meet your knitting instructor
Jessica kaufman, m.a. craft education
I founded HappyGoCrafty while living in Brooklyn in 2013. During that time I was traveling all over NYC and New England teaching knitting (as well as other fiber arts & textiles workshops) in schools, at craft centers, and to private clients.
This website was reborn and redesigned in 2023, a full decade later. We can grow and evolve; it is never too late to reimagine what we’ve already created.
My interest in handknitting is rooted in helping new knitters to feel empowered understanding how to create their own patterns, freeing them from the page. My philosophy is that we are all intelligent enough to create, without adhering strictly to written instructions, and that once we understand how our gauge works and how our bodies are shaped, we can create whatever we can envision.
Knitting that really grabs me is stranded colorwork, top-down pullover sweaters, texture/pattern created with purl bumps, and working with locally and ethically sourced wool.
about the photos on this page
I believe in giving craft artists credit whenever possible. I’m wearing a batik dress sewn from fabric made by Anwar Baat (Gujarat, India), with whom I studied in 2018 at his home studio. I knit my seed-stitch shawl in alpaca sport weight from a local fiber producer (but I’ve forgotten which). Asheville photographer Eliza Bell Photography made these portraits for my 40th birthday, in the Pisgah National Forest close to where we live. The rocks are older than dinosaurs.
Artist Statement
Humanity's basic needs of wearing clothing and using containers (all of which were built and made from natural materials up until very recently) connect my innate desires to sew, knit, felt, stitch, and weave with the desires of my ancestors from across disparate lands. The interdependent web of which I am a part, woven from the cultures of my predecessors, gives me an immense sense of connection and rightness in my fiber and textiles practice. I make because I am human.
Knowing that both my Eastern European Jewish side and my Welsh/Dutch anglo side spent their lives in clothing made from fibers practically identical to the ones I create and manipulate every day; that the patterns I stitch on my belongings were likely quite similar to ones that my ancient relatives, long since passed but carrying my DNA, saw with their own eyes around their villages; that when I pull vines, strip bark and weave simple baskets to carry my modern belongings around... I am connected directly to the hands of elders I never met, somewhere back in my family tree, whose lives I can't imagine and whose names I'll never know, may have made baskets just like I'm doing now, who knew how to process wool as I do, and who, like me, treasured the making and mending of garments as an expression of love and belonging.
My inherent urge to create and manipulate the fabrics of our lives, and the comfort of knowing that the function and form of my craft is ancient and universal, are what make me an artist.
As a fabric and fiber artist, I'm inspired by how the materials of the natural world have been found, grown, processed, and worn throughout time. I want to be making art, and my life, out of materials that reach back and maintain a taproot to the human skills and practices that are constantly at risk of being forgotten. To sew, dye, knit, felt, spin, and weave, uniting ancient and current.
The earth will take itself back once we are gone, and all our synthetic materials will eventually be covered over by the real survivors: the flora & fauna that were here before us. By deepening my practice to weaving baskets out of the plants I grow or forage; by shearing dear woolen animals and sending them to skip away fresh and light while I begin the essential practice of washing, carding, and spinning their fleece; by cutting and sewing cotton and linen fabrics into garments that both look good and function well day after day, year after year, in colors I've dyed myself; these are the ways I keep hold of a lifeline that connects humanity to itself.