Designing Stitches

Yesterday I had the extreme pleasure to take a class with Cat Bordhi. For many of you this may not seem like much, perhaps something like, “Yeah, you got to take a class with your friend.” No, you don’t understand, Cat Bordhi is a world renown author and designer. What a fabulous opportunity I was given! The class was on experimenting with designing stitches - a skill of which I previously had no interest. However, I think the class has accomplished its advertised claims and I’ve caught the design bug. I now have aspirations to create and design my own knitwear. I think I will start with socks. I don’t know how soon you will see them but I think I may start posting some designs right here. We’ll see - I’ll let you know. But before I get ahead of myself, here are some of the things I learned yesterday:

· I learned to design on the front while keeping ribbing on the back. It was quite fascinating. I was using a beautiful hand dyed wool from Yarn Chef that I got through Etsy. Cat had us knit 15 stitches in stocking net and after several rows we pulled the needle out to see the direction in which each stitch lay and then discussed how designing on one side is made possible.

· Mr. Stitch became my favorite of the day. It’s a little weird when you’re not in the class and referring to something as Mr. Stitch but when we were in the class it seemed perfectly normal. Anyway, imagine Mr. Stitch has two legs and the two guys on either side of him are pulling on each leg in a different direction. On the next row you then knit in the top of his head. There is a myriad of possibilities with this stitch!

· I don’t do well when the instructor says, “Just play with it.” I need some direction, focus or at the very least, some guidelines. All we were given was a list of knitting morphemes and direction to play. Hmmm – I don’t know about this….

What I really learned is that I am blessed. I’ve shared with several people that not only has God given me the desires of my heart, but he has blessed me in ways that I didn’t even realize I wanted to be blessed. This class was an unexpected gift. One for which I am extremely grateful!