Knitting in June? You Betcha!

I used to own a knitting school (actually I was the knitting school) from about 1985 until 1992 or 93. I had a small child, an empty Victorian house next door because my dear father-in-law had died, and an obsession with playing with the BOND knitting frame. I wanted it to stand on its ear and spit nickels . . . or, rather, I wanted to translate all sorts of hand-knitting skills to this simple machine, to test its mettle. And I was smitten with its mechanical clacking. When we took our aptitude tests in high school my highest score was in Mechanical Engineering. I’m a sucker for tinkering with moving parts.

I worked one day a week at my beloved Dinah’s Yarn Shop and wrote articles for the magazines that supported the BOND in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. This led  people to come from as far away as Alaska, Colorado and Arizona to take my funky little workshops on a small island in the Pacific NW. I threw a lot of hand-knitting workshops into the mix. My students were hard-core and I loved the whole experience.

But I hadn’t taught knitting in a very long time until . . . Sweater 101 went out of print after 15 years. When I decided to take over its publication myself (because I researched and found a whole new generation of knitters which surprised me because I hadn’t been paying attention) I landed back in the knitting business.

I didn’t really plan to start teaching again . . . but the local library called and asked if I would talk for a benefit to collect money to expand their knitting and craft collection. So I developed a little one-hour lecture class that teaches a couple of useful skills. We had a silent auction and raised some money and I’ve given that same talk to some guilds and at shops. It turns out that we’ve all enjoyed it. (Click on this link and Charisa, the President of the Snohomish Knitters’ Guild, will talk to you . . . for less than a minute.)

Charisa Martin Cairn

Then I moved to Oakland for 10 weeks, and sublet a place practically next door to Piedmont Yarn and Apparel. If I believed in coincidences, this would be one. New neighborhood, I knew no one but my landlady and the woman down stairs. . . I visited the yarn shop the very next day and was embraced by Bente and her knitting community.

What can I say? If you knit, you can go anywhere and find instant community. Even if you can’t knit and just want to learn, they’ll embrace you. There were tons of coffee shops in the neighborhood and I frequented several of them, but it’s not the same. In coffee shops people are all working on their own computers or reading their own books–parallel play. In the yarn shop, we all knit and chat. But I’m off course, once again (It’s that lateral thinking thing.)

So I taught a class there, and joined the Friday evening knit group, and helped people . . . and they convinced me that I should do some teaching again, so here I am . . . back at it . . . but in a very limited way. I have a few classes in June and July and I invite you to join us if you’re in the neighborhood and so inclined:

Saturday, June 19, I will be at Clever Knits in Vista, CA. I’m doing an afternoon workshop: How to Make Sweaters that Fit You and Your Loved Ones and that evening I’ll be giving my lecture/class, Knitting, S.E.X.*, Chocolate, and a Couple of Math Skills.

July schedule to follow. I’ll be in Michigan then.