Karida Collins

When Karida Collins learned to knit as an adult, she felt a shift inside, a new beginning. “Right away I felt like my hands should be doing this,” she recalls. Before long she was working at a yarn shop and learning everything she could. “I had a fearlessness. I would teach myself so I could teach customers,” she says.

Karida was equally fearless in her quest for hand-dyed yarn in the saturated bright colors she desired. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for in shops, she taught herself to dye at home in her apartment, and, in 2006, she launched Neighborhood Fiber Co. in order to share her unique vibrant palette with others.

Today she and her team dye 14 different yarn bases in a whopping 70 colors, many inspired by and named for the neighborhoods, landmarks, and natural beauty in and around Washington, DC, where NFC was born, and Baltimore, where they are currently based.