About Me
I’ve been a knitter for 30 years, with a recent hiatus of about 7 years with the exception of a few hats and mittens. But I’m back into a serious swing of things. Having always been interested in creating anything with my hands, I started young, at 4, in fiber arts, mostly embroidery and crocheting, but at 11, I picked up knitting. I had a teacher who knit constantly from the front of the class while teaching, except when she used the chalkboard. Seeing those scarves, socks, sweaters, etc flow from her needle every day was too much to bear. I worked up the nerve by Thanksgiving to ask for a lesson. My first project was a sweatband with matching wristbands. It was the 70s! My friends wanted me to make some for them, but instead I soon had an all-boy knitting club (NO girls allowed) of 8 or 9.Another inspiration for learning to knit and keeping it going were the indigenous peoples of the province of Cauca and Huila in Colombia, descendants of Chibcha tribes. I grew up in Colombia and visited this region several times. I saw many beautiful ponchos and garments of brighly coloured and dashingly patterned wool. The men and women both tend the sheep and spin and knit and I was enraptured, to say the least.
By 15 I was designing my own sweaters because of the lack of men’s patterns in Colombia and probably elsewhere in the world too. At 19 I was working in a yarn store in Canada and designing custom sweaters for clients and boutiques. I stopped when I entered grad school, and it wasn’t until years later, with a wife, 2 sons, and a hectic teaching schedule, that I jumped back into knitting with a vengeance.
