About Me
Nathan Lee
Being a disabled, single, transgender parent has all put a hinder on what I wanted my life to be originally, but it hasn’t stopped me from finding things that I love. Over the past 4 and a half years, I went from being homeless, with an infant and becoming disabled quite literally overnight, to going back to school to start the foundation of my dream business. Frankly, if it weren’t for my son (being my biggest cheerleader and down for all of my goofy antics), I would’ve never been in the position to get to where I am now and where I’m striving to be in the future.
I grew up with fiber arts around me - whether it be making leather pouches at 5, learning to hand sewing at 10, loom knitting and attempting to spin my own wool at 11, failing to crochet at 13, or repurposing my old clothes into new tops, dresses, and pillows at 14. It’s safe to say I had a love of making stuff, but I never “fell in-love” with any specific craft. I actually had a lull in my fiber crafts in my late teens and early 20s as more pressing matters like graduation and moving 700 miles away from home was taking my full attention. It wasn’t until I had my son and his first Halloween was coming up that I got back into the hobby.
I really wanted to find a Pennywise costume for my at-the-time 7 month old, and the only place I could find anything like that was on Etsy for well over $100. Being homeless and living in a family shelter at the time, that was completely out of my price range. So nearly defeated, I was about to give in and buy a cheaper, stereotypical costume for him when it suddenly hit me: I can just make it! I went out to my local craft store and bought yarn and a crochet hook, and after about a decade of not crocheting, I retaught myself how to crochet and had the entire costume done within 2 weeks. The costume came out amazing even with all of the mistakes and sizing issues. This little act of costume desperation made me find the second love of my life. Crochet. Since then I have been crocheting non-stop.
It’s been 4 years since that point and I have learned a lot about crochet and all of its tools. One thing that I came to learn pretty quickly was that general craft stores only had basic crochet supplies, and if I wanted something a little more specific or something that was out of stock, I had to buy that product online. Both of these options have put a damper on what projects I want and can work on. It has frustrated me to no end that I can’t buy crochet hooks in different styles and materials in person, or that there’s no place in town to get a vast variety of different colored, fibered, and weighted yarns, or even getting stitch markers locally that aren’t cheap plastic. At the beginning of 2022 I wanted to try cross stitching for the first time and had to order everything online because the materials and tools I needed weren’t available at any craft store locally. I paid about $30 in shipping costs alone for a single project.
Fast forward to March of 2022, I took my son to meet my family in Maryland for the first time as his birthday surprise. I brought some travel crochet supplies with me, but as any yarn hoarder know, the stash you have is never enough. So one day, we had some down time to go explore around my old home town and I found a fiber art store in the next town over. Naturally, I went to the store. When I waked in and looked around, I was hit with the sudden euphoric feeling of “this is home”. Owning a store like that would let me die a happy man.
When I finally got home, I changed course on what class I wanted to take that fall and knew, without a doubt in my mind, that my life would be spent in a fiber art supply store. A store specifically catered to fiber arts. Where you can buy, rent, and make all the supplies you’d need., and have plenty of free resources readily available. Where you could come in with friends and craft away at your own leisure. Where teachers could hold classes and fiber showrooms could be exhibited. My dream is to cater to the fiber art community here in Bloomington and to inspire and hopefully melt the old and outdated stigma surrounding fiber arts. Crocheting isn’t something your late great aunt Suzann used to do 40 years ago. It’s evolved and grown into something much more beautiful and magical than simple blankets and hats (though those are the best non-thinking projects in my opinion). Don’t believe me? Go ask a teenager or young adult about the crochet they’ve seen on TikTok. Fiber hobbies and crafts are coming back into popularity - full fury - and it’s some of the best stuff I’ve seen in the media.
Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t born into wealth, nor will I inherit any lump some of money. So to even approach such a magnificent feat, I will have to start from the bottom. The Mixing Pot will begin by selling unique cup cozies and crochet kits locally, and selling the patterns to the cozies and crochet tutorials and have “troubleshooting issues” for crochet on this website. Every business has to start somewhere, and I truly believe that with the help of the community, my dream will be achieved in just a handful years.