NYC Crochet Guild
When I was a child a friend of our family offered to give me "crochet lessons" on Saturday mornings - as much to give my mother a break from my maddening energy as anything else! I loved those lessons, but I think I was a bit of a disappointment as a student. I never learned to do the intricate and beautiful advanced stitches, but I did master single and double crochet as well as the half stitches that I loved so much for their thickness and texture.
I taught myself to knit when I was 25, immediately before moving to Dallas, TX, where I was being transferred by my Manhattan based employer. Actually, to say I taught myself is slightly misleading. A friend had tried to teach me the knit stitch just before I left town, but I immediately forgot what she taught me and developed my own style of knitting once I arrived in Dallas. My style is rather intuitive, and it is very strongly influenced by my crochet experience. The way I hold my yarn and the way I envision my knitted fabric is very similar to the way I work with my crochet hook.
I worked briefly at Vogue Knitting as a Technical Writer, but it was a bad fit due to the rather unique way I knit. This was the first time I realized that my way of knitting could be percieved by others as “wrong” or “bad”, and it shook me. What I learned at Vogue was immeasurable, and I have great respect for the women I worked with there, but it wasn't the right place for me at that time.
After I left Vogue Knitting I continued to design for a bit, but felt oddly illegitimate, and therefore not as worthy as other knitters and designers. I stopped knitting entirely for a number of years and attended graduate school to study Set & Costume Design. After working in the Theater & TV for several years, I began to explore knitting again with the advent of a family. It was joyful to pick up the needles, but I still felt the nagging feeling that I was doing it “wrong”.
In Fall 2000 I happened to read an Interweave Knits Magazine with a wonderful article by Priscilla Gibson Roberts where she explained the differences of the three main types of knitting; Western, Eastern & Combination. This was a revelation to me, and - most important - legitimized me in a knitting sense, as I discovered that my style of knitting was what the article called Combination.
I now design for most of the major knitting magazines, and am VERY proud that my first piece in Interweave Knits was a combination Knit & Crochet project (Mother & Daughter Vacation Hats, Spring 2001).
I began working with wire after taking Nancie Wiseman's Wire Knitting class in Summer 2002. I love the sculptural aspect of crochet, and feel it is uniquely suited to working with wire.