A Good Learning Week Coming Up!
This weekend is going to be crazy-busy for me, and I’m very much looking forward to it!
Friday morning I go to Jackson for a half day on knitting Norwegian traditional mittens, from Beth Brown-Reinsel. She’s such a well-known teacher (with an excellent teaching reputation) in the area of traditional knitting, that I’m very happy to study with her.
I’m particularly excited because I’m of Norwegian ancestry, and the only thing I remember ever knit for me to wear in childhood, was a pair of navy and cream Norwegian mittens. They were knit for me by my Great-Aunt Ingeborg, who was born and raised in Norway. She was married late and widowed only a few years after she married, and she remained a widow. She was the only relative I had in Michigan, so she was sort of a surrogate Grandmother for me.
The mittens are long gone now, moth-eaten and tossed in the trash. I grieve that now, but wool was not valued when I was growing up and nobody was interested in repairing two-colored knitting on a pair of somewhat uncool-styled (at the time) mittens that didn’t fit any more.
Ingeborg did knit a little bit for my dolls, and I do still have one mostly-whole doll blanket she made for me when I was in elementary school. It needs repair but is knit in three panels of what I guess is a sort of feather and fan pattern, so it will be a challenge to repair. I figure I’ll do it someday, as I sort of like the challenge of a good knit repair job at times. I also have a pair of sox she knit for me, never worn. I assume they were too small when I got them, because I didn’t even remember ever seeing them before when I found them in a box of keepsakes a year or so ago. Someday I’ll write a pattern in the style of that pair, to honor Ingeborg. In my spare time… you know how that goes!
Anyway… That’s only Friday morning! On Friday night I study at Threadbear with Debbie New, author of Unexpected Knitting. She’s the dynamo who has knit, among other things, socks of licorice and a lace boat. Truthfully, I don’t remember what class it is, I just want to be in the room with her. She is so innovative and so non-traditional, and I adore her energy.
Saturday I will be in Mount Pleasant dancing (there is a Mideast Dance concert at Warriner Hall that night if anyone north of me is interested). I’ll miss the Debbie New stuff that day, but a girl can only afford so many classes, anyway!
Sunday morning I have another half-day with Debbie New, which I need to leave early to go teach my Wristwarmers class at Little Red Schoolhouse. Good thing they are in the same neighborhood, not as much as 2 miles apart!
Photo: Me dancing as Eudora (at New Aladdin’s Restaurant) in 2004. I don’t have photos of Beth Brown-Reinsel’s work or Debbie New’s work that I have rights to post.