About

I am Mandyz. The zed is silent. People pronounce it anyways.

I say zed because I am Canadian. A Prairie-Girl in the ‘Peg to be more exact.

I am a knitter. I knit wonderful, beautiful, inspiring things. I enjoy showcasing indie-dyers and my own hand-spun yarns.

I am a designer; a part-time, casual, no pressure to meet deadlines, sharing my love of knits with others when inspired designer. I particularly love lace and designing for hand-spun yarn.

I am a spinner. From raw fleeces to the finest hand-dyed rovings, I love it all.

I am a fibre-enthusiast-instructor. I share my skills in diverse ways. I particularly enjoy offering short skills workshops to inspire my fellow fibre-enthusiasts to try new things and to give them an opportunity to ask questions in person. Longer and extended workshops are great too. I’ve taught everything from the basics of knitting and spinning to particular skills such as advanced lace, brioche, colourwork without the stranding, etc.

I am a tech editor. I apply my decades of experience working with a wide range of patterns and (even more) decades of editing writing and being a perfectionist with a keen eye for mistakes and inconsistencies. I am the tech editor (and pattern tester) who catches all the mistakes your other tech editor missed within minutes of looking at your design.

There is more.

Aside from my fibre-fun –

I am a family-person. Married with 3 amazing daughters. The youngest pair are monozygotic (“identical”) twins.

I am an animal-foster-fail. I’ve volunteered with foster networks in the past. I adopt more than I foster (foster-fail). We currently have one dog and a pair of cats.

I am musical. I sing in a local choir and play harp (occasionally). There is also a lovely keyboard, wonderful guitar, ukelele, several recorders, tin whistles, hand drums, and so forth in the house.

I am a dancer. I gave up the usual dance classes (tap, jazz, ballet, musical theatre) many years ago. Now I dance with the Scandia Fun Folk Dancers and perform at Folklorama.

I am a performer. I was going to hide it above, but I do also have a background in theatre. Most recently I have been directing a group of young performers at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre.

I am a volunteer of (too) many boards of directors. You know how it is when you want to help an organization you are passionate about…

I am employed as contract teaching staff at a couple of universities. I teach about religions from a sociological perspective. This is the source of my editing experience before knitting; just a “few” years in grad school.

I am a “geek” who loves fantasy/sci-fi.

I love board games (and card games). I am thrilled that my youngest pair love to play games with me too and that they embrace challenging games.