Kimber Baldwin

Kimber Baldwin is the owner of and ‘head chef’ dyer at Fiber Optic Yarns.  She has been fascinated by chemistry for as long as she has been obsessed with the fiber arts, learning to knit the same year she declared chemistry as her undergraduate major 35 years ago.  She later obtained a PhD in chemistry from the University of Michigan and branched out in the fiber arts, learning spinning, weaving, and dyeing.  In 2005 she decided to combine her love of science with her passion for the fiber arts and left a job as a research scientist to set up a dye studio in the furnace room of her basement.  The first 3 years were spent optimizing the reaction conditions and exploring the limits of fiber-dye binding possibilities, the results of which are the intensely vibrant colorways for which Fiber Optic Yarns is well-known.  The first skeins of yarn were sold through an Etsy store in 2008, followed by a website in 2011, and a brick & mortar store in 2014.  Fiber Optic Yarns has been a vendor at Maryland Sheep & Wool since 2011.  Kimber will dye up anything that stands still long enough!