Knitmania!

[Catherine Salter Bayar]

The past few months, I’ve been battling with an old nemesis of mine. It’s a certain word that for me is fraught with responsibility, discipline and dull routine: the word “should”. I should be working on the memoir I’ve been writing for a couple of years now, I should be blogging about daily life here in Turkey, I should be looking for steady work for my annual winter trip to the US. Or the more mundane duties: I should be sweeping the kilims on our floors, I should be cleaning up after our puppy Coban in the garden.

It’s already a month into autumn, but the obsession lessening my attention to all the above continues to dominate my days: knitting. If I could these days, I would do nothing but knit. This is not a new phenomenon. I learned to knit first as a child, then later in Denmark when I worked as a menswear designer and got to come up with intricate stitch patterns to adorn all sorts of cozy sweaters, several of which I kept, and for the last decade have graced the broad shoulders of my husband Abit during our cold winters here.

I did not knit these, but sketched the designs and made small swatches to send to our knitters in China and Korea. I not only kept some of the completed sweaters, but boxfuls of spools of luscious custom dyed Italian wools that had not been used up in sample making. Last spring, I started knitting a tulip lace pattern with one of these wools. The design started as a simple shawl, but when I realized that a mere rectangle was not much challenge even for a complex pattern – and I had a LOT of this yarn – the design evolved into a sweater coat. Not satisfied with one lace pattern, the sleeves, collar and trim are all other laces. Yes, I’m easily bored.

After that, but still in the lace wool mode, I knit another sweater for myself with another color of that lovely Italian yarn. By the time I finished it, the temperatures outside were hovering around 100 degrees F, so I switched to silk ribbons. However, lace patterns stayed a constant theme. In fact, after that multi-patterned sweater coat, I’ve been stuck doing variations of the same two lace patterns on everything else these past three months.

As much as I love knitting for myself (and yes, occasionally other members of our families), I do have an Etsy shop where I sell not only vintage textiles and jewelry, but small hand knit items. Last winter my knit theme was Caucasian geometric patterns. I only recently posted these mitts and hats because as much as I love knitting, I hate weaving in all the yarn ends these had! (What was I saying earlier about a certain battle with discipline?)

Kilim Motif Long Wool Mitts

In addition to my old sample yarn stash, I collected yarns from wonderful shops all over the world in my travels. My artist mom, who has a similar yarn obsession, though crochets with hers (the love of yarns, not to mention texture, color and pattern, is clearly hereditary), gifted me when my parents downsized their home with bags of yarns she too had gathered over the years. When I realized this summer that my growing bundles were about to keep me from ever getting my closet doors closed again, I decided that I’d combine all the bits and pieces into items that might sell online. In past 10 winters, I’ve sold more hats, shawls and shrugs in our Selcuk shop than I can count.

It has been great fun to watch shoppers decide which hat to buy, but until we reopen the shop – somewhere - next year, I’ll have to rely on the Internet. I miss the personal interaction with customers, but Etsy offers a far larger international audience than would ever wander into our corner of Turkey to shop.

Nazar Knit Cap

Autumn Leaves Handknit Bolero

I’m not the only woman in our Turkish family that knits; in fact, though most women here no longer weave, everyone knits or crochets. In the past, I’ve tried to employ local women to knit for me with limited success, since women here were either too busy to meet certain time frames or thought my designs would be better done in their favorite color schemes of perhaps hot pink and purple. (I’ve been told here my color sense is just too “sad”…not by my customers, but by my knitters!) But with work options slowing down in these faltering economic times, maybe any offer of an income, however small, might be more appealing this time.

Melek Lace Knit Cap

Cozy Anatolian Wool Lace Slippers

Abit is my enthusiastic champion of praise for every new hat or pair of socks that come off my needles. He’s also a willing lender of his close-cropped head when I need to see how a pattern is coming along (he looks far better in hats than I do, though he will not allow me to photograph him, understandably). He and I have been hatching a scheme for this coming winter. We’ll scrape together the funds for yarns, then ask a few women to make certain styles for us. Since the pattern for the socks I’ve been making came from a pair that my mother-in-law made, we’ll start with those and another fairly simple idea - wash cloths.

Handknit Turkish Wash Cloths

These in cotton are fun, but I’m really excited to be receiving a special Turkish yarn soon from my friend Figen Cakir of theknitbox.com. It’s called Sifa – a natural Turkish grown cotton that is ionized with silver to give it healing and soothing properties. She has other yummy yarns that she produces with local spinners and is developing her winter line of Turkish mohairs. Now if only I could stay home this winter and lose myself in all of them!

Several of the above are for sale on our Etsy site: www.bazaarbayar.etsy.com. Knitters, please check out Figen's yarns at www.theknitbox.com!

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