me, with some of my tattoos, at my wedding

I have a confession to make. I am not a knitter.

I mean, I know how to knit. And I do get out the needles and yarn sometimes, mostly around the holidays when the combination of winter rain and chills, plus gifts to give, motivates me.

When I say I am not a knitter, what I mean is that I am not the woman who carries around a project at all times, who knits on the train or when sitting around with friends. That would be Ellen.

You see, she taught herself to knit when she was five years old (seriously!) and pretty much hasn’t stopped since. It was eventual that she would open a yarn shop. She knew that. What she doubted was that I, her daughter, would ever learn.

The story goes like this: I came home to visit one weekend and we were sitting around the living room chatting and having a good time, when, fed up with my biting my nails since childhood, all of a sudden she said to me “Can I just teach you to knit?”. At this point she was already professionally teaching classes and would tell her students that she could teach anyone who wanted knit except one, her daughter.

Mind you, I had tried to learn. I always got frustrated and grumpy, expecting to knit as perfectly as my mom did, right of the bat, just like that. This is a woman I have seen knit an entire pair of socks during a family movie night.

Alas, I gave in. I don’t even remember the process of her teaching me. I just remember that one minute I was confused, and the next I was on my way to a swatch. It was fun. It was smooth. It felt good. This I had not expected. I liked it.

While I was not a knitter all those years, I was a knitter’s daughter. Which means I love the sound of needles clicking, am soothed by the woosh of the knitting machine, and, most of all, know what I want. I have been custom ordering and designing knits for as as long as I have been interested in clothes.

And that habit continues today. I may not knit much, but I do know yarns, stitches, “knitting math” (as Ellen calls it), how to read and write patterns, how to make a gauge swatch, etc.

With cool weather approaching, I’m trying to knit more. And working with this website is inspiring me to dive in deeper. I’ll be posting about my what I’m learning, my projects and hopefully some designs.

Enjoy