Inspired….

Some times you realize that the only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself.  Last Thursday, we drove out to Tammy & Scott’s new yarn shop that opened this last spring. This is the same lady who organized the knit group that met the day after the biggest blizzard last Winter. Soon after arriving at the shop. a young couple walked in and the lady sat down and introduced herself as Bethany and we were instantly inspired. Bethany’s hubby made sure she was ok and then he went to go do his thing and said he would come pick her up after the knit group. Bethany brought out her project and we all were in awe. She was knitting a round lace table cloth for her dinning table. She had some questions for the shop owner on how to pick up some dropped stitches near the point she was using DPNs (double pointed needles for you non knitters).  Bethany’s lace was just beautiful. As we talked I was just beyond inspired with how she see’s life. I struggle with some difficult patterns and I will admit I have been intimidated by some projects but I won’t be anymore since meeting Bethany. I haven’t mentioned yet that Bethany is visually impaired. I guess that’s the politically correct term for being blind. It was hard to wrap my head around the idea of knitting lace without being able to see what I’m doing. I can barely do simple stockinette stitch without peeking.  Susan looked at Bethany’s project and suggested that she could put a life line in above the dropped stitches and create a provisional cast on so you could reverse the pattern from there to repair the dropped stitch area. Within a few minutes the life line was there to protect the dropped stitches from going any further and Susan handed the project back to Bethany.
We wanted a picture of her knitting it and she laughed and said I cant knit it like this because you handed it to me backwards. I don’t even know how long it would take me to figure out if my project was backwards if I couldn’t see it.

The more we talked the more inspired she made me feel. She has her masters degree, she  teaches school for visually impaired and it just seems that she doesn’t let life intimidate her. We had a talk about what happens when you close your eyes and we all think it’s black, Bethany cant see colors so she said it’s void or something like that.  We sometimes take for granted what we have and she never thought about how hard it is because it’s all she knows.

I inquired if she was a spinner and she laughed and said she hadn’t thought about it yet. I talked to her about the book Spinning for speed and softness by Paula Simmons.
I described how in her book how Paula changed her spinning style to gain speed and softness after seeing a room full of blind spinners making perfect singles. We shared contact info I offered to teach her to spin if she ever wanted to learn.

here is my latest spinning project. Eight ounces of Rambouillet that I plan to Navajo ply. I bought the fiber from Jen AKA Moonlightbaker

More about what I’m reading and my knitting soon…..

Life is Good