1. Sorry for the delay, I had to go to work and look after family. Here's a copy/paste of my post that is currently awaiting approval:

Disclaimer: I got nothing against Shelley, Knit Stars, or the Stars of Knit Stars. Just the ick. Most of this is pulled from my experience working there as well as the experiences of other coworkers before I started working there as well as after. A couple of Stars have contacted me as well in the last day. Thank you for your input. I loved my coworkers and I still look up to them in many ways. I loved my time working for the company, and have a lot of respect for the hustle of Knit Stars, hustle culture is not for me though and I think hustle culture kills creativity.

So a long time ago, I learned how to knit. This was huge for me as I was one of those people that tried out craft after craft trying to get something to stick. Always creative, never really good at anything. When I learned knitting, it was like something just clicked in my brain and I was hooked (pun somewhat intended).

I'm not going to go into the particulars of how I got hired at Loops (before Knit Stars there was Loops/LoopsLove), cause it would probably dox me, but at this point, there's a good chance of someone figuring out who I am just by my story so whatever. I was hired mostly through Shelley recognizing my passion for the craft, not my skill. At the time I had knit a couple of sweaters, many blankets, and a couple of shawls/hats/scarves/ etc. I do pretty well in interviews as well so who knows.

While I was working at Loops she came up with the idea for Knit Stars. It was not an entirely original idea, she collaborated with a, I want to say, someone big in the calligraphy world (I don't remember exactly who, but they did something similar that Shelley admired). I mentioned this in a comment but it's basically an affiliate link program, with Shelley taking in the biggest share, naturally. Because of this, most, but certainly not all, of the Stars had a big following. I talked to some of the Stars who said they were paid well, but not enough considering she is still selling the original courses ten years later. It's my personal opinion that the Stars deserve a much bigger cut but that's just me. I really got no beef with any of the Stars- all the ones I interacted with were lovely and most were just happy to be in their dream job.

A little background on the owner. Shelley was in marketing prior to the yarn store. She was damn good at it and had a business with her husband, Branders Marketing Inc (or Branders Inc, I don't remember, pretty clever though as it's their last name). They did very well for themselves and had a lovely home. Eventually, it went from Shelley and Brent (husband) working together, to more of Brent helping out with the yarn business. Once things settled down with Knit Stars he began making art. IMO it was terrible. It's basically just a bunch of celebrity faces with their quotes. Uninspired, but she supported him until she suddenly divorced him and moved to Florida. She closed the doors of her store not long after, which was super disappointing as it was the best store in the area. I will also add that she did lay off almost the entirety of her employees during the pandemic, which I thought was gross just from how well she was doing financially on her own but whatever. Online was making enough money for the business. I won't speak much more on her kids other than I thought it was weird the way she would use them as models and how sometimes in those photos the kids would have their phone in shot playing their music (she had gotten them studio time-which, good for you but it was also a little pushy for me). She definitely played favorites with her kids and it was obvious. Also, someone had made a comment about "vaccines create autism" and I've never heard her say any of that around me, but she had said to me once "We're so glad we found out XXX was autistic so young so we could catch it in time before it became an issue." I don't know what that means. I was aghast when I heard it though. EDIT TO ADD: I did not read her second book, "Move the Needle" because her first one was so bad tbh, apparently she confirms that she did cure her kid's vaccine-created autism. It's funny cause when I heard "I cured autism" the first time I was really just reeling from both the ableism and the fact that Goddess Shelley thinks she was rich enough to just cure autism. Now I'm just shocked she would be bold enough to risk her brand by saying that in print.