Missing Elisabeth

We drove our daughter to college last weekend.

The culmination of an eighteen year journey. Raising Elisabeth has been the most wonderful experience of my life.

Though sometimes filled with trepidation. But she is riding that motorcycle with a physician. A friend of ours and the father of one of her closest friends. She has a good head on her shoulders.

Here she is with Dad. On our street. He is a landscape painter, she is going to art school.
Kids these days grow up multi-tasking.
Elisabeth loved the ancient stones of Ireland, which she saw on her trip there last spring. She photographed Newgrange, which is over 5,000 years old.
She also loves gardens, and photographed this Japanese garden in Ireland.
She was taught to knit in a Waldorf/Steiner school when she was ten. These mittens are very warm, I commandeered them.
And when Elisabeth packed for school, she packed this hat I knit for her.
We are so happy and excited to send her off on this next big adventure. And the internet is a great tool for keeping in touch with family. But we do miss having her around.
-Kathy

My garden in May and Maine Fiber Frolic 2010

Looking toward the orchard. We have pear, peach and plum trees. I love gardening (read "weeding". Well, I do get to plant things too). It is my little paradise.
The bearded iris are just starting to bloom. With polygonum bistorta, lamb's ears and ranunculus.
Looking towards the garden.

Siberian iris.
I love lemon daylilies.
And poppies.

The edge of the porch. We grow rosemary.
We had great fun at Maine Fiber Frolic last weekend! In addition to sheep, goats, rabbits, fleece, yarn, spinning wheels and a million other wonderful things, they had a "Make It with Fiber In Maine" competition.
Here are some of the wonderful entries.
This is a felted painting.




It was a great fiber festival!
See you all at TKGA's Knit and Crochet Show, Manchester, New Hampshire July 9 and 10.
- Kathy

Fryeburg, Maine

The Mountain View Knitting Guild in Fryeburg, Maine asked me to speak last week. I do a talk on "Stories of Knitting". One member, a woman who had grown up in Austria, brought this adorable child's sweater to show. All Austrian woman are taught to knit in school, and when they have children, they knit this sweater for them. I love this sweater. It is well-worn and well-loved. It the epitome of a hand-knitted garment: simple, beautiful, loved, humble.
Many of the ladies of this guild had hand-knit name tags!
They meet in a church basement.
Fryeburg, Maine is a three and a half hour drive so guild member Linda Sorensen kindly offered me hospitality for the night. She is a jeweler as well as a knitter. Below are some beautiful lapis lazuli and silver necklaces being made in her studio/workshop.
Linda is knitting a vest with the "Knit One Below" method. It creates a beautiful and dense fabric.
And Linda makes pysanky, Ukranian Easter eggs.
Her eggs are breathtaking.



I was entranced.
Linda's husband David keeps bees. This is something my husband and I would love to do.
David is a horticulturalist and he grows acres of raspberries, blueberries, currants, gooseberries and fruit trees for a "pick your own" garden called Berry Knoll Farm. They live in Eaton, NH and I am going to bring my family and go pick berries there this summer.

And when I do I will take photos of the garden for the blog. Because on this visit I only had eyes for pysanky!
Thank you Mountain View Knitters and thank you Linda and David!
-Kathy

knitting for friends

This is a throw, or lap blanket I am knitting for a friend. She is having a difficult year, and I wanted to knit her something. Aside from calling and emailing, it was all I could think to do.
This has been a hard year for us and a hard year for many people I know. There are health problems, family problems, money problems, job problems. This year (and I am thinking academic year here) seems to be more difficult than most.
Knitting helps. Spring flowers help. Birdsong in the morning helps. The love of family and friends helps.
Every small joyful thing we do, say, think, feel makes a difference.
Now, my timing is a little off here, giving someone a blanket in spring just as our need for warmth is waning. I started several other projects this winter, none of which seemed quite right, until this throw.
But even in summer there is often, at least in the Northeast, a chilly night or two.
-Kathy

Marcie's vest - a winter collaboration

I had lunch with my friend Marcie the other day, and she was wearing this gorgeous vest. When I asked her about it, she told me this wonderful story:

I've lived in Maine through nearly 14 winters, and I can say, without a doubt, that the gift of the long, cold, isolating winter is that of unpredictable creativity. The long Maine winter allows for expansion, experimentation, and experiences with both people and projects in a way that always surprises me.

For nearly all of the years that I've lived in Belfast, I've practiced yoga at the Belfast Dance Studio. For the past three years, I've taught yoga there, so of course I know Sara Melanson, who is, among other things (such as a wild mushroom enthusiast), the manager of the studio. What I didn't know, until last year, is that Sara is also a passionate, extremely accomplished knitter. One morning I was passing through the studio and saw, through the open office door, that Sara was knitting. We started talking about knitting and clothes and before long, we realized that we had found some common ground for inspiration. I myself am not a knitter at all, but I do love clothes, and I love talking to people about making things. Our conversation went on and on, until somehow, we had decided to collaborate on a knitted vest: I would design it, and Sara would knit it. As you can see from the photographs, it turned out to be a wonderful collaboration. So wonderful, in fact, that we are now working on a second piece. But that's another story...

The inspiration for the vest was collage. Because I wanted it to have the spirit of a collage - disparate shapes and colors and textures pieced together - I approached the vest as if it were a blank canvas, albeit a vest-shaped one. It was designed in my studio, using Adobe Photoshop. I began with a photograph of a basic grey vest, and from there, working in layers, I altered the shape and proportions, created the design, and determined the general color palette. Then it was time to choose the yarn. Sara and I met at Helen Sahadi's fabulous yarn shop in Belfast, Heavenly Socks, and drooled over all of her yarns. Finally, the selection was made, and the vest was one step closer to coming to life. Then, back in the studio, with all of the yarn in front of me, I finalized the design, tweaking the color and the pattern.

Here is the original design mock up for the front:

Here is the original design mock up for the back:
In the space of a couple of months, Sara knitted, tested stitches and created small swatches. She had free reign over the choice and sequencing of stitches, and this became one of the most exciting elements of the vest. At some point in the process, Sara discovered the best way to translate my two-dimensional design into her three dimensional creation. In her own words: "When I saw Marcie’s design, the usual questions of whether to knit from the top down vs. bottom up, in the round or front and back in separate pieces, were tossed out, and I had to approach it from a completely new angle. Collaborating with a non-knitter was liberating in that it was a chance to rethink my notions of how a knitted garment “should” be constructed. And I was excited to work with Marcie in particular, because I admired her style and couldn’t wait to see what she would come up with - I just knew if would be fabulous."

So what's the moral of this story? That not only is an artistic collaboration a great way to get yourself through the winter, but it's also a great way to stretch and grow, and perhaps, if you're lucky, make a new friend.

- Marcie Jan Bronstein

Sara Melanson can be reached at 323-1813. She is open to receiving commissions, and to collaborating on other knitting projects.

Read about Marcie Jan Bronstein's "real" work at www.marciejanbronstein.com.