Beth Whiteside, teaching, editing and designing in the fiber arts world, shared her story for the first time on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird.
Beth says her parents immigrated to the US in the early 50’s and her parents were very self-sustained, she and her mom did a lot of crafts together, one of those crafts being knitting. A friend, Katie, encouraged her to knit, taking her to a knit shop and getting her hooked up with a Lopi Sweater. Knitting became a hobby.
When Beth worked in Boston, working as a quality assurance engineer testing software she and her with her co-workers discovered that a bunch of them were knitters, it sounds like lunchtimes became knit groups, and sometimes included and adventures to yarn shops. She enjoyed color and bounced around with all that could be done with knitting. Her mother referred to her as a ‘Jack of all Trades’ with her craft, not as a bad thing, but as there was so much to experience. [Read more…]
school the children are taught to knit, but her household was a crafting one. Her mother knit jumpers (what they call pullovers) that she wore to school. Her mother’s family was very busy, sewing costumes for the big theater productions locally. She dreamed of being a textile designer but was told she couldn’t draw at about an age 13. She listened to that teacher and left that dream behind until about 17. She was encouraged to go back to a career counselor who said when she was tested earlier, that she had scored very high in art, so she crammed and applied to art colleges and got in. Ursula now believes that if anyone believes they are creative and wants to pursue it, they should, the are only limited by what they believe they can or cannot do. 
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