Renita Harvey taught herself to loom knit at age 13 when she received a round knitting loom as a gift from her mother while her grandmother taught her to crochet. Through the years, Renita learned a multitude of different arts and crafts including cross stitch, embroidery, needle felting, and other fiber arts.

She was taught to sew by her mother and made her own clothes throughout high school and college. Renita was very active in the Arkansas 4-H program during her high school and college years. She traveled to multiple state and national competitions, camps, and conferences.

Despite her love of crafting and sewing, Renita’s main 4-H project was Dairy. She owned, raised, and showed registered Saanen dairy goats. This was before 4-H had a dairy goat project. In 1991, she won national record book in the Dairy project. This win lead to the development of the Dairy Goat project on a national level in 1993.

While all her crafting will always be close to her heart, loom knitting is now Renita’s passion along with crocheting. Renita started designing patterns in 2013 after loom knitting became a form of therapy due to chronic illness that has caused her to be disabled making her give up her teaching classes in her other passion, tap and ballet.

Her love of being challenged and solving problems has made her grow in the field of loom knitting beyond anything she ever expected. She enjoys teaching her knowledge to others through local classes, online groups, and online tutorials. But the learning never ends. Renita is constantly pushing herself to learn new techniques in both loom knitting and crocheting.

Her desire is to demonstrate that knitting is not only about using needles and that using looms to knit also give the same finished product with an ease that needles do not provide to the crafter. She also wants to teach that all techniques and stitches that can be created with needles may also be achieved with looms and that knitting with looms is still considered hand knit.

Renita Harvey has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, and now lives with her 2 children in historic Eureka Springs, Arkansas.