The Complete Surprise by Cully Swansen proves that the classics taught to us years ago are still pertinent to us on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird.

Cully Swansen is very modest about how he learned to knit. He is the grandson of master knitter Elizabeth Zimmermann and son of knitting designer Meg Swansen, so we may assume they sat him down and taught him. He recalls like the rest of us, the stories Elizabeth shared with us of learning to knit a few stitches at a time. He says he learned while attending a Waldorf school when they lived in Los Angeles for a year. The focus is on the arts, and he worked in languages, arts and knitting. He knit an entire doll! Much later, about ten years ago, he came back to it. He had been to college and had a career, but when he broke his leg and realized this was the perfect time to pick it up again and work on it while he was healing.  [Read more…]

Craft Yarn Council‘s Mary Colucci and Jenny Bessonette joined us on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird to share big new plans for this year’s I Love Yarn Day happening October 15th.  [Read more…]

James Cox Knits for the Man in your life, was today’s HOT TOPIC on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird. This was his first visit to a podcast, we’re so tickled about this First Date!

James Cox called into the Yarn Thing podcast from Palm Springs, California, which is a ways away from where he grew up in Kansas. His family was very crafty, he says, his mom taught them everything from knitting and crochet to quilting. One day as an adult in the line at Woolworths he saw a booklet to Learn to Knit, stepped out of line and collected what he needed to start. That first project was a Fair Isle sweater that he still wears.

The mention of Woolworths kind of dates this story, he admits that was more than 30 years ago. He’s always been a fan of fashion and understands construction or how things are put together. He sees knitting as 3-dimensional grid in rows and columns of stitches, admires how things are finished. He found a local yarn shop that was helpful and nice, continued to design things for himself, and they led him into mosaic. During this time, he worked in the advertising industry which approached as an art director. It’s apparent that he has that detail orientation that successful designers and knitters have from his background and formal training.

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From Modeknit Yarns, Annie Modesitt visited Yarn Thing with Marly Bird today!

Annie says she learned to crochet as a child, at about age 7. Women who worked for her dad in his coat factory, would give her crochet lessons on Saturday mornings. She learned to knit as an adult. She lived in New York, making decent money, and transferred to Dallas, and learned to knit at the going away party before that move. She continued to knit while at work in a very cold, windowless room waiting to process. That time (she likens to prison) was practice to perfect her skills.

When she left that job, she found work knitting for designers, eventually working for a bit of time at Vogue Knitting. The pay was not as good as when she lived in New York earlier but realized the truth that if you’re happy with your life, you don’t have to earn a lot of money. She said she went everywhere and did a lot of knitting, including for Broadway shows, and designers like Marc Jacobs. Annie continued to design, write books, and contribute to magazines and now she is has a yarn company, Modeknit, which is indie-dyer business. She says she’s pretty much the luckiest person she knows. [Read more…]