Hello to everyone! This is Meg, writing to you all for the first time. I’m sorry this post took so long, I had a family emergency right after the announcement. 2021 has a terrible sense of timing.
I’ve seen the comments from people wanting to know more about me, so let me introduce myself in the classic internet style, with ten bullet points about me and my knitting history:
- I learned to knit at some point as a child, but everyone who was there is a little foggy on when exactly, and who taught me. I remember when I was little learning that my grandfathers knew how to knit, but only socks. They had both learned during the second world war, although neither had continued to knit after.
- By the time I was in high school, I was going to yarn stores in the mall and bringing knitting to most of my classes. I used to pick up spare yarn and needles to teach others at school, and one of my favourite moments was one of the high school jocks running up to his friends with his first few rows of a scarf, excitedly exclaiming “look what I made!!!”
- I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the gendered sociology of knitting. Although I was drawn to the topic by memories of my grandfathers knowing how to knit, I’m eternally grateful to the person that left their copies of “No Idle Hands” by Anne Macdonald and “Canada Knits” by Shirley Scott at the used bookstore in my small university town.
- I’m Canadian. I moved to the east coast of Canada for university, and have found the Atlantic ocean impossible to leave. I’m really passionate about Canadian fibers, yarns and dyers, so expect to see a lot more of them in the future.
- Due to a complete coincidence (I was in the UK for summer courses, and I broke a needle on my flight), my first ever knitting convention was Knit Nation in London in 2010. I got to meet a whole bunch of really cool people I had only ever seen on the internet before.
- I worked at a now-gone yarn store in Toronto. That’s where I really met Kate, and where I started spending more time with the Ontario knitting community.
- I have met many of my closest friends through the online yarn community. I’m so thankful for the power of the internet to bring people together around the world, especially those living in rural and socially isolated areas.
- The first time I met Amy was at the Make Wear Love retreat. I drove down the coast by myself, slightly worried that I only knew a small handful of people that would be there. While at the retreat, I got to meet a bunch of people that are now my close friends.
- I cast on my first Customfit sweater (the Drumlin Cardigan) in September 2015, and basically haven’t looked back since. Since then, I have become a Sweater Knitter. I’ve knit dozens of sweaters, almost all of them Customfit. I love the flexibility of Customfit: I can either generate one of the existing patterns, generate a pattern and then make some adjustments to make it my own, or mash up a sweater pattern by another designer with the numbers generated by Customfit.
- My full time job is getting computers to do math for me, which makes Customfit a natural fit in my life. Confession: while at the MWL retreats, I got to ask Amy some questions about how things worked from a technical standpoint. I went home and learned about those programming languages with the dream of one day getting to work with her on it. Life has some strange twists.
Hopefully that helps you all get a sense of who am I! I’m so excited to get to know all of you, and continue Amy’s wonderful work. I want to thank everyone in advance for your patience while I learn the ropes, like learning how to post here!
In terms of what’s next for Customfit – I hope to have a post ready with a roadmap for you soon, but I want to reassure everyone that things will look the same over the next few months while I work on some backend changes.
Meg standing on the rocks in Sebasco at a Make. Wear. Love Retreat wearing a long version of the Spruce Point Pullover
Amy Herzog Designs