Cat Bordhi
Friday Harbor, WA USA
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Books |
Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles
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| Specialty |
I am a textile artist, and have worked in soft sculpture, clothing design and fabrication, spinning, and knit design.
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| Contact Information: |
No mailing address is available...
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| Favorite Knitting Book |
Knitting From the Top Down
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| Favorite knitting reference |
Barbara Walker treasuries
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| Classes |
I teach a variety of sock- knitting workshops which include toe-up and top-down aproaches to knitting socks on two circular needles, countless nifty tricks for symmetry and smoothness and ease of knitting, as well as some very effective ways of generating abundant tantalizing designs. I also teach writing workshops, and find that there are common strands in both knitting and writing workshops!
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| Biography |
I learned to crochet first, on the bank of the Eel River, while my brothers and sisters were catching bullfrogs and bluebelly lizards. After crocheting miles of chain I switched to knitting, and knit half a red sweater and then half a blue sweater. No, they did not go together to make one whole sweater. I continued to avoid directions and figure things out for myself until the winter of 1972 when I found myself stranded on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest with an interlibrary loan copy of Barbara Walker's hard-cover first edition of Knitting From The Top Down, knitting needles, and a bundle of vegetable-dyed fingering-weight hand-spun one-ply yarn. I proceeded to knit my first whole sweater and merrily made one sleeve with one design and the other with a different design, combined lace and intarsia, broke rules right and left with impunity, and never sewed even an inch of underarm seam, thanks to Barbara Walker, whose middle name I still am sure must be Einstein.
Finally a small airplane landed and swept me and my sweater back to civilization, where I gained weight so I could not longer fit into the wonderful sweater. However, I had learned that there were no boundaries in knitting and no patterns needed either, just a continuous strand of yarn pulling loops through loops, and I have knit ever since, except for the decade when I did not knit. In the past few years I have been somewhat obsessed with sock-knitting, and wrote Socks Soar on two Circular Needles to share my discoveries with the rest of you. At present I continue to knit, am working on a second "sock plus surprises" book, and am also halfway through a full-length novel, which in spite of my attempts to behave myself, has knitting springing up in the oddest places. This novel, with the working title of Ben's Story, will be published in early 2003 by Namaste Publishing of Vancouver, B.C. I promise it will lure a lively bunch of new knitters into our craft, although they may be in trees. . . wait and see. And I wish you the simple peace of yarn sliding silently past your warm fingers . . .
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| What is your knitting mantra? |
the numbers that make patterns - reflecting one another in symmetry, sliding into one another, etc.
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| What inspires you? |
color, texture - especially in nature, as I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, on an island.
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| Confess - when it comes to hiding your yarn, what are your secrets? |
The truth is that yarn is house insulation you can wear . . . and my house is well-insulated!
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| What is your idea of knitting heaven? |
A supremely comfortable chair that exercises me while I knit.
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| How many UFO's (Unfinished Objects)do you have going at once? |
an average of seven
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| My yarn stash equals the GNP (Gross National Product) of ... |
Liechtenstein and Andorra combined
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| What knitting commandment do you most like to break? |
I didn't know there were any knitting commandments.
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| What frequently-asked knitting question do you hate to answer? |
I am delighted to answer all questions - and the most frequently asked become the easiest to answer.
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| What is your most dog-eared knitting reference? |
Barbara Walker treasuries
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| What is the most unusual place you've ever knitted? |
In my kayak anchored in a kelp bed.
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| How long can you last without knitting? |
I went ten years once, but normally less than 24 hours.
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| If you were stranded on a deserted island, what one yarn, book, or gizmo would you want along? |
How about a couple of amorous, well-fed sheep (so they can make more), a perfect drop spindle, and a collection of Addi Turbo circs.
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| What do you want your knitting epitaph to say? |
It is the silence in the space between fibers that satisfies.
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| Who would you like to greet you in knitting heaven? |
Elizabeth Zimmerman
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