Hello, world. I've actually been stalling for a while on starting this blog because I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with it. I've called it "A Continuous Thread" because in here I'm going to be writing about my fiber arts and my adventures as a spinner/knitter/weaver. The continuous thread represents not only the continuous yarn that feeds through my fingers as I spin, or knit, or tat, or weave, but it also symbolizes the desire--or perhaps I should call it a craving--to work with yarns and threads and fibers that has literally been a continuous thread running throughout my entire life. I do not remember a time in my life, however young I was, that this need to have threads in my hands didn't exist.
I remember being little and watching my grandmother embroidering and crocheting, and my mom knitting. I begged to learn how, but there was this problem. All of those things require sitting still for some period of time, and as a little girl, sitting still was not something I did -- ever (it still isn't). The only way to get me to slow down and stop was to hand me a book. When I'm reading, I can sit still. That's about it.
Well, nobody realized then, or for the next 30-odd years, that I have ADHD. Didn't catch it until I was 39. That's another 'continuous thread' in my life that has made me the way I am--sometimes it's an advantage, sometimes it's a thundering nuisance, sometimes it's a major problem. So, sometimes I'll be talking about that too.
Onward. Mom, and Grandma Thorpe, held out the ultimate carrot: they'd teach me to do any of those wonderful things with thread, if I could sit still and listen for 30 minutes without jumping up to go chase the dog or something. How I managed that, I don't remember--but I did it. I think I was about seven, maybe, when Grandma taught me embroidery. I recall doing bright-pink lazy daisies on something..
When I was about eight, Mom taught me to knit, and I was in love with it--still remember those thick shiny brown wooden needles, and kelly green yarn. I knitted cat toys and one enormous white scarf with colored stripes. I knitted, crocheted, embroidered off and on as I got older, but didn't do much of anything while I was in high school. I don't know why, I just didn't.
Once I got into college, life got more complicated and less complicated at the same time. During my sophomore year, I met one of the two people who became my lifelong best friends, and the people who led me into the fiber arts as a way of life. Her name is Catriona and I met her by way of taking Gaelic lessons from her. That's a whole other story. But Catriona knitted like mad, and still does, and that reawoke my knitting interest. I bought some yarn and needles, and then had to call my mom at home to talk me through it--I'd forgotten how to purl. We laughed ourselves silly as she refreshed my memory over the phone.
Catriona moved away from Colorado, but we kept in touch as much as we could on the phone and by mail; this was back in 1981, so no cell phones or email then. I learned to knit socks first, with her help via long-distance. I was scared of trying something as big as a sweater...too overwhelming a project at that time.
The following summer, I met Rebecca Lawrence who was also at CU that summer, and she was an accomplished knitter even then, and still knits rings around me, and anyone else I know besides Catriona. She coached me through my first sweater, which believe it or not, is still in my sweater drawer, still fits, and is still worn from time to time even though it's nearly 30 years old.
I had to get far enough along in my story to get to Rebecca, because she was how I became a spinner. But I'll save that for the next installment.
