Tilt-a-whirl: From There to Here

I began knitting at the age of eleven, when I had the money to walk into the yarn store on Lakeshore Avenue, in Oakland, California and purchase a squeaky, clear bag of possibilities. I had been working with embroidery floss and any piece of cloth that I could successfully stab with a needle for most of my childhood and this knitting kit that I bought, caught my attention because it was pink mohair with big crewel style embroidered flowers on it. Ah, more fabric to stab but this time I was going to have to figure out how to make that fabric before I could lay those petal shapes over the top of it. This was the beginning of another fiber obsession and I dutifully sat with the plump grandmotherly figure better (known as the knitting teacher) for a few Saturdays, while she helped me through the learning process of turning that fuzzy yarn into a three dimensional canvas. I learned to knit and make a sweater, all at the same time.

Fiber running through my hands always felt right to me but it was always an extension of drawing. I sat under my dad's drawing table as a little girl, using his shirt cardboard from the laundry as my place to create fanciful things. He would be sitting at his angled table, designing the intricate window displays for his menswear shop clients and I could be near him, "designing" as well. To me, it seemed like heaven until I came home from Kindergarten that first time with a prescribed kid drawing of a house and flowers, done to "fit in".

I think that was the first time that I broke my father's heart. I remember his rants about how my creativity was being stifled at school. I just wanted to be one of the kids and everybody seemed to be doing the same thing, to make the teacher happy. OY! Why did I need to conform? Perhaps to please my mother, who became the 800 pound gorilla in my life after my dad divorced her and moved on with his creative and unusual life.

I sat alone a lot, as a kid. I tucked myself behind big chairs with my Anthology of Children's Literature and Smokey The Bear. I found sunny places to sit with dish cloths and embroidery thread, making colorful pictures appear on any piece of cloth that I could beg from my mother. I just had to create in a quiet way and thread running through my fingers just seemed to be the most soothing thing to my 7 year old self after my dad left. Small movements depositing color and lines; stab, stab, stab, knot. Free-hand and fill-in-the lines ironed on from dime store transfers. No matter what, there was color, lots of color.

I became obsessed with knitting, right around the same time that I became obsessed with a high school boy. There was constant knitting, even to the point of getting caught by my history teacher as I made those rhythmical movements under the table as he droned on and on during lecture time. Busted.

I made That Boy an ugly green scarf and then I made him a ridiculously heavy Aran sweater from another kit from that yarn store. He dutifully wore both, even though he was probably "sweating up a storm". His girlfriend had made these things for him, with that fiber running through her hands and he was going to suffer through it. That boy carried my books (no one wore book bags in those days), carried our babies, carried my music equipment and for the past couple of decades has helped me carry my Work to craft shows and now fiber shows. I do not believe in the Boyfriend Sweater Curse, IF you pick the right boy.

I went to art college and while I studied to be a painter, my focus was always running to fiber art when left to my own devises. I began doing painted canvases with embroidered bits. Fiber fiber fiber.

As a young mother, I crocheted lacey curtains and then began knitting, when I could afford the yarn, asking those that I knitted for to simply buy me my next yarn supply (fix). Knit knit knit, crochet crochet crochet.

Fiber has run through my fingers forever and I NEVER would have considered myself to be Laid Back about any of it, over those years. I created at least one fanciful one-of-a-kind garment a week, during those years of selling my work at Juried Craft Shows. I spun yarn from fiber that I had dyed and made three dimensional canvases for my art. I HAD to do it. I knitted each day until the light waned and watched a stack of sweaters grow in time for the big show of the year, the King's Mountain Art Fair, where I would exchange my art for some small amount of money. I knitted until my hands ached and my shoulders ached and then I knitted some MORE.

We fast forward to Friday when a UPS delivery brought a box from a publisher. It held the concrete proof that this secret project that I collaborated on with a mystery writer/yarn fan had become real. Five galley copies of Ten Secrets of the Laidback Knitters were lifted into my hands by That Boy. IT is the result of an idea dreamed up by Vicki Stiefel many years ago. She had asked me to contribute a pattern to this project that she was working on and I said yes, forgetting about it until she came back to me a couple of years later saying that she wanted me to collaborate with her on her latest version of this idea. I hesitantly said yes, having no idea of what I was getting myself into. Yes, I had blogged for years and proved to be a decent writer but this was a knitting book. I scoffed at the idea of being Laid Back about anything and then realized that I was evolving into that kind of knitter at this stage of my life, reaching for knitting during all of the hard times during my mother's last years, consoling myself yet again with the fiber running through my fingers. I guessed that I really could relate to being a Laidback Knitter. I added my voice, creativity and friends to the project and battled through the long process, loving and hating it and Vicki. I was watching my mother move toward death and she was doing the same with her beloved Bill during this hard time. How would we survive all of this and at opposite coast distances? Stubborness.

We had a remarkable editor, BJ Barti. Vicki took the reins of the book and did all of the photographs and gathered all of the tidbits of information. I wrote, created and edited. I contributed my two best selling garments to the project; my most simple pieces that I knitted over and over and over for people because they were comfortable classics and looked good on everyone. I rallied designer friends and got them to contribute pieces for the book and stuck with the project through thick and thin because of those people. It is finished and now I await the actual publishing date, this May.

It built character, this book. It turned me back into someone who knits, instead of "just a spinner and dyer". Nope, I came into this project as the little girl who had to have fiber running through her fingers and emerged as the woman who has her name on a book. I am thankful to Vicki for the experience and will be happy to share the work with my yarn fans. It has been a long and fascinating journey. I wonder what comes next.

Comments

I love this. I learned to knit when I was 5 and HAVE to have some sort of fiber nearby at all times. Wonderful reflections, Lisa! Congratulations to you and Vicki both.

Posted by: Mary | February 27, 2011 at 02:19 PM