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The Oasis Knitting Guild extends its deepest condolences to Marian on the death of Lazi Pollak this month. Marian, one of our most active guild members, has contributed many patterns and several articles over the past year to this newsletter and is a "regular" at our meetings.
I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, lived a couple years in Israel while doing a Master's, and now find myself in the United States, in St. Louis, Missouri. Although there's a fairly large knitting guild in town, I have never been to a meeting. One year I actually joined (in other words, paid membership dues), but somehow I always had something better to do on meeting days. The newsletters contained nothing to entice me, being full of baby hats and afghans and charity knitting (none of which I'd discourage anyone else from doing, but which did not encourage me to adjust my schedule to attend).
I used to be a member of a spinning guild that bored itself out of existence with endless administrative meetings, so now a few of us meet about once a month to simply spin and chat. We've been meeting consistently for a couple of years now, so the format suits us.
I've been knitting forever--I really can't remember when or how I learned, or who taught me. I suspect I learned from a book as soon as I could read. When my daughter (age 11) was born, my mother handed me a bag full of Barbie clothes that I'd sewn, knitted, and crocheted as a child, so fine that I withheld them from my daughter, in theory until she was old enough to take care of them, but what actually happened was that she outgrew Barbies long before I deemed her responsible enough. I don't think I'd let her have them even now.
Because I'm entirely self-taught, I've never had a sense of what is considered difficult or advanced--I've always simply knitted what I've wanted to. In seventh grade, we were told to go to a yarn store and pick out a pattern and yarn for our knitting project for the year, to be completed at school. I had no idea that lace was considered difficult, so I picked an allover lace croptop in pale yellow crepe. The ribbing went smoothly, but I had to redo the first few inches of lace so many times that my sweater had a grubby, grey streak just above the ribbing, from my grubby 12-year-old hands. I did finish it though, and no one helped me in any way. In all honesty, it's only since I've participated in various on-line fiber forums in the past decade or so that I've come to the realization that lace is considered difficult by many, along with intarsia, stranded knitting and cables.
My view is that these are all techniques that ought to be mastered so that you can make whatever you want, without worrying about your skillset. Actually, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that any of these is difficult or not suitable for a beginning knitter. I firmly believe you should make things that you *like*, regardless of what techniques are required. If you like the item enough, you'll make it. If you give up because it's "too hard," what you probably mean is that you don't like it enough to put that amount of effort into it. A few years ago I started some Bavarian-style socks, and ripped them out very quickly as soon as I realized that I had to knit into the back of EVERY SINGLE STITCH on my 00 needles. The socks simply weren't attractive enough to endure the unpleasantness. I *could* have, though!
Broadly speaking, anything non-traditional or innovative attracts me (which doesn't mean that everything I do is wildly creative--sometimes I just want a brown cardigan, after all). So in colourwork I'm drawn to bold intarsia rather than stranded Fair Isle knitting. I think multi-directional knitting is just too much fun not to use it often. I like variation and contrast and surprises. While I admire many Alice Starmore designs, the thought of knitting an entire sweater, each piece of which has exactly the same pattern in exactly the same colours in exactly the same sequence, frightens me a bit, in the same way that house arrest would frighten a world traveller. Well, perhaps not quite that badly!
I like the idea of weaving. I've woven one length of cloth and have bought weaving yarns, books, and a 4-harness floor loom. However, even though I've owned the loom for a couple years, I've never used it. I do have a triangle loom that I've used twice, but it may well be nearing the end of its useful life as a member of my family. I think I must come to the conclusion that I'm really not a weaver at heart.
Over the years, I've probably sampled almost every fiber or needlework technique. I used to sew about 90% of my clothes (even underwear--*my* panty elastics did *not* bind), but lately I find that I like buying fabric more than I enjoy getting down to sewing it. This is a common theme in my life: I like the raw materials for far longer than I actually participate in the activity!
I've crocheted, done cross-stitch (though never finished anything), needlepoint, petit-point, bargello, and a little tatting. I've never tried bobbin lace, hardanger, or hairpin lace. I've knitted socks, gloves, mittens, hats, countless sweaters (my guess is well over 100), and one scarf, but I've never made an afghan--and probably never will.
I love buying beads and bead magazines. I even make jewellery occasionally, but my interest in this waxes and wanes quite significantly. My lampwork [making glass beads with a torch] is currently in a lull, I think in part because I don't have a work area with the most propitious feng shui--seriously, my work area is awful, so I don't like going there to play. I'll only make beads if I have a plan or a promise or a deadline.
I think that one of the things I like about lampwork, apart from that primitive something in many of us that is drawn to the magic of fire, is an element it shares with knitting. It's fluid and not hard to redo it if it doesn't come out right. I can control it and change it and make it into what I want. There are wonderful opportunities to experiment with colour, both in terms of combining shades to get subtle, deep effects, as well as using colour to highlight form or texture. With beads, you can also make transparent layers, which results in an even larger playing field than colour in knitting.
December's guild meeting was held at Haya's home in Ramot. Haya, Donna, Althea, Judy (from the Jerusalem Fiber Craftsmen weavers' guild) and Brachah (also from the weavers' guild) spent the afternoon playing with spindles, producing designer yarns, and eating. They learned, above all, why those things are called "drop spindles"! Haya kept us supplied with towels to cushion the impact. Most of the participants were producing reasonably good yarn by the end of the afternoon. Brachah brought two heavy, unusual spindles with carved whorls from Yugoslavia. Haya used a T-shaped spindle that was a gift from her daughter.
