"All the women in my family knit, I come from a long line of Scottish sheep farmers and that is the fibre that we have been manipulating for centuries."
She began learning to knit as a child, and those skills came in handy later when she was a university student living in cold flats.
"I would knit big chunky socks to keep me warm, and that is when I started to knit my first sweaters and garments."
Knitting was her hobby of choice, something she could do in front of the television or during downtime from work, she said.
A huge variety of items could be knitted, and one of her more inventive creations was knitting a Dalek from the BBC show Dr Who for her brother as a Christmas present.
It proved to be a bit of a challenge — "I will never knit one again because it was complex and annoying".
Knitting could be a form of public art or social protest.
"You get knitting graffiti where people make, kind of, public art around knitting."
Knitted items had appeared on statues, such as the Robert Burns statue in the Octagon.
After the earthquakes in Christchurch wire fences were given a cheerful makeover with knitted items, she said.
The craft had room for different categories.
Some people only knitted toys, some created sculptural three-dimensional objects, and others would only knit socks.
"There’s people who are obsessed with socks, and there are sock knitting competitions that are intense."
Her love of knitting has become her full-time occupation and for the past 15 years she has run an online store selling hand-dyed yarn, needles, beads, buttons, ribbons, patterns and more.
She also runs knitting workshops, and before the Covid-19 pandemic she organised a regular conference called Unwind where local and visiting knitters gathered.
"I view knitting as a way to connect with people and a way to share and tell stories."
For World Wide Knit in Public Day on Saturday, Ms McKenzie is running free workshops on circular knitting at Tūhura Otago Museum.
"I’m going to be teaching a class about how to knit a small circumference using one long circular needle, which is a more modern method of knitting in a particular way.
"It’s kind of a technique that was made quite popular by the internet in the last decade or so."
- Tūhura Otago Museum has a series of free knitting activities from 10am to 5pm on Saturday for World Wide Knit in Public Day.
