John was nice enough to pack up for me after the marketplace closed on Sunday, and I high-tailed it over to the Luminary Panel, the closing event for Sock Summit. It was lovely and amazing and, of course, huge:
The knitters, of course, were all knitting (I assume the crocheters were crocheting– most of the audience were knitters). It was a world of constant handwork. My friend Bahar is working on a sweater or afghan right now (I can’t remember which), and said she had been conflicted about bringing her big project with her, and not having something to knit. I offered to run downstairs and grab some needles and yarn– I certainly had both sitting in my booth that she could use!
The audience members were not the only ones knitting:
And a little closer, with identification:
While watching the luminaries, I turned the heel on my sock and knitted a miter in the mitered square cuff. They had 2 open microphones for questions, but cut off the questions just before I’d have had a chance. But no worries. While I was standing in line waiting my turn, I knitted the second mitered square, so even though I didn’t get to ask my question, it was time well spent.
I was conflicted about which question to ask. The serious one, which would have required some explanation, and therefore, wasn’t the best choice (the luminary panelists could not hear us very well, as the speakers were amplifying towards the audience, rather than the stage). That question would be directed at Anna Zilboorg, who is, relatively speaking, a self-described hermit, living on a mountain and creating and working her craft. That question is near and dear to my heart: “Living away from people, a little isolated if you will, how do you connect with the community of knitters? How do you get that sense of community that is so essential to creativity?”
But then it occurs to me now, that Anna Zilboorg probably does not find the collective consciousness essential to her creativity.
Or the quick, quippy one, for the entire panel:
“Aside from your children, what is your oldest work-in-progress, and what does it mean to you?”
That was prompted by Barbara Walker’s comment that the unhappy side of creating is the work that’s still unfinished, or the “have to finish” part. On the one hand, I often feel that an unfinished project is like a broken promise to myself “oh, I will knit such-and-so.” Unkept promises really suck, whether they are to my husband, to an organization, to a friend or family member, or to myself. This is why, although I have a marvelous stash for my available space, and I fully subscribe to the “yarn pantry” notion vocalized by the panel, the majority of my stash is sock or lace yarn, because I can absolutely identify, within 1 hour of being asked to cast on, a project to make with any skein of those yarns.
But in another way, an unfinished project is an opportunity to continue to improve and grow and get better at what I’m doing. If you remember the Fear Sweater, you may or may not remember that I had to re-learn how to purl in the course of knitting it, thanks to learning that, in fact, stockinette stitch is not supposed to look like ridges on the “wrong” side of the fabric. This enormous sweater, then, was knit partially with the purls wrapping the wrong way around the needle, and part with them going the correct way (that’s wrong and correct for the specific way that I knit– not the way that you knit!) But let me tell you, when you knit 14,000 stitches the “correct” way, you rarely fall back to bad habits!
Well, speaking of WIPs, here is the second sock, in progress, as of this morning:
There’s 1 more round of mitered squares, some ribbing at the cuff, a bind-off, and a bunch of happy seaming and weaving-in to do. Yes, I want it to be happy, so I will do it with a smile, even if it makes my teeth hurt.
I had happy tears quite a bit this weekend, and I’m so very, very grateful to the organizers of Sock Summit, and to everyone who came and made it such a success. Mostly, I was honored to be among such amazing people, whether luminaries or absolutely new knitters. I was so thrilled to meet everyone who came to the booth, or who I met just wandering around. It was definitely a successful weekend.