Author: Tommy Schafer

Hi my name is Tommy and I’m a Midwesterner through and through. I was raised in a small town of about 2000 people called Petersburg. Perhaps luckily, this town had a state park nearby, an historic village where Abraham Lincoln spent his teen years. Between the knitting and crocheting knowledge of my grandmothers and the influence of spinning and fiber milling this historic village had on me, I became a bit obsessed with the fiber arts. I studied Quantitative Biology, Ecology, and Art History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio before getting my Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology from The University of Illinois at Chicago. I have been living in Chicago since August 2014 and have no plans to leave. I currently work my day job as the Manager of Data and Evaluation at Howard Brown Health, primarily working on projects and research aimed at serving the Transgender, Non-binary, and LGBQ+ communities and bridging gaps in disparity seen in health access for these communities. I have been knitting since I was 10, spinning since I was 12 and self-published my first knitting pattern in 2018. My goals in the fiber arts are usually based around color-play, long processes, and mid century and prairie style aesthetic.