Sarah Luse is inside her garage in Tahoe City, home to a design studio and makeshift shipping headquarters for her business, Fast and Luse Fiber Arts, which sells knit hats and knitting supplies locally and online. Boxes are stacked high with bundles of yarn and sheets of fabric; elsewhere sit three sewing machines, a 10-foot-long fabric-cutting table, and a yarn swift that turns messy yarn into tidy cakes.
“I say I work in fiber arts, and people immediately change the subject,” Luse says. “So sometimes it’s clearer if I just say: ‘I knit hats.’”
Luse is the kind of person who’s always knitting. A ball of yarn and a set of needles live permanently in her bag. “I don’t like to be bored or have my hands sit idle,” she says. “If I’m on an airplane, or in a waiting room, or watching TV, I’m knitting. Knitting is relaxing for me.”
The first thing you need to know about a Fast and Luse hat is that it costs $75 to $80. Yeah, that’s a lot for a hat. But the second thing you need to know is that it’s made from the finest merino wool yarn you can find and it’s hand-knit with care by Luse herself, a Tahoe resident who’s been knitting since she was a kid. She launched her own knitting business back in 2011.