Adella Colvin facts for kids
Adella Colvin is an American yarn dyer.
Career
Colvin first began knitting at 34, at the suggestion of an older neighbor after her husband was deployed to Afghanistan and Colvin wanted to find a hobby. The two visited a yarn shop together, and Colvin was impressed with the quality of the yarn. When Colvin, who is Black, entered a yarn shop for the first time without her neighbor, who is white, the white owner of the shop met her at the door and told her the restroom was only for customers. Colvin left and decided to shop online and soon became interested in dyeing her own yarn.
When other knitters became interested in her hand-dyes, she opened an Etsy shop in 2015, electing not to use her photo in the shop's profile due to concerns about perceptions in the majority white knitting community that products by Black artisans were inferior. Her daughter, nicknamed LolaBean, was born in 2016, and Colvin, "thinking about the legacy she was building," decided to rebrand, naming her business after her daughter and having a logo professionally designed featuring an image of the baby, who is portrayed as clearly Black. In 2017 Colvin was featured by knitting influencer Gaye Glasspie, which brought Colvin to the attention of yarn shop owners and knitters nationwide. In 2019 Glasspie, who is known as GG, introduced Colvin to Felicia Eve, one of the few Black yarn shop owners in the US, and Eve gave Colvin a trunk show, which sold out.
Colvin has collaborated with Stephen West, a pattern designer who created a pattern for a custom colorway of LolaBean's.
During the George Floyd protests, when there were images of white protesters standing between police and Black protesters, GG started a hashtag, #StandintheGap, that encouraged white people to "offer that kind of protection in everyday life," and Colvin's wholesale accounts went from 1 to 30 with a waiting list as of October 2020 of more than 70.
As of October 2020 Colvin's yarns were carried by yarn shops throughout the US.
Personal life
Colvin is African-American and Puerto Rican. She is originally from New York City. She is married and lives in Grovetown, Georgia with her husband, an Army veteran that works in the cybersecurity industry. She has a daughter born in 2016 and two stepchildren.
