true. Three years after taking the business full-time and feeling like a hamster on a wheel, we grew the EKF team from two of us to eight. All of a sudden, this thing I had started in a tiny creative bubble had become a living, breathing thing of its own.
In December 2022, we opened the doors to the EKF Studio for the very first time for our Winter Market. To say we were blown away by the outpouring of support and community on that day would be an understatement. So much so that we decided to open our doors again the following summer, where even more ideas for what type of space we could create for our community started to brew.
Fast forward to 2024, when we launched our most successful collection yet. A collection whose idea popped into my head that winter based on changes in my own style choices and my ever-intensifying love for playing with color. In January 2024, MONOCHROME was born. The team spent the following five months dyeing up our largest preorder to date, and when summer temperatures hit, we opened our doors once more. This time, while battling the ever-present imposter syndrome thoughts, I taught our first-ever hand-dyed yarn classes.
I take great pride in how, from the time we expanded to now, we have focused on steady growth. It feels like the kind of growth that can be sustainable (growing pains and all) to both myself and my team, and that creates a life where we feel genuinely happy to be in the space we're in.
And then, in the spring of 2026, we decided to take another leap.
I moved to Brooklyn, New York, to follow a childhood dream of living in the big city where my mom's family grew up, and to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather, whom I loved dearly.
After weeks of conversations with the team, during which I felt their unending support and encouragement, we went into full planning mode to do everything we could to make this move as seamless as possible – for myself, sure, but especially for the team.
They had seen, over the last couple of years, that it was time for a step. Not backward, but sideways. A step that would give me room to breathe and spend more time on the creative work I had missed, while giving the team the space and autonomy to continue doing what they do best.
I spent two months setting up a quaint dye space in Brooklyn – a safe haven where I could create quietly and at my own pace again. A place to start dedicating more time to thinking about where we want EKF to go, and what creative endeavors will help it flourish.
I'm finally getting settled into my life in Brooklyn, with frequent visits back to Denver and daily calls with the team, and somehow, this feels like exactly where we need to be right now.
Over the years, I've had the incredible privilege of traveling all over the United States and meeting so many of you in person at pop-ups, fiber festivals, and everywhere in between. We've been fortunate enough to collaborate with many, many artists and designers, and I've learned what community really means along the way.
In fact, one of the reasons I'm sitting here, seven years later, writing this story again is because of your trust in me. In this person who, as you can probably tell by now, started with no business plan, no formal background in art, and no idea what she was doing – but with a lot of care, a lot of love, and an overwhelming amount of excitement about something that lit a creative fire in her that is still burning bright.
My passion for what EKF is goes far beyond creating and telling stories with color. That alone isn't enough for me.
It's the connections and the stories shared. It's the familiar faces and the encouragement. It's the trust you've placed in me, and the trust I've placed in the incredible team that has helped build this alongside me. It's the artists we've collaborated with, the places we've explored, the people we've met, and the community we've found along the way.
That's what makes EKF so special.
That's why we're still here.
I'm so, so incredibly grateful that you're here, too. That you've allowed this little space, built on a dream and a love for exploring, to grow alongside you.
Thank you so, so much for being part of it with us. I can't wait to see what happens next ❤️
With Love,
Ali