My mother taught to knit when I was about 10. I’ve just taught my 5 (excuse me, almost 6) year-old daughter and my 10 year-old son to knit.
Even though I’ve gone for long periods of time without knitting, I always come back to it. Right now, I’m in a knitting groove and I want to knit all the time. Maybe the cool summer has something to do with it.
Like most knitters I’ve got bags of yarn stashed in more than a few places around the house and I have several projects on the go. I’m always attracted to new patterns and yarn. I love colour and texture. And I can’t wait until August when a few of my fellow knitters and I are driving up to Listowel for the Yarn Factory Outlet annual tent sale. We’re talking yarn by the garbage bag full.
I’ve long thought of knitting and yarn craft as one of the original slow activities. And like the growing small, sustainable, slow food movement, we yarn crafters can also trace the provenance of our yarn. Happily, in Ontario there are many places where you can source yarn right, well, from the source. These are farms where they raise the animals for the fleece, mill the yarn, and sell it. One of my favourite places is Philosopher’s Wool (www.philosopherswool.com) in Inverhuron. I love their colourways, but mostly I love the way the yarn smells because the lanolin isn’t milled out of the wool.
So what does knitting and yarn have to do with Monforte? Well, sheep, of course. That, and Monforte is going to do stuff with yarn and fibers like sell wool and display fiber art. And who knows what else.
We think of it as closing the circle. Knitting in the round. You get the picture.