August's Indigenous Collective is inspired by the book, 'The Night Watchman' by Louise Edrich. Like so much of Edrich's work, the visuals she gives in The Night Watchman are authentic, heart wrenching, spiritually provoking, and full of a type of Indigenous optimism that is as complex as funny.

Louise Edrich is a monumental Ojibwa author who has written dozens of books that tell stories of Indigenous people. She has won some of the most prestigious awards you can receive as an author. And while I could give you the wikipedia version of Louise's life, I thought it would be better to link a couple of places where you can listen to Louise herself!

Get Lit: The Nightwatchman by WNYC Studios

I also wanted to add this link for anyone who would like to learn more about the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa

While the inspiration for The Nightwatchman was Eloise's grandfather, we were drawn to Patrice AKA Pixie. Many things resonated with me in Pixie's story. My mom grew up very impoverished in a 1,000 square foot house with 14 brothers and sisters. The descriptions of Pixie's home are very similar to the stories I heard growing up. The thing I love most about this book and actually Native culture in general is that no matter how bad things are, humor is always present. Like when Pixie brings the raw dough to work and everyone just laughs at her while sharing their food. The scenes of Pixie as the Waterjack in Log Jam were so haunting, hilarious, and honestly terrifying. I can even smell the stale beer, greasy burgers, and chlorinated water of the place. I also kept thinking of the lake where Pixie swam out to her uncle's boat after the group of boys tried to attack her. So it was the variety of blues that kept coming to the forefront when I was envisioning this yarn. We added a couple of blue speckles that split to a bit of purple, because I wanted to show the femininity of Pixie.

I know single skeins of yarns like Oh Dang! can be sometimes a little annoying for the stash. Like, what am I supposed to do with this? But I wanted the softness of the yarn to be a part of the inspiration to represent the matriarchal themes in the book and in Indigenous Culture. And even if inspiration might now immediately spark to what to do with this yarn, I know you will LOVE using it! Here is a video showing you patterns we love for Oh Dang and the links are below!

Paloma by Espace Tricot

Stripes by Andrea Mowry

Engle by Caitlin Hunter

Vintage '83 by Andrea Mowry

Giled by Karen Teasdale Simpson

A lot of our blues, greens, and yellows will go with 'Pixie' but we especially love Kinnikinnick, Sinopah, and PBR.

With every month in the Indigenous Collective you can order more of the colorway in the listing below. Please know that additional yarn will be a preorder, the listing will be up until the end of the month and will ship mid September. These preorders have been marked down a few dollars as a thank you for being apart of the collective!