Melanie Asato

My name is Melanie and I’m a full-time indie yarn dyer and owner of my shop, Big Little Yarn Co.! I love to work with all things fiber/fabric – from knitting, sewing, spinning, weaving, and dyeing, I love it all! I’m very much into very simple makes, and I love to hand sew the most since I love the slowness and deliberate/repetitive movements it gives me. I recently relocated to my home in Hyogo, Japan and had to leave my sewing machine behind, but that just means more time for knitting and hand sewing!

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

I love listening to music while I’m doing creative work – sewing especially because I find that it really gets me “into the zone”. Time flies, but in a wonderful way when I really get into my sewing project with some good music! Also, I find that a lot of the feelings that I try to convey within my work is taken from the music I listen to. When it comes to my full-time job as a yarn dyer, many of the colorways I create is inspired by my Japanese heritage. Since I’m bilingual, I listen to both Japanese and English-speaking music, and I find that immersing myself in both music cultures really “subliminally” inspires me in a way. I never thought that music would affect me this much in my line of work, but I find oftentimes that the songs I listen to kind of “leak out” into the colorways I create, or the collections I make.

Tell us about your playlist:

This playlist has a good mix of my current Japanese/English faves – they’re tracks that I always find myself going back to in the middle of work, when I’m just chilling out and knitting/sewing, or just dancing around in my kitchen! Even if you don’t speak Japanese and can’t understand the lyrics, I think and hope that these beats and melodies are enough to move your heart even just a little bit!