Maker Faire Austin 2008!

I spent the weekend before last in Austin Texas promoting the Virgin Knitters project. I taught about 20 new people to knit and they all promised to send their first scarf in to the collection. It was so much fun to meet all these new people and talk about other people's interesting projects too.


Here's all the Lucky Scarves I've collected so far all laid out for display. You wouldn't believe how many people wanted to know if they could buy a scarf!


Matthew from Alabama was my very first knitter at Maker Faire!


This was the most knitters I taught at one time.


And this was the fastest knitter, see her finished scarf here.

Also, sadly, I did not get a chance to teach Bill Murray to knit. He must have gone by when all of my chairs were full :)

Looking back, I wish I had taken a picture of every knitter. There were so many great stories and people to remember: Zach the boy wonder knitter, the chemistry major thinking about changing his major to textiles, the woman wanting to knit socks to help her sons itchy legs, the mother daughter knitting team, the man knitting the fishing net, the girl from Nevada, and of course all the folks who said they'd come back and then did!

Kari Steihaug

I'm in love!

Norwegian artist Kari Steihaug has a lovely project called Archive; The Incomplete and Forlorn. I can't link to the specific page on her website (I hate that!), but I've posted the two pictures of the project here. She is collecting pieces of unfinished knitting. They are really lovely. There is also a component of the project called The Tatters of old pieces of worn knitting (see her site above for these).



I love that the Virgin Knitters project is sort of the knitting precursor to these two ideas. First you have the pieces about learning to knit, then you have the ones that the knitter never finished (you know we all of some of those), and finally the finished knitted garments after they are used and used and used....