The Beginning

Jeez, no photos yet! So, instead of pictures of things I'm working on or essays on my design process, I'm going to tell the story of how I began knitting. First, here's the setup. My mother taught me the basics of knitting when I was probably 11 or 12. We lived on a ranch in Colorado, and it was a wonderful life - horses, cows, sheep (when the coyotes left them alone), pigs, chickens, and lots of dogs. There was only one problem - my stepfather who also happened to be a wife-beater and believed strongly in the "spare the rod, spoil the child" theory of child rearing. But I digress... Anyway, my mom taught me how to do the knit stitch and possibly the purl stitch, but that's about it. I wish I could say that I took to it like a fish to water, but it was more like a cat to water. Nonetheless, it must have had some impact, right?

In 1983, I took off for England in June for a study abroad program at the University of Cambridge. We had a month long course, followed by a 6-week break, then back to school with two more 6-week breaks at Christmas and Easter. During the first break my friend Sarah Craven (who happens to now be the head of the UN Population Fund) and I did the whole Eurorail and hostel tour of Western Europe. We had exciting adventures - my passport case & lots of money were stolen in a laundromat in Paris; a man on our train to Bern, Switzerland gave us some chocolate, then came back later to tell us it was poisoned; we were flashed by a pervert in Bern; we accidentally went to the red-light district in Amsterdam instead of the youth hostel; etc. Anyway, you get the picture.

During our trip, we spent a few days in Interlachen, Switzerland at a youth hostel. One day one of the other patrons pulled out her knitting. She was in her early twenties (or late teens), and she knit all the time. I was really intrigued. I thought to myself, "I know how to knit." HA! But somehow that thought stuck with me until we got back to Cambridge. As soon as I was settled in again there, I found a local yarn store where I bought some yarn and a small, paperback Patons how-to book (which I'm proud to say I still have). I didn't ask for any help at the yarn store. I just went back to the house that I was sharing and re-taught myself.

I got bored really quickly with the scarf I was intending to knit. Then one day at the local book store, I saw this fantastic book of knitting patterns. It was called "Knitting in Vogue" (this would have been British Vogue by the way, not American Vogue which to my knowledge has never carried knitting patterns). A very young Andie McDowell graced the front cover. It was filled with a lot of "Then & Now" patterns - patterns that had been published previously and were now redone in current yarns, etc. I picked out a pattern called "Moss-Stitch Woolly Tunic." O.K. I was probably crazy to pick out a pattern in moss-stitch, but I must say that except for a small mistake in the patterning on the top left side of the front, it turned out pretty well.

And the rest is history... I haven't stopped knitting since. And, I think I've made at least 3 sweaters from that book.

Years later, I learned that I was wrapping my yarn the wrong way on all of my purl stitches, so the stitches became twisted on the purl rows. This is not a problem if you untwist them on the next row (as some people do), but I didn't know to do that. But, you know what, I don't care - and I still wear some of those early sweaters.