About Karen
When did you start working at LBY ?
I was hired as Creative Director in October of 2005
What do you do?
I work closely with a wonderful team–the design department–on all of our projects and initiatives, and represent the department to the wider company. I collaborate with Liz to develop new yarns. We do a lot of things, but one thing we especially like is to go to the yarn fairs together to look at all the new fibers and trends in yarn. It’s fun talking things over with Liz as she is funny, personable and smart. I contribute the color work to the yarns we develop. I work closely with Nadira and Jackie to keep our garment assigning and voluminous pattern support on track. Mostly I help them with moral support and enthusiasm as their technical expertise and saavy far outreaches my own ability! I work with Mandy on the graphics we need - labels, signage, brochures, sales sheets, ads. Mandy is amazingly fast and talented. We see eye to eye on just about everything. I work with Elissa on our department organization–everything from helping locate garments needed by our sales teaam and customers for shows to going over spreadsheets. Elissa is the newest member of our department, but has already proven she’s got a great sense of humor and is a wonder at organization and detail. Elissa, Mandy and I pull together the photoshoots - which are involved and detailed projects that requie a lot of scheduling and organization. I do the creative direction for our photography, which is the look of Lion Brand. Beyond that I go to a lot of meetings! We all want what we do at Lion Brand to represent the best of our collective gifts. It means a lot to us that we continue to evolve our look and to reflect where design, fashion and craft are going for our customers.
What kind of yarn-crafter are you?
I learned to knit when I was 6 and I am from a family of fiber lovers. I taught myself to crochet when I was a teenager. I pretty much love anything yarn can do - knit, crochet, embroideriy, weaving. I’m interested in using our yarn in more woven projects with small looms.. My favorite part of my job is working with artists and seeing what boundlessly creative ways yarn can inspire.
What do you do when you’re not at Lion Brand?
I love reading about design trends - home design, architecture, graphics. I garden and read cook books the way others read novels. Best of all, I hang out with my family. All that reading makes for some good dinners.
