Total Immersion

Every year, around this time, the Madison Knitters' Guild hosts the annual Knit-In, a one-day event that rewards knitters of all stripes with total immersion into the craft. So, last Saturday Cassandra and I joined hundreds of knitters from around the country and took advantage of the opportunity to bathe in the luxury of knitting all day.

The Knit-In offers morning and afternoon classes, lunch, and a large vendor room. The cafeteria becomes the defacto knitting room with large, rounds tables filled with friends, old and new, knitting, talking, laughing and generally enjoying some fiber-filled leisure time.

The Guild always manages to snag some pretty great main guests. In the past, I've seen The Mason-Dixon Girls and the founders and staff of Ravelry, among others. This year, the featured speaker was Kate Gilbert from the Twist Collective and her talk included a fashion show that I hear was exceptional. Neither Cassandra and I made it to her talk. Instead, we opted for spending some time and money in the vendor room.

At first pass, nothing jumped out at Cassandra as a "must have" item. I wasn't so lucky. I was completely enamored of a multi-colored hand-spun Alpaca and some super-cute drawstring bags. Plus, I kept seeing patterns that I just HAD to make. After a quick run through the vendors to see what was there, we left, empty-handed, for the cafeteria and lunch. A yummy spread of "make your own tacos/burritos" and ridiculously good desserts (they know their audience) was followed by some frantic swatch knitting as both Cassandra and I forgot to do the homework for our afternoon class - Conquering Kitchner Stitch.

I don't knit socks so Kitchner doesn't show up too often in my patterns. However, it does show up and I've never, ever been able to do it successfully. I figured a three-hour class on nothing but Kitchner would probably change me from a Kitchner failure to a Kitchner winner. And, boy, did it! The instructor, the author Ann Budd, was patient and kind and insistent that there was nothing to fear. By the end of three hours we had learned to perform successful Kitchner Stitch on stockinette, garter, K1P1 rib, and K2P2 rib. She opened up a whole new world of joining!

Look at this mess...

Except for some tension issues, pretty good!

Once our class was over, we wandered back to the vendor room to see if anything was calling out to us. I ended up with three skeins of the alpaca that I loved, a skein of angora, two drawstring knitting bags, and two patterns. Cassandra got a couple of skeins of lovely yarns in her "signature colors". Fortunately, this event is always right around the time I get my tax return. LOL

Cassandra's booty

Honestly, there's nothing much better than spending the day surrounded by like-minded, lovely people. Everyone was wearing some wonderful creation - shawls seemed to be the "garment du jour" - and there was an air of  fun and relaxation. I wish there was a Knit-In every quarter, instead of just once a year. :)

- Alex

Crafting for Democracy

As you're all aware, Madison, Wisconsin is the epicenter of a huge U.S. political battle. It consumes those of us who live here. Everyone wants to talk about it - whether to commiserate or to dissect the minutia of all the political wranglings. Frankly, it's exhausting.

This was the scene on Saturday: 

I've coined three terms: "rally fatigue", "rally stress", and "rally anxiety." I'm thinking about trademarking them... (j/k)  Over the course of the last two weeks, I've bounced between these three states of being - none of which are particularly pleasant. Then, on Friday night (2/25), I got to add "rally inspiration" to my list of terms.

You see, Friday night was the first meeting of the Knit-In/Craft-In for Democracy. As we all know, I can't resist an opportunity to knit in public with a group so, of course, I went. One report counted 92 people in attendance on the 2nd floor of the north wing of the Capitol. Most were knitting but some were crocheting, or spinning, or sewing. On person had set up a make-shift craft "table" with bits of paper, glue, pipe cleaners, and such - like you'd see in elementary school art rooms. It was awesome.

photo courtesy of Carrie Ouradnik

photo courtesy of Thea Dingo

photo courtesy of Carrie Ouradnik

People chatted and laughed. They talked about their knitting and about the rally. There was an air of camaraderie and of doing something "important" - even though we were just doing what we'd probably be doing at home, in front of the t.v. The "event" lasted until about 9:30p.m., at which time many protesters were bunking down for the night so it was the right time to leave. We dispersed as we'd arrived, with hugs and words of gratefulness and support.

From that first, three-hour gathering, the Knit-In/Craft-In has expanded. People convened again on Sunday February 27 starting at noon and are encouraged to keep coming every day, starting at noon, until the end of the "siege."

Carrie, a friend from my knitting group, (aka CraftyPuppyLover on Ravelry) provides this account of the end of the day:

"They were supposed to close down the capitol and start arresting people that didn’t leave at 4. So a few of us stuck around, and were planning on peacefully leaving once we were personally told to by an officer...and that never happened! My VERY unofficial guess is that there were about 200+ people that stayed behind, and the officers all just stayed calm. (edit: I have seen this number as high as 600, it's probably in the middle somewhere)


At around 7pm we got the word that there would be no arrests and that everyone was free to stay the night! Kelda Roys was SUPER AWESOME and escorted me upstairs once we figured no one was going to be arrested. She was also the person that was escorting others around to make sure that we could all get things like water, gatorade, and pizza into the capitol to feed the protesters.


I left around 7:45, I felt like I was there long enough to have my “body counted” and so that people could stay the night. The last thing I heard was that they were going to let in more food and eventually move everyone down to the ground floor so that the 1st floor could be cleaned, and that no one would be forced to leave."

I think that, when it's all said and done, the thing that inspired me was the peacefulness of it all. Throughout this ordeal, there's been no violence - even though there's been horrible anger. And we crafters are not known for being too unruly so we fit perfectly into this non-violent protest. Ghandi would be proud. Let's hope it stays this way.

One last note: as I was leaving on Friday night, there was a documentary filmmaker shooting video of the knitters. Here's the video she produced:

Peace,

- Alex