POCATELLO — Along Hawthorne Road lies a quaint and comfortable brick house shaded by the verdant eaves of nearby trees and filled with resplendent and vibrant collections of yarn.

This idyllic homestead is the site of Witch Fire Fibers, a luxury yarn and fiber company that is spinning a new narrative surrounding women in small business. The long, stretching backyard is filled with a quaint collection of chickens and several sheep, who bleat comfortably in the warm rays of the sun.

But it’s what resides within the home that is shaping the local yarn industry.

“I think yarn has always been a part of my life,” said Jessica Ransom, the creator and owner of Witch Fire Fibers. “I've been knitting for a very long time. Back in 2018, my dad went into the hospital and I needed something to do with my hands. I ordered myself a little bit of fiber to learn how to spin it into yarn on a drop spindle. From there it was a deep dive into everything fiber related. Learning how to clean my own fleeces, how to spin them, how to make yarn, how to dye yarn, how to dye fiber, and just went down the rabbit hole until 2019 when we bought our own little miniature hobby farm and added sheep to the lineup. It just bloomed from there.”

The name Witch Fire Fibers is inspired by Ransom’s ancestors who were in the Salem Witch Trials and her sheep are all named after famous witches and wizards throughout history. The inspiration for starting the company came from Ransom’s desire to get out of the corporate world and to marry some of her hobbies and passions.

Working almost entirely out of her own home, Ransom fulfills orders for patrons across the nation, providing high quality yarn for knitters and fiber for artists who want to spin it into yarn.

“We really love to dye yarn that ends up evoking emotion, whether it is the memory of something and how that feels as color on yarn, or our most recent collection that was based off a book series and the different moments from that book series interpreted into color on yarn,” Ransom said. “We really want to make it something that interests you that's very wearable, but also stands out against its competition — and it truly does. It's beautiful.”

The collections include a wide variety of different colors and tonalities from rich lavenders, cerulean and jade weaved mixtures, fiery crimson and ember-etched skeins and countless other combinations and pigments.

On the 15th of every month interested customers and fiber fanatics can join Witch Fire Fibers Oracle Club, which provides colorways inspired by a monthly pull from an oracle tarot deck and comes with a companion card that helps patrons dig deeper into the monthly message.

Ransom distributes mostly through pre-orders on her website, introducing the colors online and then opening it up for pre-ordering typically in 48 hours to a week. Those orders are fulfilled within four to twelve weeks, depending on the collection.

“I would need to have 400-plus sheep in order to really fulfill the orders that I have,” Ransom said. “The sheep that I have currently are just for me being able to introduce people to the joy of hand spinning from a fleece and the sheep that I have are natural colored Merino. They're relatively rare here in the United States. But they are really fun to help people be introduced to the industry itself, which has been kind of waning here in the United States for a long time.”

Ransom continued, “Most of our yarn is imported from either South America, South Africa or from New Zealand and Australia. There's a lot of stuff that I do that is imported. Most of my yarn comes from a mill in Peru, but my sheep and my flock are a huge portion of my Instagram profile. I have people who follow me specifically just to see their sheep, to see their faces and then to also be able to buy some of their fleece as well.”

Ransom begins her process in one of two ways when working on creating the yarn and fibers.

“I either start with my sheep, shearing them, selling some of their fleece, or bringing it to a local mill, who's able to make it into yarn to be sold from there,” Ransom said. “The primary portion of my business is where I buy blanc yarn from my mill in Peru. Then I will dye it here at my studio, show pictures of it as the process is going, dry it, spin it, label it and then send it out to you.”

Witch Fire Fibers also plans on branching out into selling in local markets and there is an upcoming large scale fiber festival in Seattle called Flock that Ransom will be attending to sell her goods and instruct people on how to spin and drop spindles out.

Throughout this entire endeavor of starting and maintaining a new business, there was always a connective piece that kept Ransom going and deepened the relationship between her and those around her — the community.

"That's one thing that has grown through the years,” Ransom said. “It's the connection in the community. The people that I've been able to become friends with, or people who follow me and reach out to chat about things, that's really been the primary thing that keeps me coming back day after day.”

Last year, Ransom attended Flock Fiber Festival and celebrated everything yarn and fiber, connecting to the community in new ways. 

“This last collection that I did was based on the connection that (the community) has to a particular story and moments within a story that really moved us,” Ransom said. “It’s that connection piece. It's the fact that I have friends who I've never met before, who reached out to support me, to support my yarn or to leave a comment on how beautiful it is or how much they connect to the idea that was behind it. That connection piece is what really keeps us going in this industry. I love the fact that yarn can bring you together in so many different ways.”

The other strong bond that Ransom shares is with her sheep and the acting of knitting itself. Ransom will go out to her pasture during the evening, spending dedicated time connecting with two of her sheep, Charlie and Andromeda, cuddling them and sharing in the moment of joy and peace.

“These animals have true individual personalities and getting (the opportunity) to get to the root of it and have this little flock of sheep of mine and really understand that process from raising them, to sharing them, to creating yarn, to then making a sweater out of it — having that kind of connection has been huge,” Ransom said. “One of my favorite things is literally just to go out and sit with them. I love them so much.”

Witch Fire Fibers has big plans coming up in the fall with a collaborative collection coming out in the middle of August between Ransom and a close personal friend, a general large fall pre-order selection and an in-stock update for Christmas. Ransom is hopeful to move into a dual storefront and dye studio in the future and has plans for local options to open up her yarn to the public a few times a week for in person purchases.

“Part of the goal is to really expand Witch Fire Fibers, we've been growing exponentially year over year, which has been incredibly humbling,” Ransom said. “I'm so grateful for it, but I really want to be able to support a group of people to work for me. Making sure that they have a living wage, that they're comfortable with what they're doing. Giving them an opportunity to learn and to grow with the business as well and to really open it up to be able to support a few women here in the community by giving them a job to help us out and help us to continue to expand and grow.”

No matter which way you spin it, the tight-knit yarn and fiber community is essential to the success of the industry. Their stories are intricately weaved together, creating a beautiful tapestry that spans the whole of the globe.

“I just want to express how much I absolutely love the knitting community and the yarn community here in Idaho,” Ransom said. “Please, please, make sure to check out your local yarn store. If you are looking to support local makers, we really want to make sure that the yarn that is being used is something that is natural, made locally and is going to be something that helps keep local businesses in place.”

For more information on Witch Fire Fibers you can visit its website, Witchfirefibers.com or its Instagram, instagram.com/witchfirefiber.