As a former superintendent of schools, Director of Research & Technology,
teacher, principal, and librarian, Jane thornley has lived many lives in her first set
of careers. Now she has graduated (in other words, she’s retired) into her best life
and flying free.
She has lead an online knitting community called the Inspired Knitters Club for a
decade as well as taken knitting groups on evocative knitting tours worldwide. She
calls her knitting style ‘free-range’ because her patterns are more like recipes than
traditional patterns and she encourages knitters to explore outside the lines using
a mixture of yarns and textures.
These days, she mostly writes novels. Her historical mystery thriller novels
featuring an art historian who also knits has become so popular that it has
absorbed her full-time.

Originally coming to Mongolia as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2010, Jon Hetts founded ULA+LIA to provide products made fully of Mongolian raw materials produced 100% in Mongolia. The incredible fibers harvested from free-range animals raised by traditional herders in the countryside to the workmanship of the industrial sector in Mongolia create unique and high-quality items specific to the country. Currently providing a range of knitting yarns, we have ambitions to also provide bespoke ready-to-wear items in the future.

Barb Barone and Cynthia Hyslop are teachers, makers, sisters, content creators and former yarn shop owners. Since closing their bricks and mortar shop in 2023, Barb and Cynthia have opened their Yarniversity and have been offering online classes, make-a-longs, tutorials and community building events. These sisters have extensive experience in corporate training, management and presentation. But it was their experience as yarn shop owners that honed their skills for teaching. 

Barb and Cynthia have always offered workshops as part of their LYS offerings. For over 20 years, they’ve been educating and supporting their customers and have a knack for helping you to feel welcome and at ease in their classes. They have a wide range of interests and areas of expertise that incorporate: knitting, crochet, spinning, machine knitting, colour and yarn choices. As yarn shop owners, they are also creative problem solvers!

And now, Barb and Cynthia are sharing their yarn shop knowledge and expertise with makers around the globe, via live (and recorded) virtual classes that you can attend whenever and wherever you like to learn. Come and ask questions, build new skills at your pace and gain confidence in your abilities with Barb and Cynthia as your coaches.

In/near Kitchener-Waterloo:

Stephanie Earp was born in Toronto, studied in Chicago, Boston and Kingston, and now lives in Montreal. She came to knitting in her twenties when she mistook a copy of Vogue Knitting for Vogue. She made one of the sweaters from that issue and never looked back. Stephanie’s designs have appeared in Laine’s 52 Weeks of Shawls, Pom Pom Quarterly, Vogue Knitting, Knitty, Cascade’s Quick Knit series and Making Stories magazine.

She is a co-owner of a lovely yarn shop in Montreal called, Espace Tricot.
(You may remember Stephanie as the adjudicator of the KWKG show in 2023.)

In/near Kitchener-Waterloo:

Until her move to Ottawa in 2008, Sally Melville lived in KW. While there and in the mid-80’s, she—with friends—established the KW KNITTERS’ GUILD. Sally taught regularly for the guild, but she also hired workshop leaders from around the world, and those teachers encouraged her to both travel to teach and to publish.

Over the course of her publishing career, she wrote seven knitting books (including THE KNIT STITCH, a best-selling learn-to-knit book which sold 300,000 copies and has been translated into French and Russian) and published a variety of patterns on Ravelry. But her favourite work is her last—KNITTING PATTERN ESSENTIALS—a book that teaches Sally’s favourite skill (pattern drafting) and puts those skills into the hands of every knitter. 

The travelling to teach took her around the world and to Denver where she put much of her teaching expertise onto the Craftsy platform. She retired in 2019 after a wonderful career—speaking to folk who can appreciate the perfect buttonhole, who admire the textures and colors and techniques of knitting, who love to wear what they knit, and who know that life is about learning.

In/near Kitchener-Waterloo: