Toft's Morag, the Highland Coo
2018 was a year of political turbulence and uncertainty which made the vibrancy of the knitting community I encountered even more necessary and uplifting!
1) 1) I attended Vogue Knitting Live New York with my best knitting gal pal, Stephanie, who owns the luxe yarn store, Uncommon Threads. We had a marvelous time seeing all the sights and discovering new yarns. We even snuck over to Laduree’s New York outpost for a pastry! We also appeared in Rowan's fashion show and Stephanie won second prize!!
2) 2) Meeting up with all my British girlfriends from Ravelry face-to-face in London was awesome. Everyone was even warmer and more interesting in person and that was really a real high point for me.
That experience just reinforced the importance of making connections in the knitting community. Somehow, every time someone walked into the restaurant to join us, I recognized her right away and the kinship between us was deeper than I expected. For all the complaints people make about social media, I am grateful to be able to know wonderful people thousands of miles away who value the same experiences and share my deep love of knitting and yarn.
3) My mother-in-law, Maxi, and I had a fantastic time at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival and got to meet our designer crush, Marie Wallin, in person. She even helped us each choose a sweater to knit from her design collection! It is on my list of cast-ons this year, for sure!
4) Vogue Knitting Live in San Francisco allowed me to meet the artist, Ambah O’Brian and attend her presentation on “Shawl Love” in which she described her sources of inspiration. Nancy Marchant’s fabulous Brioche Class also helped me internalize that fascinating technique and allowed me to knit my own Briochealuscious shawl afterwards.
Stephanie and I roomed together there, and I had several wonderful dinners with knitters, local and from afar, cementing my deep appreciation of the creativity and kindness of the knitting community world wide!
Stephanie and Stacy Charles, distributor of String Yarns
5) In October, I met up with my husband's German cousin, Nessi, in Paris. Nessi is a professional cabaret singer:
She decided to take up knitting again after seeing me knitting at her parents house in Germany two years ago, and we have been corresponding ever since. So far, we have met up three different times and in three different locations (Paris, London, Denver) to knit together!!! I took Nessi to the Knit Night at L'Oisivethé and we stayed until closing time, but we knit all over Paris as well!
6) This year, I began to integrate knitting teaching into my tutoring work with children and discover its enormous potential to increase focus, confidence, and well-being for elementary to high school students, boys and girls. I knitted with some students face to face, and others via FaceTime.
The surprise discovery was that after my boy students fell in love with making pom poms, it spread to their fathers as well, and soon everyone was making pom poms together!
7) After my head injury, I continued knitting the simple stockinette section of Norbu with my eyes closed, and found myself in awe of the healing power of knitting. As my injury progressed, and my vision cleared, I was able to finish the cardigan. Next, I positively visualized my head healing by knitting a Peerie Flooers hat to cover it. I also reflected on Kate Davie's speech in Edinburgh about how her knitting helped her recover from her stroke, and was inspired by her example. Her book, Handywoman, explains this experience in great detail, and she gives a Ted talk about her experience here:
The kindness and support of my weekly knitting group at my local LYS, Uncommon Threads, helped me enormously in recovering from the injury. It is now the nine month mark and my symptoms are pretty much gone, which is a huge thing to celebrate, going into the New Year.
8) This year, I published three knitting articles in Knitability Magazine. The topics were the "100-Day Challenge of wearing my Handknits", "Knitting and Slow Fashion," and "Prison Knitting Programs". My fourth article, on Finding your Local Fibershed, will be coming out in the January issue of this subscriber-only magazine which is produced by The Bakery Bears.
What are your knitting highlights from 2018? I’d love to hear them! And I hope you enjoy a wonderful New Year!!!!