Category: Blog

Meeting Cat Bordhi

I must admit, I was so nervous the morning I woke up to go to my first Cat Bordhi class.  I had already read her book New Pathways for Sock Knitters cover to cover; in fact, that was the book I picked up when I wanted to learn how to knit socks for the first time.  (And if you know me, you might suspect that I didn’t just want a book full of patterns; I wanted a book that would explain the different parts of a sock to me — one that would allow me to understand their construction so I could make them up on my own.  New Pathways was that book for me.)

You see, I became a better knitter from reading New Pathways.  Cat didn’t just write a book full of sock patterns.  She wrote a book full of knitting tips disguised as a sock-knitting book.

Would the real Cat Bordhi, I wondered that morning, be nice?  Would she like me?  I want to be a designer like her someday… Would she see anything special in me, or would I be just another student?  

Well, I don’t know how she saw me, but I sure enjoyed meeting her.  She seems to be a teacher to the core, and a good one, at that.  I believe that she really gets excited by encouraging other people.  She wants her students to excel.  She wanted us to come up with new ideas that we could turn into our own patterns, and she cheered us on through the whole process.

In short, I had a great time.  

And now, the top ten things I learned from Cat Bordhi, in no particular order:

  1. Persevere; new ideas come from the strangest of places;
  2. Play with the yarn;
  3. Use other brilliant people’s awesome techniques, and give them full credit (think Judy’s Magic Cast On and Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off and Cat’s two-circ method for knitting in the round);
  4. Do good work;
  5. Come at problems from new angles to find solutions;
  6. Knitting can always get better;
  7. Any technique can be tweaked, especially if you’re determined;
  8. Knitting builds community; LYS’s are an important part of that;
  9. Good yarn is worth the money;
  10. Knitting will always be fun.  (I already knew this last one, but I love seeing it in other people, too.  It makes me happy.)

 

I Took a Class with Cat Bordhi and…

What a great weekend I just had!  (Okay, it was two weekends ago now.  I wrote this post last week, but wanted to “tweak” it… Thanks to this post by Crunchy Betty, I have more confidence in posting today.)

Anyway, I took two classes with Cat Bordhi, organized by my local knitting guild.  The first:  Cat’s Sweet Tomato Heel.  The second: Finding the Fountain of Fresh Knitting Ideas.

Oh my!  And what a fountain.  Whether or not some of our crazy brainstorming results in some new patterns from me is yet to be seen. My brainstorming partner and I got pretty carried away, and the things we came up with are much more complex than any of my other patterns to date.  But I might be up for the challenge…

I have some other things to think over, too.  I think it was Sally Mellville who mentioned, in passing, during our guild meeting, about a woman who taught pregnant women on bed rest to knit.  Cat’s topic at the meeting (since she was our main speaker — Sally just happened to have some extra input for us during the discussion time) was twofold:  the relaxing attributes of knitting, and the importance of supporting local yarn shops.  Imagine the therapeutic potential of knitting while going through tough times!  We all know it works; it’s why we do what we do.  (As for the LYS topic, we can talk more about that later maybe.)

The idea of teaching people stuck in hospitals to knit has caught my attention.  I have a soft spot for hospital families, since ours was one for a while, and one of my best friends’ is one right now.  I wonder if the moms of kids in the local childrens’ hospital would like to learn to knit.  I wonder if the teenage patients would like to learn to knit.  I wonder if the little kids would like to learn to knit.

I sat with my kids this morning, taking turns with each one on my lap, teaching them to finger knit.  Again, I was inspired by Cat last night, who talked about her classes of middle school students knitting while she taught them; she talked about how it calmed them and helped them focus; how it broke down social tiers; how it gave the kids with less-obvious skills something to excel at.  The more I thought on the calming and focusing aspects of knitting, the more I wanted to teach my kids to knit; and my motives are no longer as selfish, wanting them to knit just because I think it’s awesome and therefore everyone should do it.

As I sat with my second-youngest on my lap — the one who is slightly behind, the one who I worry about the most when I choose to worry — I felt tears of amazement gather behind my eyes.  He and I sat, with fingers overlapping, chanting “in front, behind, in front, behind,” then repeating “up and over, up and over, up and over.”  He loved the rhythm of it all, the repetition, the growth of the “snake” down the back of his hand.  His little fingers, awkward at first, became adept at pulling the loops up and over his finger tips.  Then he, in the two minutes I turned away to help another son, wound the yarn around his own fingers, whispering “in front, behind, in front, behind” to himself.  He did it perfectly.

There really is something wonderful about knitting, isn’t there?

More on my inspirations from Cat in later posts…  Her Sweet Tomato Heel is really something wonderful.  You can find the how-to video here.

Have you taught kids to knit?  How did it go?  I’d love to hear from you.

From Scratch

In a world of knitting, I still have to eat.  (Don’t you ever just get so annoyed that you have to stop the stitches in order to make the food?  What a nuisance.  That’s why I like making bread.  I can knit while it rises.)

The thing about us knitters is that, well, we like to make things from scratch that can easily be bought in a store.  Socks?  I’d rather spend $20 on a ball of luscious yarn and take a week to make them, thankyouverymuch.  Sweaters?  I can totally make a nicer one than that cabled one in the store that’s on sale for $10.  

Sourdough bread?  I think I’ll grow my own wild yeast and wait a week for it to get all bubbly… at least once in my life, anyway.  Kind of like my vague goal of someday knitting my own lace curtains, from my own pattern.  

It turns out that sourdough starter is much easier to make than lace curtains, though.  I pulled out my trusty, clunky copy of The Joy of Cooking (much like the newly re-released Principles of Knitting that’s the biggest reference book on knitting I’ve ever seen, TJoC is a huge, fat book full of everything I could ever think to do in a kitchen, including make three different kinds of sourdough starter).  I chose the simple one: mix 1/2 cup of flour with 1/4 cup of lukewarm water, then let it colonize itself from the wild yeasts in the air.  

Is that not the coolest things you’ve ever heard?  I mean really:  wild yeast?  Who knew!?

I’ve been feeding my little blob every day, twice a day, for about 4 or 5 days now.  At first, it just sat there, looking all doughy and cute.  But each time I fed it the same, boring meal (1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup water), it changed a little.  It got looser, and fatter, and it started to bubble.  And now, it looks like this:

Image

I think it has enough leavening power in there to make some bread soon!  I’m pretty excited.  I’ve been feeding it and loving it, and soon I will be eating it.  I think I will name it Jennifer and keep it forever.  In small pieces, at least.  It’s big enough now that I could easily take 2 cups out and still have more left to feed and love.  Maybe I should knit it a sweater and a little matching hat, just to show my appreciation for its bubbly-ness.  What exactly does sourdough like to wear?  Fair isle?  Or simple garter stitch?

Fall Flowers

Here’s a little update to show you what I’m working on right now. I have a couple hats in the planning/knitting/writing stages, and I hope you’ll like them as much as I do!

The first is a bigger version of the Tulip Preemie Hat, sized for little girls. I like to test knit my patterns to be sure they’re actually what I think they are, so it’s taking me a lot longer to get this pattern re-written than I’d expected. Let’s just say that by the time this pattern is published, I’ll have knit it in every size, and quite unintentionally. I keep casting on, meaning to make a small size, but it ends up being enough stitches for a bigger size. This stitch is quite unpredictable. Either that or I just need to think more before casting on. Anyway, here’s a preview of it in the fingering-weight yarn. (There will be a dk version, too.)

I’ve also noticed that the cast-on technique makes a difference with this pattern. I used the long-tail cast-on for that version, and I don’t like it. It pulls up the tulip petals until they’re practically gone! Boo hoo. So I’m still tweaking.

And what a shame, too! I took such nice pictures of that darned hat. Like this one:

If you like the flower theme, I’ve got another idea brewing along those same lines. It’s been sitting on the back burner (or, more accurately, the shelf in my knitting room) for at least a year now, but I think I’ll give it a chance to …bloom.

Yes. I do love puns.