Knitting with Brooke A.

I approach my students with the same attention to detail that I approach my own knitting. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to knit something and it always end up turning out wrong no matter how much you try to understand the pattern. Most of what I teach is how to read the fabric the knitting creates and how to improve your own method. I would have never been able to do this with out all of my own experiences and all the experiences that lead me to where I am now. I have been raising my daughter, being a wife and all the while knitting and challenging myself to become better for no other reason than for myself. I took on small projects, like baby sweaters, mending store bought sweaters, making blankets and built from there. Many times I would be at a stand still and would to go to a local yarn shop or find knitting reference books to figure out what I needed to do to fix my problems. Mostly, half of my time knitting was spent ripping (frogging; as knitters say) out my work and picking all my stitches back up. My life as a sergeant in the Army gave me a “can do” attitude that helped me to never give up. Now, that doesn’t mean my knitting didn’t ever go in a “time out” basket. However, one thing the Army encourages in the their enlisted ranks is to find a way to get a job done with the end in mind. So, that was me, just jumping in, not being afraid to do so. I mean what was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like I was jumping out of plane. (Yes, I did do that, too, while I was in the Army.) During this time I was also homeschooling our daughter and when you do this it forces independent study and good research traits. The answer is always out there somewhere and yes, I did believe. Along came another life shift. This time my daughter would be taking less of my time as she was going to college and my husband would no longer be active duty. I wandered into my local craft store where I knew the yarn manager and mentioned that my life was going to drastically change. I saw her excitement plain as day on her face. “Why not put in an application?”, she asked. I did, and she promptly retired within the next few months. The teaching opportunity almost, literally fell in my lap. But, the beauty of it all was that I was willing to accept yet another life change and as a result found my passion.