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Athena, goddess of handcrafts and wisdom, will guide your odyssey through the knitting universe.
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Lizbeth Upitis Biography
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1946
|  | LIZBETH LYNN LEWIS UPITIS
Born July 2, 1946 in Canton, OH
Miami University 1964-67 B.A. in Literature
Moved to New York City for graduate school at Columbia University in Library Science, but dropped out and began working with IBM as a Systems Programmer/Writer Analyst. (I was programming, but also writing manuals, for most programmers didn't write.) Lived in Manhattan 2 wonderful, crazy, war protest years.
Two things happened in NY that changed my life. Walking through my apartment one day, I heard a voice say, "You should be a weaver." My reply was, "Yes, but where do I learn to do that?" So I knew I should look for a school to learn weaving. Also, I went to Woodstock for the weekend and stayed 6 days. When I came back, I REALLY knew I couldn't work for IBM any longer.
So in the fall of 1969 I set off in a VW van to check out the country and figure out where to go to school to learn to be a weaver. A stop in Logan, Utah at Utah State University felt good and felt like the right place.
But I traveled on... and on for about a year... to the rest of Western US, Europe, Singapore, India, back to Europe, nesting in Germany for a few months and working as a putzfrau (cleaning lady) in a junior high. Everywhere I went, I collected textiles - that was about all that was in my backpack upon return.
But Logan and the weaving program there stayed in my mind, and I came back and entered there in the fall term of 1970. Studied, learned weaving, spinning, dyeing and entered the graduate program for MFA.
There I met my husband, Alvis Upitis, who was in the MFA program in photography. He is Latvian and I first saw the beautiful mittens in a big box full of mittens his mother had knit. We married in 1972 and he got a position teaching in MPLS beginning the fall of that year. I left USU without completing my degree, for I had begun the program after he had.
We have two children: Andris born in 1974 and Alise born in 1976.
I returned to school at the University of Minnesota in 1979 working towards the MA degree in Design, Housing and Human Behaviors school. (New name for Home Ec) This was the third graduate program begun, third dropped.
While there I became friends with Sue Baizerman and Karen Searle who had the publishing firm: Dos Tejedoras. They asked me to write the book: Latvian Mittens. So formal schooling stopped once again while I learned the Latvian language (all source material was in Latvian), learned to knit the mittens, and wrote the book and supervised the translation. I knew how to knit, but had knit nothing except a couple of baby sweaters for a dozen years; I had been busy weaving. Karen and Sue suggested I take a workshop with Elizabeth Zimmermann, and I spent a luscious week with her at a workshop in St. Paul. She had a wonderful, liberating effect on all my work and life.
Book came out in fall of 1981 and I hosted a large show of the mittens in February 1982 (or next Feb. after publication) at the University of MN, gathering more than 160 pairs from collections all over the country.
Began many workshops on mittens after that, and became friends with Elaine Rowley and David and Alexis Xenakis. When they started Knitter's magazine, they asked me to write a column on ethnic and historic roots of knitting: Other Places, Other Times. I began working so closely and helping on so many aspects, that I became Assistant Editor at some point.
But after four years, I realised that I had been working so hard and at such length, that I barely knew what my kids had done during that time. My son was about to enter high school and I knew I couldn't miss those four years. They were the last full exposure of his life. I also knew I couldn't just partly back out of Knitters. I was so involved, I didn't know how to partly withdraw.
So I left the magazine after four years and focused on being a mother and on my garden... and could once again knit mittens, as there had been no time for that while working with Knitters.
Traveling continued as well, at first as a family. Australia, Europe, all over the US, but especially Hawaii. Then I began to travel alone again because I started studying taiji quan (T'ai Chi Ch'uan) and went to Europe and Taiwan for workshops.
The second, enlarged edition of the Latvian Mitten book was put together and published in 1997.
Things were beginning to fall apart at home, so I went to test my wings for four months in 1998 to Europe, India and China. Again I studied textiles, especially in India and visited artisans in their home. We got a divorce in August of 1998 and moved to Wisconsin.
January 1999 I did a month tour of workshops from WI to CA. September 1999, I did a series of workshops on the E. Coast. I've been a teacher at Stitches East, West and the one in Portland, and was a keynote speaker at the second Stitches on the East coast.
I was in San Diego working with metals as textiles last winter and will return for more work this winter and spring. I'm weaving, knitting and doing basketry with metal and love it, for it moves and I can manipulate it, but then it stays where I put it!
I've always had a fascination with 3-D work. I always design feeling I'm inside the garment or work, and building it around me. With this, I'm moving around the 3D piece as I make it.
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