Inspiration three years in the making...

Last week I attended a "knitaway" with my mom with the  amazing Cheryl Oberle in Denver, Colorado.  I learned so much, enjoyed myself tremendously, fell off my yarn diet wagon in a hard way, and learned something very important about knitting, myself and creativity.  Simply, you can't knit in a vacuum.

I have realized that over the past few years I have knit less and less.  I still read the magazines, still lurked in knit shops, still marked projects that I wanted to do, but I knit less.  My intense periods of knitting creativity happened when my mother was visiting, and she and I would sit and knit together, drinking tea, nattering about this, that and the other, after 5pm adding wine to the mix and then dropping lots of stitches, but we knit together.

Yes sitting in the living room watching TV at night is a fine place to knit, but when you can't look over at the other person in the room and say, "Damn, I just got through that lace row, I need a break!", or "ARGH I have to rip this out!", or "Do you think anyone will notice that I did a ssk decrease and not a k2tog???"  Partners are all well and good, and some of them are wonderfully supportive, like my own who understands when I respond "62"  to a mundane question like "where did you put the muffin tin?", that I am counting and not to be disturbed.  Another knitter knows...  we speak our own language, and its not just a language of stitches, we have a community that speaks fiber, stitches, patterns, ideas and above all a shared history (and there is so much to be written about the history of knitting!!!)

I can't come up with enough superlatives for Cheryl.  She is funny, creative, grounded, talented, patient, honest, a master knitter, a true craftsperson, and quite possibly one of the most self actualized people I have ever met.  It is a rare person who can invite eight very different women into their studio and make us all feel like we belong!  Then again I think it might be the magic, the alchemy of our shared love of those two humble little ways of making string hang together "knit" and "purl".

And I learned this week.  I learned more in five days at her studio than I have been able to teach myself.  I am largely a self taught knitter.  Mom did teach me to knit when I was in about fourth grade, and there were the inevitable piles of knotted yarn that she patiently dealt with as I grew up.  She reminded me of the bikini that I  knit in junior high - yup, knitted bikini in about 1980.  The yarn was ugly and so was the result.  And of course as fiber began to get better and knitting entered the mainstream this century (!!!!) I started to knit.  I am an intrepid knitter.  If I didn't understand what I was knitting I made it up.  I didn't know about knitting help at yarn stores, or Stitches, or even really about Knit-aways, although my mother has been participating in them for years.  I learned how to read a chart!!!!!!  Seriously!  I've knit some really nice lace (don't look at it too closely), but I wrote out all the rows on index cards, put them on a ring and tried to remember to turn the card at the end of each row!  I learned some fantastic cast ons for knitting center out, one that only requires three needles, so you aren't knitting with a porcupine!

To bring it back to the 'inspiration' part, I learned that knitting with fellow knitters is the most engaging and fulfilling way to knit.  Several of the women knit with guilds, the rest of them knit with charity organizations.  I am not going to sit on my hill and knit alone anymore!  I am going to knit with my fellow knitters.  Now I just need to find them!

Here are a couple of things that have me really on fire right now:

Cheryl Oberle's Center Panel Shawl

Which was the project we all started at the Knitaway...

I will knit it in a gorgeous natural Alpaca that Cheryl carries at her studio (in addition to the yarns she dyes herself!)  Here is my progress so far, center lace panel knit, stitches picked up around the edges...

I plan to knit Cusco from her book Knitted Jackets: 20 Designs from Classic to Contemporary

In this lively grass green from Cheryl's Dancing color line.

There is so much more that I want to add.  But I think at this juncture it is enough.  I'm on a mission, find knitters!  Finish projects.

Next: the perfect knitting chair, and the best label for your hand crafted projects.

It feels good to be back!  Now just have to learn blogger again, reconnect with knitters and...