Jeanne

Short bio

My name is Jeanne (pronounced like Gee-Knee). I knit and crochet toys and spend the rest of my time with my spouse and dog, playing video games, baking, and laughing at my own jokes. I’ve lived in Texas, Florida, New York, and now the mountains of North Carolina. Brooklyn still has my heart. You can often find me at comic conventions around the Carolinas. In the past I’ve attended Asheville Comic Expo, Asheville Toy Expo, Fayetteville Comic Con, Florence Comic Con, Geek Out, SC Comic Con, and SpartanCon.

Long bio

I was not naturally crafty. My mom didn’t cook or sew or knit or scrapbook or anything that you’d find at Joann Fabrics. I don’t think that I realized brownies could be made without buying the Duncan Hines box until I was a teenager. However, somewhere deep down I did feel vaguely creative though and it came out in awful teenage poetry and then pretty decent photography.

Eventually, I was a soulless drone working for the man and living in Brooklyn and feeling vaguely unsure of what I was doing with my life like every 20-something feels. Somewhere during that time, my mother-in-law came to visit and decided to teach me how to knit. I started a burgundy scarf that day and I didn’t finish it for about two years. I was not a natural talent. I made some truly hideous sweat bands after that and discovered that no matter what yarn I bought from a store or how beautiful I thought that it looked while I was there, it was always pea green when I got home.

Then one day I made a toy. I made a knitted penguin and my spouse looked at me, shocked, because it was adorable and that was a pretty big surprise to both of us. After that, I wanted to make more and more toys but I found knitting to be an awkward and finicky medium so I found that YouTube was full of more than just cute kittens and learned to crochet. I found the amazing book Creepy Cute Crochet by Cristen Haden and realized that toys could be weird and geeky. I started the slow march to inspiration.

Now, I’m in my 30’s, living on a tiny but beautiful little piece of the planet where I sometimes can hear cows from my living room, and I am embracing my love of toymaking. I hope that you love the geeky and strange and adorably offbeat toys that I make as much as I love making them.