Yarn, a tactile balm: meet Knitsanyasini’s Priyamvada who knits natural-dyed fabric

For Priyamvada, knitting handcrafted tea- and marigold-dyed fabric is more than just craft — she says it helps her get through life’s uncertainties

These days, Priyamvada spends most of her time experimenting in the kitchen. Before you ask, it is not the recent lockdown obsessions of baking bread or preparing sourdough starters. Instead, watched over suspiciously by her cats, she brings to boil various concoctions of pomegranate, beetroot, turmeric, tea, and coffee. They are patiently stirred, each taken to a different level, all to create natural, beautiful hues for her sustainable hand-crafted knitwear range, Knitsanyasini.

For the 26-year-old, the brand is a culmination of a journey that began when she was seven. “Growing up, I’ve seen my mother, grandmother and aunt knit. My mother would always experiment with knits, and my first experience with the needle was in third grade when she taught me how to hand-knit a scarf for a school project using the rib knit,” says the Pune-based artiste, who went on to pursue a degree in Knitwear Design from NIFT Chennai in 2013.