Carol

Once in Moscow, while visiting our Russian relatives, I took my children to see a ballet performance. It wasn’t a famous ballet from a famous company in a famous theater like Bolshoi. It was something modern and experimental performed by young dancers. The audience wasn’t very enthusiastic. They rarely clapped and never cheered a difficult dance move. They looked bored and uninterested. My twelve-year old daughter who had been going to a ballet class at the time looked at me with horror in her face: “Why don’t they clap? Don’t they understand how difficult it is?” She knew from the inside about the sweat, blood, and innumerable hours that every move required. For that reason she couldn’t understand the audience’s coldness and disinterest and tried to clap and cheer as loudly as possible to compensate for it.

This is exactly how I feel when I see Carol’s work. Carol (seajean on Ravelry) is an amazing knitter who makes mostly shawls. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and comes to Florida every winter.

Sadly, the only place you can see her work is my website. Because Carol doesn’t take pictures of her work and doesn’t post them on Instagram or Ravelry. Yes, in our age of selfies and non-stop sharing Carol doesn’t seem to need validation from strangers that much. Which makes her an even bigger figure in my book.

Yet, I think that knitters must know their “unsung heroes”.  Not because these people do something else important in life – charity work, scientific discoveries, successful business – but just because they knit things really well. After all, knitting is a craft and craftsmen always honored the most skillful among them. Nowadays everything must have an underlying socio-political agenda, even knitting, as I was surprised to discover lately. Well, I don’t have any other agenda as to validate a remarkable and rare workmanship.

I myself hardly ever make shawls and avoid working with lace weight yarn. However, it doesn’t make me less filled with admiration of Carol’s work because I know how difficult and time consuming it is. And, like my daughter many years ago in Moscow, I try to clap as loudly as I can to try to compensate for the audience’s silence.

Unfortunately, this year I had an opportunity to take pictures of only one of Carol’s shawls - Victoria shawl by Alexis de Gregorio on Ravelry. Carol’s version has the same bright color as the original and was knit from lace-weight silk. Please share my admiration of the craftsmanship! Making of such a shawl takes lots of love and skills.

In conclusion, if by any chance you know of a skilled knitter not represented on the social media, please send me their information and pictures. I would love to feature this person here and cheer as loudly as I can for her artistry and craft.