Sarah and I attended “Knitting LIVE! Seattle” by Vogue Knitting this past weekend — almost exactly 2 years to the day from it was scheduled in 2020!  It was fabulous!  We took 4 classes (3 hours each) with world class teachers/designers and prowled the Boutique Market (smaller than usual, but well-curated).  We talked knitting all weekend.  And we knit with knitters.

Exploring techniques and developing skills at this kind of event fires our inventiveness and inspires soooo many projects :).  Access to gorgeous yarns at the Market helps too!  I came home with a bag of Autumn-hued beauties for my next design project.

As well as Spring-tastic yarns for two shawlettes.

But one the real joys of the weekend was seeing knitters wearing their hand-knit garments.  It is an entirely different experience from scrolling images on a screen or flipping through a magazine.  Here the artisan knitter stood before us wearing the very piece into which she had poured hours of highly skilled work — the piece she had envisioned, wrestling with color choices and gauge decisions — the piece in which she had invested significant funds and countless hours, simply and courageously believing in her ability to do it, to knit this magnificent creation!  

This was the project she had chosen over all the infinite possibilities of projects in the world.  This was the piece she loved, hated, agonized over, sang her way through, slogged row after row, ripped back and re-knit when something went terribly wrong (or even a little bit wrong), then loved again.  All around us were these triumphant and lovely pieces adorning the persons who had brought them into being!  

I clearly feel pretty “over the top” about knitters — they are my people and we share a world (down many rabbit holes there are whole worlds!).  But maybe what fills my heart is knowing that every knitter has a full life outside the knitting world — and yet he or she makes space in that life for knitting.  Simply for the joy of knitting.  Simply because he or she believes that joy matters.  

For everyone who does whatever it is you do because it brings you joy and because you believe that joy matters, thank you.