You’ll find a description of the workshop here and registration information here. Once the workshop is full, I’ll keep a waiting list. If the workshop has filled by the time you decide to register, send me an email with the subject “Chicago Basic Techniques, April 28-29″ and I’ll put your name on the waiting list. In the event of a cancellation, I’ll contact the first name on the list.

In Kyllene, Kirsten has married traditional technique with a strikingly bold graphic pattern, contemporary shaping and a flattering neckline to create a visually stunning and thoroughly modern sweater.

A sweater that was inspired by the winter view from her office window when snow falls on the cedar trees. Gorgeous. And just in time for this year’s snow!

Thanks to James Brittain and Twist Collective for the photography.

It began with an early morning telephone call while I was at Madrona. My mother had been taken to the hospital. She was gravely ill and I was needed to make decisions, as her doctor put it. My parents lived in Virginia, just outside DC, and it felt like the longest cross-country flight I had ever taken. When I got to the hospital, my mother was completely unresponsive. The next morning, for a brief moment, she opened her eyes and seemed aware that there were people around her, caring for her, but she recognized neither my father nor me. Medication kept her comfortable until she passed away a few days later.

Ours is a small family. I’m an only child. There are no grandchildren. “It’s just the two of us now,” my father said when I told him my mother had died.

My father is an extraordinary man. Everyone who meets him tells me that. A career military officer who left a promising future in law and finance when he was called up, for a third time, to fight in the Korean War. That was his second war, having served in Europe and the Pacific during World War II. There would be one more, Viet Nam. He retired as a much-decorated, high-ranking officer, but he never thinks of himself as more than a soldier. Now though, age and injuries have deprived him of much. Macular degeneration has taken most of his eyesight; his career in the Army Ordnance Corps that kept him near munitions and test ranges left him severely hearing-impaired; residual nerve damage from a broken neck suffered when he was in his sixties produces tremors in his hands and forearms so strong that it is impossible for him to button his shirt, or put on his hearing aids, or sign his name.

Over the last ten years, as my father’s condition worsened, my mother had assumed full responsibility for his care and for their household. She refused any help as adamantly as she refused any conversation about his care. “What if you aren’t able to take care of him, for whatever reason?” I had asked her last autumn. “Have you made any contingency plans?” “I don’t need to,” she answered, “that won’t happen.” At last she relented. Two days before she was hospitalized she finally allowed someone into her home.

So, it was the two of us—my father and I—and the home health aide, who was with him during the day. But it was not safe for him to be alone at night, and he was understandably uncomfortable with a stranger watching over him as he slept. He had enough of that during the day, he wanted a familiar face or none at all during the night. Though he never asked, I knew that it was my turn to take care of him, just as he had always made sure that I was safe and cared for when I was young.

Then, two weeks after my mother’s death, my father contracted pneumonia. He was hospitalized briefly and released while still quite ill. His recovery was long and difficult and fragile. His physician insisted that he needed a level of care surpassing the qualifications of the home health aide if he was to regain and maintain his health.

Toward the end of April, I drove my father to his new home, a spacious apartment in an assisted living community where he would have access to immediate medical care whenever he needed it, where there was someone to help him with his shirt buttons and his hearing aids and to make sure he got the correct medication at the proper time, and where he was otherwise independent, not followed by a stranger everywhere he went in his own home.

My father’s move meant that my parents’ house was now empty and their car sat unused. I came home for a brief weekend, then Jerome and I drove down to Virginia. It’s a daunting project, liquidating the contents of a house that has been lived in for thirty-five years. Some of the furniture had gone with my father to his new home, but most of it remained, along with all that one accumulates over a lifetime. Two lifetimes in this case. We sold what we could, discarded what could not be salvaged or used. The rest went to a thrift shop whose proceeds benefit the hospital where my parents had been. A contractor was engaged for a complete renovation and, finally, with my father’s enthusiastic blessing, the house went on the market in late summer, at absolutely the worst time possible.

That’s where I’ve been. There were lots of plans afoot back then, in February. I’m home now, picking up where I left off.

To underscore her sweater’s versatility and to highlight its design details, Marnie chose two weights of the merino and silk blend from Catherine Lowe Couture Yarns, CL I #5B and CL I #4B, in cardinal. And we’re delighted she did. Thanks, Marnie, for a gorgeous design and a great showcase for the yarns!

And speaking of Twist Collective, don’t miss the newest member of our team.

Photos © Marnie MacLean for Twist Collective.

Canvassing Jean’s students to get a sense of how much interest there might be in the workshop brought a response that overwhelmed the limits of a single session, so we added a second weekend that is now almost filled as well. In order to fill the last few remaining places, the Nihon Vogue students have very graciously allowed me to open the workshop to general registration. The session that has openings will take place the weekend of May 22 & 23 at the Holiday Inn in Issaquah WA; registration is first-come, first-served and closes April 2, 2010.

Because of the way the workshop was initially organized, registration will be a bit different than for a regularly announced workshop. There are two sessions, May 15–16 and May 22–23. The May 15–16 session is currently filled; however, if you can’t make the May 22–23 session but could make the May 15–16 session, you may sign up for the waiting list by sending me an email with the subject “Seattle Design & Fit, May 15/16.” Once the available openings for the May 22–23 session have been filled, you will be able to sign up for a waiting list for that session by sending me an email with the subject “Seattle Design & Fit, May 22/23.” In the event of a cancellation, I will contact the first name on the appropriate waiting list. As with regular workshops, registration is guaranteed upon receipt of the workshop fee.

A quick update: both weekend session of the workshop are full and each one has a short waiting list. We’ve added a third, mid-week session on Wednesday/Thursday May 19-20; registration closes April 12 for this session.

A  heartfelt thank you to the Tidewater Knitting Guild of Virginia! They’ve listed The Ravell’d Sleeve on their list of “Read Me” Books alongside the likes of Clara Parkes and Elizabeth Zimmermann, heady and very humbling company.

Knitting guilds are, for me, the unsung heroes in the “knitting renaissance” we have witnessed in the past fifteen or twenty years. Long before the Internet brought us social networking and made online communities like Ravelry and Planet Purl possible, the guilds encouraged and fostered all aspects of hand-knitting: the technical, the social and the charitable. A quick look at the home page of any guild’s website underscores their sustained commitment. That commitment and the sense of welcome, interest, skill and community that I feel so strongly whenever I am invited to speak at a guild never cease to amaze and impress me. I know that I am not alone in my appreciation of all that guilds have to offer; read, for example, what Kim Finley has to say about her discovery of her local guild and her enduring relationship with it.

When you rsvp, we’ll send directions.

Two elements distinguish this collection of yarns from any offered to hand-knitters: each yarn is dyed in the same color palette as the others; and each yarn is delivered to TCKW in a cobweb lace weight. The yarn is then custom prepared to your individual specifications with regard to weight, fiber content and color. We’re delighted that the complete collection is now available in The Shop.

Learn more about the yarns.

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