November's Featured Designer: Vanessa Smith

The first time I saw the Indira Cowl, I spent 3 hours trying to see if i could make it with any of the yarn in my stash. Between the color used for the sample and the luxurious texture, it was love at first sight.

Vanessa Smith creates patterns that are all luxurious with texture. It speaks to my knitter's heart. No miles of stockinette here!

Vanessa is a Pacific Northwesterner currently living in Olympia, Washington. After a friend showed her how to cast on and complete a knit stitch, she taught herself everything else on the internet. As such, she has a whole section on her website with video tutorials for anyone else who may need some help!

Her sweaters currently go up to a size 53in bust. She has lots of gorgeous shawls, hats, mitten and cowls.

Give her Ravelry site a glance and we're certain you won't be disappointed! You can also find her on instagram @VanessaSmithDesigns.

October’s meeting was a busy one and filled with a lot of inspiration and information. And on an evening when the Twin Cities saw its first significant snowfall of the season, I bet we were all very happy and grateful to be able to meet together virtually from our homes.

Here’s the wrap up in case you missed it or need more information. A recording of the meeting is also available. (You must be logged into your MKG account to view the page. Once logged in, click on "Members' Area," click on the "Budgets, Minutes, and Bylaws" section at the bottom of the page, then click on "Previous Meeting Recordings.")

Debuting this month was our first virtual trunk show featuring Kara, the dyer behind the Kinetic Knitter from Minneapolis. During the trunk show, Kara showed off some of her recently dyed skeins, answered questions about her dying process, and shared where she gets inspiration for colorways. Check out Kara’s shop on Etsy: The Kinetic Knitter. Follow her on Instagram for updates about her shop and to see beautiful photos of her yarns.

This month’s program featured Lauren from Mother of Purl, and Lauren is also our featured designer this month. Lauren took us into her creative space in her home in Wisconsin and showed us how she works with roving to create inspired one of a kind skeins of yarn. She demonstrated two methods working with the same colors of roving, so we could see the difference in results. Using her blending board, Lauren demonstrated creating a rolag, and it was fun to watch her creative process from beginning to end.

If you couldn’t keep up with all of the steps (or want to try it yourself!), she recently published a how to on her blog: How to Make Rolags on a Blending Board

Ewetopia Fiber Shop is the yarn shop Lauren mentioned.

Check out Lauren’s shop page to see her patterns for sale. The cardigan she was wearing during the meeting and spoke about is her Spring Birch pattern, and it is free to download!

Another new feature of this month’s meeting was the break during the program and business portion. The idea stemmed from the Guild’s last board meeting when several members shared they had recently attended a virtual conference that featured breakout rooms. Since we all miss the casual opportunities to chat with each other in person at our meetings, we decided to try it out this month. We spent about 5 minutes in the randomly assigned breakout rooms sharing what we were working on or wearing. The feedback in the chat was very positive, so look for this to be a regular feature of our virtual meetings.

In other Guild news:

The bylaws have recently been updated. They will be added to the website and members will be able to make comments on them. Watch your email for more information.

Don’t forget to renew (or become a member!) for 2021.

There will be another charity knitting drive-through drop-off on Sunday, November 22 from Noon-3 pm at the Textile Center. This is your last opportunity to bring in knits for this year’s charity partners.

Anne, our librarian, has been getting in some requested books and magazines. Members can check out up to five books at a time. Go to the Textile Center Library page for more information.

Show and Tell:

We had several people show some recent finished projects.

Kate (KateCKnit)

Pattern: Lopi (Vol 17) Designs #19 & #20 by Guðný Pálsdóttir

Yarn: Ístex Plötulopi – Unspun Icelandic Lopi

Notes: Yarn held double, which gave me a gauge of 3.75sts/in. I adjusted stitch count to get size and yoke shaping to fit my husband.

Kelsey (kelseyanna)

Pattern: Greenwich Cape

Yarn: Harrisville Designs Highland 

Notes: An accessory for my Halloween wedding.

Deb (weissmntc)

Pattern: Pitter-Pat Scarf by Lisa Hannan Fox

Yarn: Big Bad Wolf Weepaca (grey Wolf Color way) and Cascade 220 Superwash (red)

Notes: 1^st time doing double knitting.

Nikky (FroggyGirl72)

Pattern: Sammal (by Joji Locatelli)

Yarn: Pop! Sock (Yarnery independent brand in an unnamed colorway)

Notes: #6 on a parade of finished objects since July 1.

Thanks to the 90+ participants in this month’s meeting. Looking forward to seeing you all at next month’s meeting on November 17. Until then, stay warm and happy knitting!

Our Designer Spotlight of the month is none other than our speaker, Lauren from Mother of Pearl.  Lauren's patterns are more an experience in becoming an intuitive knitter than a rule book. Her patterns allow you to express yourself in your work. All of her designs lay out the math to achieve any size you like! Knowledge is power and Lauren's patterns really help take your garment knowledge to the next level.

We love her thoughtful designs and how she incorporates her handspun into her designs.

Also I am obsessed with this knitted dress! KAL anyone?

Through her website, Lauren offers classes on spinning, she has a YouTube channel full of goodies and reviews of some of our favorite yarns, and a Patreon. Lauren's designs are also available on Ravelry. Her instagram handle is @MotherofPurll1.

Darci Kern (@DarciDoesIt) was gracious enough to recently sit down with me for a Zoom interview.

We talked about what was on our needles (her: a sweater of her own design; me: the Lucca Scarf by Julie Hoover), about our quarantine adventures in training our respective puppies, and she even humored me with a live unboxing of yarn that was aptly delivered while we were chatting (small batch skeins from Birch Hollow Fiber and Serendipitous Wool as part of their Yarn Journeys Book Club)!

But the majority of our conversation was about her Knitting While Black photo series on Instagram, which seamlessly weaves history, humor, activism, and art into posts which I personally look forward to every Sunday!

It all started in July with this photograph of noted suffragette Sojourner Truth. 

As we approached the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment — which gave white women the right to vote on August 18, 1920 — the famous portrait hit Darci a little differently than it had before.

She thought to herself, "I don't know that I've ever seen another historical photo or painting of a black person knitting. There's got to be more out there!"

So she started with a search on Google Arts & Culture. Of 1,300 search results, there were exactly 2 photos of Black people knitting. She was disappointed, though not all that surprised.

Darci learned to crochet as a child from her grandmother, who learned from her mother, who learned from her mother, and so on. She learned to knit from her mom about a decade later. "[Those search results are] not my experience of who I know that knits... There was no shortage of Black people working in fine art and knitting. There was just no representation."

And so, Knitting While Black was born.

In addition to the amplification of Black makers that came with the #diversknitty conversation that started on social media about a year ago, Darci wants to create actual art (through the re-creation of existing art) that features Black people, while shedding some light on little known histories in the process.

"Our labor — our place in the fiber industry — is literally in the fiber. In this portrait series, I'm trying to make it plain that Black people have been here, Black people have made [fiber arts] possible (you're welcome!), and just because we weren't depicted in the art back then doesn't mean we weren't doing it!"

The research skills that she honed as a Black History major at Kenyon College have been put to good use with this project, where she digs up primary sources and pieces together the larger historical context of the artworks and the periods from which they come.

Among the many under-told stories she's unearthed so far:

Mary Eliza Mahoney, the first Black nurse to be licensed in the United States:

Robert Smalls, born into slavery and who became a South Carolina Congressman:

And Archibald Motley, the Harlem Renaissance artist who painted the not-so-cleverly named Knitting Girl (and his self-portrait):

Though Knitting While Black was in part born out of an excess of time during quarantine, Darci doesn't see the project stopping any time soon.

She committed to making 12 re-creations as the first-ever grant recipient through the Be Seen Project, a "community for BIPOC artists and makers who are using their work to center marginalized voices and create social justice dialogue and change."

But despite having already met her post quota through the grant (and despite the pieces being quite laborious) Darci says, "I can't see what would come into my life that would make me not want to share history."

Each Sunday, Darci posts two photos to her Instagram stories and lets her followers vote on which piece she'll recreate next. From there, she figures out the technical details of how to recreate the look, giving special thought from everything to the props to the background.

For example, I adore her clever incorporation of a vibrant orange skein of yarn to recreate a braided crown, and the architectural backdrop of the St. Louis Arch in her re-creation of this 1880 oil painting by Polish artist Aleksander Gierymski.

This particular painting was one of many pieces of art that was stolen by the Nazis and went missing for decades. (In fact, it was only recovered 10 years ago, when it mysteriously showed up in an antique market in Northern Germany!)

Once Darci has the raw materials ready to visually re-create the artworks, she spends a full day researching the pieces and the eras; adding to the conversation through her incisive captions, which read like mini essays.

In the piece above, for example, Darci adds a bit of her own family history, paying respects to her grandfather who served abroad with the U.S. Army in a segregated Engineer General Services Regiment during WWII. (It's worth pointing out that he wouldn't even get the right to vote until 20 years after he served his country.)

And she brings it full circle by anchoring the pieces from the past in the present.

In the above, she starts her caption by talking about the literal looting of artwork by the Nazis. She rounds it all out, however, by bringing it back to the divisive buzzword:

Like [this painting], Black American's rights, freedoms, and most tragically — lives — are looted. This painting made it back to its home in 2010. We can’t ever get back the people we have lost, but we can keep fighting for the justice they deserve... In America we have many names for looting. Slavery. Jim Crow. Sharecropping. Mass Incarceration. Police Violence. Voter Suppression. LOOTING by another name.

Follow Darci on Instagram if you aren't already (bonus: her OT husband makes regular appearances to help folks out with their knitterly aches and pains!!)

And if you want more behind-the-scenes content, you can support Darci's work for as little as $3/month on Patreon!