Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat is just days away!   Sarah and I are crazy excited because we get
to teach 3 “mini” classes this year — on top of the 3 classes we are taking
and the sweet temptations of the yarn market! 

But it is the knitters who make the event.  Sounds corny, but it is true.  I am soooo eager to be
amongst ‘em – all the shop talk, the opinions, the naked appreciation of a good
skein of wool, everyone decked out in hand-knits and proud of it.  I understand them and they understand
me.  We are comrades before we even
exchange names or Ravelry aka’s. 

Modern American society (99% of which is, at this very
moment, dressed in some kind of knitted garments – the other 1% being in the
shower) regards knitting as a kind of quirky hobby which is both mindless and archaic.  Many of our beginning knitting students are
looking for something to keep their hands busy, something to do while they are
doing something else – and are pleasantly surprised to find that knitting
engages the mind and soul, as well as the hands. 

But people who have only brushed by the occasional knitter
seem to think that it “just happens” when you tie some yarn to two
needles.  One clicks the needles together
repeatedly and a sock grows all by itself – in cartoon-style fast-motion.  Funny, but the amazed “you made that?!” comes from the same people
who cannot fathom what one could possibly do
during a 3-hour knitting class.  “It’s
just knitting, right?”

And I cannot blame someone for not seeing the depths of an
activity that is foreign to him.  But
just once in a while, I would like someone to assume from the get-go that
knitting is a complex and compelling art!

Maybe too much to ask of the cosmos.

But all that sighing is for another week – for now, the
knitters are coming to Tacoma!