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We just had a visitor come through our knitting class. She told us that she was a knitter but that she could "never do what we were doing!" And all of the students exclaimed at once that of course she could!
So what are we doing that looks so complicated but is so based in common sense that we think this newcomer could totally handle it?
Well, here's what we're doing in the knitting room this week: Top Down Stranded Yoke Sweaters (without a pattern). Sounds intense, right? Sounds like you need a lot of experience? Nope! Really, all we are doing is the knit stitch and increasing.
We're starting at our necklines, learning how to do the knit stitch with one color in each hand (stranded knitting), and then we are increasing as we work beautiful designs down to the widest part of our shoulders (the "yoke"). Since we each have different body sizes and proportions, and we each fancy different types of designs, we are going off-road and making up our own sweater patterns as we go.
Folk Harp Class with instructor Lorinda Jones[/caption]
The four f's of why I continue to teach at John C Campbell Folk School.
I can teach music lessons on a weekly basis, twenty minutes from my house, so why would I drive 6.5 hours, sleep in a different bed, and not have continual access to internet for a week?! Because when I pull in the drive to the Keith House Community Room, I get the feeling one gets when they have returned home after a long absence. When I open the door in the mornings to the music studio and see the light streaming through the doors, highlighting the wood of the instruments, and I look out at the beautiful view of the mountains, it is like nothing else I can describe. And after just a couple of days with my students, it is like being reunited with family, even though we may have only just met on Sunday.
This year was no different. Well, it is always different, but I experienced those same feelings of being home, being united, and being inspired.
For the ten students who...
