Knitting is not supposed to be a dangerous hobby, but it led one Dunedin woman into a rather woolly situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Knitting is in Jan Aitken\u2019s blood. As a child living on a South Otago sheep farm, she grew up watching her mother and grandmother spin wool and turn it into beautiful handcrafted knits. As an adult living in \u014ctepoti Dunedin, Aitken\u2019s love of knitting led her to create a local community of like-minded craftspeople, who gathered at her home to learn new skills and make new friends. Together, they created hundreds of knits for local charities, and when Aitken taught knitting classes in her garden studio, she started selling the knitters a few skeins of wool so they could all work on the same project together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Crofters Yarn was Aitken\u2019s life \u2013 until she got a phone call that changed everything. Her knitting had broken the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aitken (left) hosts a community knit in her garden studio (Photo: Jan Aitken \/ Crofters Yarn Facebook)<\/p>\n
Aitken had just turned 50 when she was made redundant from her office manager job during the Covid-19 pandemic. \u201cI thought, now what?\u201d she says. She\u2019d always considered creating a knitting group to bring people together in a meaningful way and, without a nine-to-five job to fill her days, she started up a small local wool swap. To her surprise, the knitters who arrived at her door weren\u2019t people she knew \u2013 they were strangers, wanting to connect with other like-minded people in a post-pandemic world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That first stash of rehomed wool disappeared in a week, proving to Aitken that the people of Dunedin wanted to knit. She decided to open the doors to her garden studio in the suburb of Wakari, offering somewhere for knitters to gather together, and Crofters Yarn was born. One of those early attendees was Rowena, who arrived at Aitken\u2019s studio one day in search of knitting advice and received so much support that she kept coming back. Rowena points to the cardigan she\u2019s wearing, a complicated knit covered in colourful flowers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would never have done this at home by myself, but when you\u2019re with a community that can help you and support you, it makes a huge difference.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Crofters Yarn community grew and grew. Aitken worked at a part-time job in the mornings and started hosting small learn-to-knit classes in her studio in the afternoons and evenings. Other knitters would regularly drop off items to be donated to Queen Mary Maternity Centre, the Dunedin Bedding Bank and local kindergartens. There were larger group outings to pubs and cafes, and in March this year, nearly 200 knitters climbed aboard a train and knitted their way to \u014camaru and back. It was the second annual Crofters Yarn train trip, and the sounds of laughter and the clack of knitting needles through the carriages was the culmination of everything Aitken had dreamed of.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it all changed in April, when Aitken received an alarming phone call from Dunedin City Council. \u201cI was sitting at work, just doing my little job, and I got this phone call telling me I was breaking the law,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI felt sick. I thought, \u2018holy hell\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of the Crofters Yarn charity knits (Photo: Jan Aitken \/ Crofters Yarn Facebook)<\/p>\n
A DCC spokesperson confirmed to The Spinoff that it had received a complaint from a member of the public about Crofters Yarn operating from a residential home. \u201cAn assessment found the operation included a retail activity (the sale of yarn and wool products) and a training and education activity, both of which require resource consent,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aitken was unaware that she had breached the District Plan 2026 (2GP) by teaching knitting classes and selling wool from her home. Although she charged a fee for her classes and sold products to her knitters, she says Crofters Yarn was never intended for profit, and any leftover wool went into charity knits. \u201cWe don\u2019t make money. I don\u2019t take a wage from it. I pour all my extra money into making sure the facility works.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n