Blog about someone in the fibre crafts who truly inspires you. There are not too many guidelines for this, it’s really about introducing your readers to someone who they might not know who is an inspiration to you. It might be a family member or friend, a specific designer or writer, indie dyer or another blogger. If you are writing about a knitting designer and you have knitted some of their designs, don’t forget to show them off. Remember to get permission from the owner if you wish to use another person’s pictures.
I’ve always had an odd definition of hero. I wonder if someone didn’t explain hero/person you admire oddly to me at a young age. As a child one of the annual school essays that we had to write along with how we spent our summer vacation was to talk about someone you admired. Both were irritating and hard to write an essay about. Summers mostly because they were boring, I was more likely to travel to Middle Earth, Camelot, or Narnia than take more than one trip to see family in Canada.
The hero essay was hard because I always thought it meant you wanted to be like this person, pretty much become this person and follow their path. If you didn’t face the same hardships, or walk the same roads how could you admire them. I don’t remember when I realized this was not quite right, possibly the year I wrote about Eowyn.
So when I think about my knitting hero the first thing I realized was that I didn’t have one. I had a lot of designers whose patterns I loved, a lot of blogs whose posts I read, plenty of favorites on Ravelry, and so many favorite shops on etsy. So I started thinking about what made each person different in hopes of narrowing down the list. And I realized no that wouldn’t work either.
What made me like then beyond the color of this yarn/fiber, the shape of this or that pattern, the clarity of their posts or photos was a bit universal. One of the biggest facts in my liking an admiring was that they were out there doing this at all. I am just dipping my toe into things like more pattern writing. I have had my etsy shop a couple years now but I’m trying to diversify and I still remember when I got my first sale. I remember the first time someone I didn’t know sent me a picture of their finished Justice League scarf.
So to anyone who’s started a blog, put up a pattern, dyed a yarn, created a spinning batt, then was willing to share it to the world I think that’s plenty to make you a hero to someone. I received a note a while back from someone who told me my posts had inspired them knitting, and all I could think was me? I’m no one special, those other guys, they are the real inspirations.
And then I thought, what if I had sent an email to the first etsy shop that made me wonder if I would ever be able to make my own yarn, the first designer that had a pattern that meant I had to learn something new/difficult to make it happen, the first blogger to talk about their adventures in knitting at knitting events, the first person I saw knitting on the subway. The first person who liked something I had made, or was in the process of making. I learned to knit on a whim, but I have stayed for so many reasons.
Look at these people: these human beings. Consider their potential. From the day they arrive on the planet, and blinking step into the sun. There is more to see than can ever be seen. More to do than – no, hold on… Sorry, that’s the ‘Lion King’. But the point still stands.
Everyone who has picked up a pair of needles, combed some fleece, spun some yarn, dyed some yarn, wrote a great pattern, blogged, come out to a show, joined ravelry and proved that knitting and all it’s friends are here to stay are a hero even if they don’t know it yet.
Knitting
3kcbw, 3kcbwday3
