Meet Margaret Rye

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Margaret Rye. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Margaret with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

My earliest memories are of my brothers my parents dogs and heavy equipment, motorcycles, engines and transmissions in various stages of movement, repair and disrepair. My life was surrounded by activity busy people working and living life. My mother made our food from sctatch and sewed our clothes, pants, shirts, dresses. She also went to college full time in Anchorage. Our home was 54 miles north of Anchorage at this time so my parents enrolled my younger brothers and I in school in Anchorage. We commuted as a family, my mother to University of Alaska, my father to ATU to work in the switch room and my two younger brothers and I in a diesel Volkswagen rabbit. Not comfortable. We ate one to two meals a day in the car. My mom allowed my brothers and I to take turns on fridays going to UA with her to go to art class and then go swimming. We would have to wait for my dad to finish work and often played outside the telephone exchange while we waited. Our home was filled with extended family and fast cars my uncles were working on in perpetuity. My grandfather had a backhoe half the size of our house in the front yarn along with mining equipment and an assaying and refining lab in our garage. My brothers and I would wander ourthe neighborhood on foot or on bikes. It was about a five mile area that we had full run of without any supervision. My mother would ring a huge brass bell when we were wanted home for dinner or chores.
Looking back on my early childhood and elementary school years it was really a very dificult time for my parents. SO many changes to my dads work and business was stressfull. We lived on rice and beans and tvp – textured vegetable protein for a few years while my dad was heavily invested in placer mining during the summers. My parents didnt burden my brothers and I with what was happening financially. We did learn to do whatever came next. There was no stopping and stewing about all the wrong that could happen. There was of course plenty of talking as my dad his dad and his brothers worked ideas through to solve whatever problem occured. There was not an attitude of defeat but one of “what do we do now?”.
There have been many times while I have been working with knitting machines and have had something break. One time in particular I took the machine apart. I have no idea how this thing works but I felt compelled to figure out what was wrong. What I saw was a coil of metal under pressure with a spring and a broken piece next to them. Naturally I took a rubber band and wedged a hard piece of plastic in a strategic way to make the whole thing work again. No idea how or why but it worked.
When I started training my children to help me with the knitting machines, weaving, dying, I found that one child would come to me right away to fix whatever the problem was when they were stuck and the other would try to solve the problem on their own and continue with working. The first child would need detailed instructions and encouragement while the second one could see what I was explaining and intuitively create solutions while needing very little encouragement from me. They both completed their assigned jobs adequately. For one child stopping and asking was always at the forefront of their mind while the other child was focused on finishing the job. Both now have great attention to detail and strong work ethics.
Over and over throughout my life both of my parents have had seemingly insurmountable obstacles to their preferred goals and they kept working with the end goal in focus instead of focusing on the problem and getting mired in hopelessness. Failure is not an end its a learning experience that can drive us to success.
I have a job that I enjoy and there is no end to the creativity. Weaving, knitting, dying, spinning, all have so may options to choose from as far as fibers, colors, tools! I love machines and tools. I run a business that has no certain supply of materials for what I create. For thirty years I haven’t known whether I have a business three to six months down the road. Its stressful but that is not my focus. My focus is to create items that are worthy of the material used to create them. One of a kind pieces that are beautiful as well as functional and will last long enough to enjoy. What I teach my knitters and weavers to create are heirloom quality items reflecting a work ethic taught to me by my family.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My business Qiveut Desings makes wearable accessories from the wool of the Musk Ox. Our primary source of fiber is from wild musk ox along the western coastline of Alaska. Hides are combed out after subsistence hunting resulting in about 3-6 pounds of fiber per hide. This yield depends greatly on the gender of the musk ox as bulls tend to yield more pounds. After processing raw fiber into yarn we are left with 30%-60% of the original weight. So ten pounds of fiber only yeilds 3 to 6 pound of yarn. In a typical year we purchase raw fiber and have it made into yarn the same year. Sometimes it can take two to three years depending on processing time and quality. Qiviut the underwool of the musk ox is very difficult to process into yarn without ruining it completely. When that happens the local mill will reimburse our loss fairly and run another batch for me. Other mills do not offer any compensation for ruined qiviut. Having a local mill in Alaska makes business more efficient. It can take 4 months to two years to have qiviut made into yarn. We are totally at the mercy of the fiber mills. A couple of years ago the mill we use most of the time had a catastrophic equipment failure and an employee was injured in another instance causing the turnaround time for our order to be delayed by a few months. Because our musk ox wool is so rare and unique in the fiber world it is always in demand.
Our fiber comes primarily from Alaska with some yarns purchased from Canada and Greenland. All items are made in southcentral Alaska in the Palmer area and Talkeetna. Almost every item is dyed by me and made by someone I taught. Except socks, gloves, mittens – those are made and designed by my friends Stephanie Bass, Jan Pelrine and Steph’s daughter Cait. I have no talent in that area!
Lace knitted items are the backbone of Qiveut Designs. The lace knitted circular scarves that are worn around the neck and pulled up like a hood called smoke rings and our lace knitted long scarves are knit by our very talented Brandy. I taught her how to use the knitting machines quite a while back and am so grateful for her excellent talent.
Weaving has been on the back burner for a few years. I have been focused mostly on selling hand dyed yarns and finished knitted items like lace scarves and hats. This spring I blocked out a month to work on setting up looms for weaving and starting large shawls in the hope of having something complete for the Vintage Market show on Mother’s day weekend at the Alaska State Fairgrounds. April has been amazing for weaving! The looms were fully functional no needed repairs or major problems. We have a Schacht Spindle baby Wolf with an AVL dobby box and larger 16 shaft Macomber floor loom.
I taught one of my knitters to weave a couple of weeks ago and she picked it up so fast! Her attention to detail is what makes her work stunning. I used to make everything myself and have been taking the last few years to teach some younger ladies how to make items that I can sell. Right now, one huck lace shawl and a broken twill shawl will be for sale on time for Mother’s day shoppers.
We sell retail year-round locally and online. I do not have a store front and dont advertise actively. Much of my income is from wholesale yarn sales to gift shops and galleries around the State of Alaska. The last few runs of yarn have not been up to my standard of “yarn shop qualty”. Because of that I have not sold any yarns wholesale this year and have focused instead on retail sales. I am expecting a new run of yarn in June so there may yet be yarn to wholesale later this summer.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Attention to detail and quality of materials is our mainstay. A sense of style is key because we work with exceptionally expensive materials and have to turn them into something beautiful and functional that will be heirloom quality.
Find a good teacher. Create what you like and do it well. Learn your craft and be exceptional. Walk away and try something new and then go back to what you thought you loved and look at it with a renewed spirit.
I never knit a stitch or sat at a loom until I was 19 years old. It amazed me how much possible creativity there is in a few simple processes. The only formal training I had was in my thirties when I took a weaving class at the local community college while I was pregnant with my son. I had already been weaving for almost 15 years.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

My health has not been great the last five years and has been getting progressively worse. Not surprising at my age and who knew that knitting would totally ruin the nerves in both by arms?? Really what I do is incredibly boring to most people and yet starting a project and finishing it is immensely satisfying. I have been teaching others what I do passing on that knowledge. That has been hard too. In an emotional way I was not expecting. Some days I want to just take my arms off and set them aside and be free of the pain that never really fully goes away. Early last year I had a definitive diagnosis for most of my symptoms. That was quite a relief for a while until the side effects of the medications started. Those I’m getting used to and have strategies to deal with now, but it took time that seems more precious now that I don’t want to spend on medication management. I have other priorities like being a grandma and getting my last kiddo through high school. Having lunch with my mom and playing ball with my dad’s dog and teaching my ridiculous poodle dog how to play frisbee. My husband has been encouraging to me and we are making plans for the future. We have been going to the range and trying out different firearms to find a good light weight fit for me to be able to enjoy shooting again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.qiveut.com
• Other: Etsy shop Qiveut Designs

Image Credits

Margaret Rye, Matanuska Valley Fiber Festival July 2025