Getting Back to Feeling like a Knitter - Not just Knitting

Crawling out of the knitting hiatus I suffered this summer has been slow and painful. Without my knitting being top of mind I can't just pick it up and go. like I'm used to doing.

Without taking advantage of all the opportunities to knit each day there are no satisfying FO's.

With no knitting or even thoughts thereof, there is no knit blogging or the attendant enjoyment of reading about the knitting conquests of the knitters I follow on line.

Without day to day knitting and gratification I found my desire to scheme and plan future projects or activities also evaporated.

Of course just letting the knitting go wasn't an option so I have just been white knuckling my way back into it trying not to be scared at the prospect of maybe not making it at all.

So yesterday while at the library to get poodle grooming reference books I nipped over into the knitting section and came home with some great books to flip through in the next couple of weeks.

I also picked up Vogue Knitting Fall 2010. Magazines are only loaned for a week at a time but I've never found a current issue before this so it feels like a great stroke of luck.

This morning I took some time to check out the Vogue Knitting Live show scheduled for New York City in January. I had thought I might go down and take a class or two. The list of "knitterati" designers that will be teaching is formidable plus there will be a marketplace plus its in New York so its got to be great whatever happens.  In the end the only class that really appealed to me (at least on my first flip through the lengthy schedule) is on short rows and is being taught by Fiona Ellis. Fiona lives in my neighbourhood. I know she is a great teacher because I've taken a couple of her classes. In fact I'll see her tonight at the DKC meeting.  Anne Hanson and Veronique Avery are also offering classes that caught my eye but I've already taken lessons from both of them too and part of the fun would be experiencing teachers of note that are still unfamiliar to me. If I can't find a couple of classes that interest by designers I'm not yet familiar with I may rethink the New York idea but at least I'm dreaming and I feel good about that.

The DKC meeting is of course another great thing on tap today in my little knitting world. (I missed the September meeting because for some reason I thought it was a week later and came very close to going down on the wrong night.) I'm going to help with the portion of the meeting when Elise Duvekot's designs will be modeled. Hopefully I'll knit en route to and from the meeting as well!

All this, is making me feel more like a knitter than I have in weeks and weeks. Its making me realize that just because I may be knitting with my hands sufficient to achieve progress on something, feeling like a knitter seems to be dependent on what's going on in my head and my day around the topic of knitting. Just the knitting itself, it seems, isn't enough.

Anyway, if you're in the GTA, why not come down to the DKC meeting tonight! Maybe I'll see you there! Wherever you are while you're reading this, thanks for doing so!