In this fascinating interview extracted from Making
a Life: Working by Hand and Discovering the Life
You Are Meant to Live by Melanie Falick, Kristine
Vejar, natural dyer, teacher, author and owner of A
Verb for Keeping Warm, gives us a wonderful insight
into her life as a maker
LIFE
Making a
Kristine Vejar is on a mission to do her
part to make the world a better place, one
where all people are treated with respect
and, in turn, treat the Earth with respect
— or, at the very least, she will spend
her time trying. Her drive comes from two
vastly different formative experiences:
the rst happene d in the 1970s in rural
Illinois, the second in 1999 and the early
2000s in Kutch, a remote desert region in
the state of Gujarat in western India. Her
mission is manifested at A Verb for Keeping
Warm in Oakland, California, a retail store,
classroom, dye studio and gathering place
for textile lovers and makers in the Bay
Area — as well as a bucket-list destination
for creatives worldwide.
As a child, Kristine spent a month each
summer in Sterling, Illinois, a tiny steel
mill town where her mother was raised and
where her grandparents still resided. Most
days, she and her grandma Lorene would sitExtracted from...
Making a Life: Working by Hand and
Discovering the Life You Are Meant to Live by
Melanie Falick (Artisan Books) £22.99.
Copyright © 2019. Photographs by Rinne Allen