Knitting Idol Week at Twisted

One day last week, one of our regulars came in. Her name is Betsy McCarthy, and she’s a knitting celeb. She wrote the book Knit Socks! which, coincidentally, I first learned how to knit socks from. I have fawned over her many times – really, it’s because of her book that I was able to make my first few pairs of socks, the very first of which S still wears, even though they are huge, thick, and pink, brown, and green. They are his absolute favorite bumming-around-the-house socks. I also made a great striped pair for my dad, out of non-superwash wool, which went and got themselves felted. Ah, well.

So, anyway, in comes Betsy, with a friend I hadn’t met before. It was fairly busy, so it was a while before I could greet them fully, and when I did, who should this friend be, but Evelyn Clark! OMG! Evelyn Clark is my lace knitting guru. It is because of Evelyn Clark’s neck-down triangular shawls that I had a full-blown addiction to lace a few years ago. That I made 3 lace-weight Shetland Triangle shawls for my wedding, and then made a sock-yarn Shetland Triangle (pictured below). That I am able to encourage others to tackle lace, because, frankly, it’s just Not That Hard.

After making a bit of a fool out of myself by telling them how much of a knitting inspiration they both have been, I asked if I could take a photo for the blog. They acquiesced, because both are truly lovely women, and, without further ado, here’s a photo of two of my knitting heroines!

And, just so you know, we carry Betsy’s book, and a whole MESS of Evelyn’s patterns here at Twisted. We even have two of Evelyn’s shawls made up in the shop for inspiration! The Great Wall of Sock Yarn can help with projects inspired by both ladies – sock yarn works great for, obviously, the sock patterns in Betsy’s book, but also for Evelyn’s shawls.