We first saw Monica Gilles-BringsYellow work in Montana Women Magazine and immediately fell in love with the multimedia femininity of her work. The colors, the inky dyes, the gold inlay, and to see a modern take while celebrating historical women is clearly our jam.

You can read that article and all about Monica here.

I had the opportunity to meet Monica in person at the Charlie Russell Artweek earlier this summer. She is as sweet in person as she is online, we giggled and laughed while talking about art, music, and movies. As soon as I saw 'Agnes' I knew she belonged in the shop. We love that we get to see Agnes everyday. Who is Agnes? Well I asked Monica to tell me about her and this is what she had to say.

"Agnes is from the Flathead Reservation and she is from the Salish tribe. In the mid 70s she started a culture camp and the culture camp is teaching traditional salish techniques; how to bake camas bulbs, tan hides, how to gather. This camp is still going to this day. This was something that was outlawed back in the day; we were not allowed to practice a lot of our traditions or have ceremonies. Agnes knew how to do all of these traditions and she was basically like, 'I want to pass it on to other people'."

Monica continues to tell me that the National Archive came out to take photos and interview Agnes, which we have linked below.

"This is during the 70s and Agnes just kind of wanted people to go back to the traditional ways. There is a recording and she says things like, 'It's hard for the spirits to talk to you because now we live in houses and not tipis anymore ." So she was really a traditionalist and did important work in teaching people what we had already known for centuries that were eventually outlawed. Even when she first started there were people and family members who said things like 'nobody is going to come' and questioned why she was doing it. Her response was, 'well I have to do it anyway'. "

Agnes is Monica's relative and you can hear her passion for Agnes and her work not only through her storytelling but obviously her artwork. Agnes is the Auntie we all know and love, we hope you love her too.

We knew that the yarn this month needed GOLD to represent Monica's painting and Agnes fearlessness. We chose a fingering weight yarn with a blend of wool, nylon, and gold stellina. We wanted to use all of the colors Monica used and think we captured it pretty well. I will say it was awesome to listen to Monica talk about her artistic process and it was almost identical to mine in the way we choose colors and first experiment with them.

This yarn screams socks to us! You can check out our Sock Suggestions here. And we are also offering mini skeins in Pintler Sock for preorders! If you're not a sock knitter we can see this yarn being used in a striped sweater with Moon Sisters or in a 2 color shawl. We would definitely pair it with Moon Sisters to keep the sparkle sparkling! Here are links to a few shawls we love for this yarn.

Moon Flowers Shawl by Ambah Obrien

Pure Joy by Joji Locatelli

Painted Pebble Shawl by Forest City Knits

My Chrysalis Shawl by Lavanya Patricella

Above photos are paired with Moon Sisters and are: TL 'Juniper' BL 'Chinook Winds' TR 'Sinopah' BR 'Come and Get Your Love'. Bottom are paired with mini skeins are are availble for preorder.

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 October.