Spycraft Knitting: Simon's SOE Vest, and what's coming up

Hello friends,

I hope all is well where you are, and that you are managing to keep body and soul together as we watch these troubling times unfold around us.

Our recently produced show, Spycraft, has turned out to be unfortunately topical – not something we expected when we began writing it in 2020.  The script follows the adventures of a 50-something woman, Audette Whitlock – who happens to be a hidden Jew – as she spies on the Nazis in Occupied France during WWII for Churchill’s secret army, The Special Operations Executive (SOE).  She battles fascism and antisemitism using her wits, mathematical and coding prowess, and knitting.

And now, here we are today, dealing with fascism, antisemitism, and ‘othering’ of all kinds. The fight never ends, I suppose. So, we soldier on.  In this newsletter I’m picking up where I left off in detailing the work that went into the knitting of Spycraft.  Not just the techniques or craft of the stitching, but the thoughts and process behind the choice of images and coded messages embedded in the knitting of the show’s costumes and props.

I’ll pick up the thread here, so to speak, with the vest I designed for the character of Simon Rawlings, played by Blair Williams, a veteran SOE operative tasked with heading a covert operation to Cherbourg to uncover intelligence about Hitler’s construction of “The Atlantic Wall,” designed to repel any Allied invasion. Simon’s backstory was that he had just returned from a botched operation in Occupied France where the majority of his espionage team had been rounded up by the enemy due to their lack of experience and training.

As with Gerald’s Lions waistcoat, we decided to make this a Fair Isle piece.  It would have that home-made look, and because it would be using a maximum of two colours per row, my collaborator and knitting saviour, Lynne Pascoe of Sheep’s Clothing, would be able to knit it on her knitting machine. (During this time, I was pulling my hair out knitting a form-fitting intarsia sweater for another character, so I was unavailable – more on that later).  Keeping with the same approach as Gerald’s Lions, the pattern used a couple of large repeating representational icons to pull focus away from the code, which was embedded in the smaller, seemingly decorative five-row motifs. As we were looking for a good range of colour and a gauge that matched what was available in the 1940s, we went with Sport weight yarn from Briggs & Little, made of 100% Canadian wool.

The first decision was to settle on what those large icons would be. Because of Simon’s connection with France, and because he would be wearing the vest in Cherbourg, I went with the Fleur de Lis for the first icon.

The SOE, being a paramilitary organization, had its own crest which featured a parachute and a dagger.

I really wanted to use that crest, but of course, it wouldn’t be very wise for a spy to wander around enemy territory broadcasting his profession by wearing an SOE crest. So, it had to be hidden. The science of hiding messages in plain sight is called steganography – and this is where the fun is.  I came up with a simplified knitted version of the parachute and dagger, inverted it, and then alternated right-side up and upside-down versions of it. Here are a couple of sketches of some different colour ways:

Next was inserting the coded message into the sweater.  As with Gerald’s Lions, I used basic five-row Fair Isle motifs, each one corresponding to a specific letter of the alphabet.  Simon’s message was longer than Gerald’s, so I was obliged to continue it on the back of the vest.  This made the back and the front of the vest different, which meant that the rows didn’t line up evenly at the seams.  This bugged me for a while, and Lynne and I experimented with adding a vertical column of plain colour up the seam to mask the fact that the rows didn’t match up… but that didn’t make things any better. In the end, we figured that Blair’s arms would provide enough masking and stopped worrying about it. Here’s the pattern along with the legend to the code if you’d like to work it out for yourself.  If you haven’t the time to do that, the code is revealed below.

There is a maxim that goes like this: “There are old soldiers, and there are bold soldiers, but there are no old bold soldiers.”  I used to think this meant that all the bold soldiers invariably got themselves killed. But as I’ve aged, it has occurred to me that those bold soldiers may have indeed survived, but in doing so, gained experience. They now know what can go wrong, and how dangerous acting impulsively can be. The bold soldiers haven’t died, they have matured.  As an experienced agent, and having just returned from a botched operation, Simon is that kind of soldier. With that in mind, Claire and I decided that the thematic message for his sweater would be “your best teacher is your last mistake.”

Here's how the vest turned out:

And here’s how it looked on Blair on stage:

Next newsletter, I’ll share the design and knitting process for the Secretary Sweater for the Spycraft character of June, played by Charlotte Dennis.

In other news, Claire and I have lots going on.  Here are a few upcoming events where you can see us either virtually or in person:

 

May 17, 2-4pm ET: My talk about Spycraft at The Center for Knit and Crochet

I’m looking forward to being an online guest speaker for The Center for Knit and Crochet on May 17, 2-4pm ET. I will be giving a talk about our play, Spycraft. The Center, based in Wisconsin, preserves and promotes the art, craft, and scholarship of knitting, crochet, and related arts.

June 2, 6pm ET: “Abroad: Patchwork Pride” short documentary screening, Tranzac Club

The wonderful filmmaker and social media content maker Neville Madill went to the UK last year with us on our tour to follow us on our journey as we brought The Patchwork Pride Project to Canada House on London’s Trafalgar Square for Pride Month. The result is a great short documentary. Doors at the Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Avenue, Toronto, open on June 2 at 6pm for those who’d like to show up early for a casual knit-along; then, at 7:30 pm, Neville and I will give a talk before the screening. Proceeds from the fundraiser go towards supporting the innovative 519 Community Centre, which is committed to the health, happiness and full participation of the 2SLGBTQ+ communities.

Tues, June 30, 6-8pm: The Lost in France Book launch - SAVE THE (NEW!) DATE

The Book Launch for Claire’s new novel Lost in France has moved dates. The book’s official pub date is June 23, and moving the launch to June 30 means you have time to collect your book and bring it to the launch party and have it signed by the author.

Come get Lost in France...by way of Ireland. Or at least at a great Irish pub, our local: Noonan's Irish Pub at 141 Danforth Avenue (between Broadview and Chester Stations, south side of Danforth). Author Nathan Whitlock, also creator of the author podcast What Happened Next, will be on deck to interview Claire for a short Q&A. Join us.

Thanks for reading, friends.  Looking forward to next time.

 

Kirk

Spycraft Knitting: Gerald's Lions Vest, and things upcoming

Hello friends,

Happy spring to us all!

As I type this, winter is taking a few last kicks at the can here in Toronto.  But, despite those final flurries, the snow drops are poking their heads up out of the earth in our front yard. Spring is on its way.

I promised to backtrack a bit and catch up on all knitting busy-ness I did not manage to share during the wild ride Claire and I had writing, funding, producing and touring, last fall – our play Spycraft, so I will continue that process here.

Also know that at the bottom of this missive are notices of a few upcoming events I want to share.

So, first, more about knitting and Spycraft.

The Spycraft Knitting Diary: Gerald’s Lions Vest

The show was a huge success (phewf!) and a whole lot of work. In my next few posts, I’m going to talk about the knitting side of all that, sweater by sweater, prop by prop.

Spycraft, as a quick recap, follows the exploits of our heroine, Audette Whitlock, a 50- something hidden Jew who spies on the Nazis in Occupied France for Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), and passes coded intelligence back to the Allies in her knitting. 

In such a show, of course, we would want as many costumes as possible to be knitted. And, because the show is all about espionage and code, why not embed coded messages into those knitted pieces?  

Nick Blais (who designed the set, lights, and non-knitted costumes) was thrilled with this idea.  He told us, “This is such a treat – we never get customized knitted wardrobe in the theatre!”  And friends, now I know why: theatre’s timeline and a knitter’s timeline just don’t get along.  Once rehearsals start, you’ve usually got about three weeks until the show opens. We had five sweaters to design, knit, and fit to four different actors. Yikes. We had to start early, and we had to have help. 

Luckily, at the PEI Fibre Fest in October 2025, I connected with Lynne Pascoe, proprietor of Sheep’s Clothing in Nova Scotia.

Lynne’s specialty is machine knitting historical knitwear, and she’s done a lot of work on patterns from the 1940s. Yes, it would have been nice to be able to hand-knit all our sweaters, but there was just no time. Lynne and her knitting machine very much saved our bacon.

The first sweater we tackled was a waistcoat for the character of Gerald, the young deputy director of the SOE, played by Devin Lee.  Lynne’s knitting machine could handle two colours per row, so a Fair Isle pattern seemed to be the way to go.

In order to hide a coded message in the design, I figured the thing to do would be to distract the eye from the code by featuring some uncoded representational images to pull one’s focus away from the coded areas.  And since the SOE’s recruited agents were from across the British Commonwealth, I played with symbols of some of the countries involved. Here’s what my first Fair Isle sketch of those icons looked like, using Briggs & Little Sport yarn: 

Bottom to top:  Lion (England), Dragon (Wales), Maple Leaf (Canada), Shamrock (Ireland), Fleur de Lis (France), Thistle (Scotland)

In keeping with the idea of code and hidden messages, this first sketch played with obscuring the images through colour choice, and, in the case of the shamrock and the maple leaf, flipping alternating icons vertically so that you really had to look for them to pick them out. This worked a little too well and I found it was difficult to see anything.  

So, I tried again, keeping everything right-side up, and choosing colours that made the icons easier to see. First, with the lions and dragons:

And then, with the maple leaves:

In the end, I went with the lion icon for Gerald’s waistcoat and kept the lion band to a simple two-colour palette for clarity.  

I hid the coded message of the piece in the five-row Fair Isle bands that separate the bands of lions.  Each five-row band corresponds to a letter (well, one of them represents a space), and the message is read from bottom to top. Below is an image of the pattern I designed using Stitch Painter Gold software by Cochenille Design Studio. Beside the coloured chart I’ve included a legend for the message if you’d like to puzzle it out (spoiler alert: the message is revealed immediately below the pattern, if you can’t wait):

In choosing the message, Claire and I thought about Gerald and his role in the play as a young innovator and decided on “If not now, when?”  Which, in addition to echoing Gerald’s ‘get it done’ attitude, is also one of Rabbi Hillel’s three questions, so it works with the hidden Judaism theme of the show as well.  

I sent the repeating section of the pattern off to Lynne, who came back with a beautiful rendering of the back.

And here’s how it turned out:

Gerald’s waistcoat on stage:

Devin Lee as Gerald, Spycraft. Photo Credit: Heidi Chan

The vest looked fabulous on Devin. I’ll say that the other really hard thing about knitting garments in such a short timeline is sizing. When Devin first tried on the vest, it was quite baggy on him, and my heart sank. Even though Lynne and I had been very careful with measuring the actors, you never quite know about tension and gauge and how it will work out—and the experience of producing garments through machine knitting was brand new to me. So, there we were: the vest was at least a size too big for Devin, if not two. With almost no time left, we turned to our amazing Assistant Designer and Head of Wardrobe Émilie Beaudry-Levesque and asked if she could alter it. Which she did beautifully. We were also assisted by the ever-wonderful Phyllis Goodfellow who came in to make tiny adjustments and sew in ends. It takes a village, that’s for sure.

Next newsletter, I’ll share the design and knitting process for the SOE vest for the Spycraft character of Simon, played by Blair Williams.

What’s on my needles now

There has been some silliness floating around in recent months about the thought of a certain 51st state. I’m looking at knitting a vest that pushes back against that idea.  I may call it “Tell me you’re Canadian without telling me you’re Canadian.” It features a version of the maple leaf icon I played with for Spycraft, mentioned above.

This sketch below is in Briggs & Little Sport with the limited number of colours that I brought on our recent 7-week European trip to work on Claire’s Lost In France pillow (see my last blog).

Looking forward to digging into my stash (or what Claire would eyerollingly call The Canadian National Yarn Reserve) to try out more colourways.

Speaking of Lost in France…

There is a 25% off Preorder sale of Claire’s next book, Lost in France, at Barnes & Noble.

It comes out via Alcove Press on June 23, 2026, but pre-orders are available, and right now, Barnes & Noble has a special 25% off promo running Tuesday, March 24 to Thursday, March 26, including audiobooks and eBooks. Premium members get an additional 10% off print book pre-orders. If you’re in the US, I hope you can take advantage of the sale.

The Code is PREORDER25.

Here’s the link to the book on the Barnes & Noble website:


Lost in France via Barnes & Noble

If you aren’t in the US, the book is also available to pre-order in Canada and elsewhere, via whichever platform or bookstore you choose.

Upcoming Events

Sunday, April 19 at 3pm: I will be performing The Knitting Pilgrim at Aurora Town Square’s Davide De Simone Performance Hall. I think it’s our 122nd performance, which is a bit hard to believe. Here is the link for tickets. If you haven’t seen the show, please come—I think the show is already half-sold, so now’s the time to book.  It’s a great way to spend your Sunday afternoon. And don’t forget your knitting (if you’re the kind of person who has some knitting…) If you’re not, you’ll enjoy the show, too, I promise.

Tuesday, June 2, 6pm: Screening of Neville Madill’s documentary “Abroad, Patchwork Pride” at The Transac Club – doors open at 6:00, screening starts at 7:30. The film is about my journey to bring The Patchwork Pride Project to the UK to exhibit it on the façade of Canada House in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Sunday, May 17, 2:00pm: I will be giving an online presentation about Spycraft to the Center for Knit and Crochet digital museum.  If you’d like to attend, you’ll need to become a member. Membership is $10 US and includes access to the online museum, study centre, and social networking environment. For tickets to the talk, click here.

Thanks for reading, friends.  Looking forward to next time,

Kirk

 

Catching Up, Starting With What's on My Needles

Hello friends, I hope you are all well.

It’s been a full five months since my last newsletter – things have been busy, and there is  much to catch up on. So, let’s get to it.

I’m going to start in the present, and over my next few newsletters look back on what it was that filled those five months.

The Here and Now:  What’s on my Needles

My knitting at the moment is tied to another big event in our lives – my wife Claire’s second novel, Lost in France, is due to be released on June 23, 2026 by Alcove Press, distributed by Penguin Random House.  It’s the story of dedicated single mum and overworked film festival staffer Marlow, who doomscrolls with way too much bubbly one night, sees an article online about a fabulous house in rural France she could buy with just one euro, and then wakes up the next morning to discover that she bought it. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that there are strings (and much French red tape) attached. To sort out the mess, Marlow takes an impromptu holiday in France where the impossible local bureaucrat refuses her a refund, and many romantic shenanigans ensue with a couple of hot French men.  (Yes, it is the rollicking great read it sounds like).

Shameless plug: you can pre-order the book now, anywhere you like to buy books, online and elsewhere. Pre-orders mean a ton to authors, as it gives both the publisher and retailers an indication of which books they should pay attention to. If you felt like pre-ordering Lost in France, that would mean so much to me and to Claire.

 

Some of you may recall that for her first novel, At Last Count , I knit a pillow of a Henlslow’s Sparrow, a bird which had significant thematic presence in the book. 

There happens to be another avian presence in Lost in France, too: a magpie.  And so, I am knitting a pillow: Marlow’s Magpie.  Here I am working on the pattern in January, so that I would have something to knit as I accompanied Claire on a research trip to Paris as she works on the sequel to Lost in France. Yes—she’s already working on the next book in the series. Pretty exciting, if you ask me.

And here is a shot of a test swatch – just a portion of the pattern progress, as I sat at a kitchen table in Normandy on that same research trip..  Knitting in France.  What’s not to like ?

I should be further along on the Magpie, wanting it ready for Lost in France’s release June 23, but I took a short detour to take care of something important:  a Melt The Ice Hat in support of the protesters in Minneapolis.  In the 1940s, Norwegians knit and wore red pointed tasseled hats to protest against Nazi occupation of their country.  The Needle and Skein, a knitting store in Minneapolis, revived the pattern to protest the fascist events occurring in their city.  A mere $5.60 US on Ravelry, and all proceeds go to the immigrant aid agencies supporting those impacted by the actions of ICE—a win-win if ever there were one. I started my hat after finding some vintage red wool in a charity shop in Chichester UK and finished it in Paris.

I am now juggling a number of things, Marlow’s Magpie among them.  The first sketch is done, but I’m not thrilled about my colour choices.   On the other hand, I’m trying to cut myself some slack. What is it they say?  There is no such thing as a failed experiment—the worst that can happen is that you find out what does not work.  I am always tempted to hold out sharing my work until I have a piece I’m happy to show, but that’s never the whole story.  The whole story is that lots and lots of things do not work.  With that in mind, here’s a look behind my knitting curtain at my bumbling and fumbling while trying to find a colour scheme I like.

Let it be known that I love the colours of the yarn I’m using – Sport Weight 100% wool (knit double) from Briggs & Little for the magpie, and Merino hand-dyed in Goldenrod by Cabin Boy Knits for the background.  My challenge is in figuring out how to combine them.  

In my first test swatch (on the left, below), I was going for a gradual blending of shades for the magpie’s feathers, particularly with the black moving into grey and blue. I think the result, though, was pretty muddy.  In addition, the background consists of five-row stripes in two different golden rod dye lots, but I don’t think the difference in shades is enough to notice.

This second effort (on the right, above) is doing less blending with multiple strands of colours and is more successful, I think.  For the background, I’m playing with stripes of colours from the cover of the Lost in France book.  I have some additional hues I could use from my stash when I get back to Toronto, and I think this is showing some promise.  I’m only 2/3 of the way through this sketch, but it’s looking better.  Not quite there yet, but closer. 

And that is where things are at the moment.

My next newsletter will back-track in time and cover the play Spycraft which Claire and I wrote together and produced in November, 2025,,  and my 1940s, coded knitting adventures as we mounted that show (spoiler alert – it was a big hit).

Until then, taking things one stitch at a time…

Kirk

A book ride for At Last Count, the world premiere of Spycraft, and sooo much knitting

Claire and I have lots on the go and I wanted to share a few bits of it.

She is prepping for a fun event: a Book Ride for her novel At Last Count, organized by Janet Joy Wilson and The Reading Line. It’s Saturday Sept 27, 2-4pm.  

A Book Ride is like as a literary festival on two wheels, delivered in a safe, engaging and relaxed parade format with plenty of stops along the way. Local authors (this time, that’s Claire) read from their books at points of interest along a street, and audiences have a chance to ask questions and have their books signed. When authors ride along, it turns into a mobile book club meeting. Local libraries and bookstores make the books available for borrowing and purchase before the Book Ride.

If you want to join us,  At Last Count’s Book Ride begins at Toronto’s Alexander the Great Parkette, Danforth & Logan, at 2pm.

We’ll ride to a few locations in the novel, Claire will do a mini-reading at each stop and talk about the meaning of that spot in the book, and we’ll finish up at Another Story Bookshop’s booth at The Word On The Street in David Pecaut Square where books will be available for sale and she’ll do a signing.

 

The World Premiere of Spycraft

Meanwhile, Claire and I are gearing up for the world premiere of our new play, Spycraft, Oct 30-Nov 30.

Spycraft is a follow-up to our first show, The Knitting Pilgrim, which we premiered in 2019 with Anna Pappas’ Ergo Arts Theatre. Like our first show, it explores the wonderful world of knitting (in fact the idea for Spycraft came out of our research for The Knitting Pilgrim into the history of knitting).

Here’s the blurb for Spycraft:

Directed by Richard Greenblatt and starring Diane Flacks, Blair Williams, Charlotte Dennis and Devin Lee, Spycraft tells the story of an easily overlooked yet crafty Canadian factory worker who helps Winston Churchill’s WW2 intelligence agency spy on the Nazis in Occupied France by knitting code into ordinary garments. It’s a cracking, suspenseful espionage thriller that also tackles issues of identity, the Holocaust, and the rise of Antisemitism today. 

The show's set, costumes and lights are designed by Nick Blais, sound and original music are composed and designed by Heidi Chan, and knitted costumes and knitted props are designed by me. Our stage manager is Ada Aguilar, and our Technical Director is Rhett Costin. 

 

This is the first time I’m officially designing for the theatre. I sort of backed into it with The Knitting Pilgrim—when I started knitting the Stitched Glass tapestries I certainly did not know that they would end up being the set for that show.

The Knitting Pilgrim at Southwark Cathedral, London, UK

[And while we’re on the subject, kudos to designer Joanna Yu who suggested how to use the tapestries as a set for The Knitting Pilgrim, and to Jono Peters and Anthony Snelgrove at Steel & Oak Designs for building the frames that we travel with.]

But back to Spycraft. It’s very interesting to be not only be designing knitted garments for the theatre—but coded knitting—and knitting in the style of the 1940s.

 Before I go any further, a giant shout-out and thank you to our three yarn sponsors for the show: Briggs & Little (from Harvey, New Brunswick), Topsy Farms (from Amherst Island, Ontario) and Cabin Boy Knits (from Stirling, Ontario). These three wonderful companies are providing us with all the yarn we’re using for the show. More about them to come.

 One person I’m working closely with on the knitted costumes is Lynne Pascoe, a knitter from Margaree Valley on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, who specializes in 1940s garments and who owns a company called Sheep’s Clothing.

Lynne and Sheep’s Clothing produce quality knitwear with an emphasis on classical design, quality materials, and the cultural traditions of craftsmanship.

 They also offer historical reproduction knitwear items for living history museums, reenactors, and the film industry. Lynne and I met at PEI Fibrefest in 2024 where I was presenting The Knitting Pilgrim, and we were both giving workshops. 

 I’m especially lucky that Lynne is spending the month of September in Toronto, which has given us time to confer on design, construction, and schedule—namely how to get the large number of sweaters and vests knitted in time for Spycraft’s opening night Oct 30 at Stirling Festival Theatre.

I’m learning a lot working with Lynne and her knitting machine which she brought all the way from Nova Scotia so she could work on a number of Spycraft’s designs.

Because Spycraft is on a typical theatre schedule, knitting all the sweaters and vests and props for the show by hand would have been impossible. First, there’s the design process; I’m working with Nick Blais, Spycraft’s set, lights and costumes designer, and together we agreed on the look of the knitted wear, and the colour palette.

Then, while I designed the coded patterns and charts, I had to wait for us to cast our actors. And it wasn’t until then that we finally had the measurements for the humans who were going to wear those costumes.

As for the set, we start to construct it just a few weeks out of the premiere—and our set has knitted elements, too. Usually, knitting a sweater requires months of work, and we just didn’t have the luxury of that time.

There are, of course, a great many things that WILL be knit by hand, as a few of my designs are bit too colour-intensive (surprise, surprise) too be knit on a machine. Here’s a work in progress that bears that out (there’s a coded message in there, by the way):


So, there are no shortages of learning curves for me in the creation of this show… but that’s what keeps it exciting. I am so thankful for the team of people who are helping make this production possible.

I really hope you get a chance to come and see Spycraft. (If you’re a knitter, come see the show to try to break the knitted costumes’ code. I dare you.)

Here is the lineup of theatres where we will be touring this coming November. The box office links are below.

Spycraft 2025 Tour Dates

Hope to see you there.

Kirk

Getting ready to tour BC.. and then almost immediately thereafter, the UK.

Hello friends,

We’ve been preparing for this tour for months, and we’re almost ready. I’m talking about our impending tour to BC. And once we’re done that, we go to the UK! But that is for the next newsletter—so stay tuned on that.

Yes, we’re almost ready, but of course, there are so many things to do. And doing those things brings up other things to do. And then doing those things brings up even more things to do. And then… well, you get the picture.

One of the fun pre-tour things was opening a shipment of yarn I ordered from Briggs & Little to use in the workshops we’ll be giving on tour. 

And as I said, once the opening was done, then came the yarn winding.

If you happen to be reading this in BC (or thereabouts) and are interested in seeing the show or participating in a knitting workshop, here’s a list of the places and times you can do that:

Hussein Esmail, our projection operator, and I are flying out of Toronto with eleven bags between us.  There are three large suitcases for the tapestries, all of them overweight.  This couldn’t be helped.  The airlines consider anything over 50 lbs to be overweight, and the tapestries weigh 60 lbs each. Oh well. Each pound of knitting is worth its weight in gold, I say.

We have another large suitcase stuffed with tech equipment, and it’s overweight, too.  Again, tech stuff is heavy.

Then there are three re-purposed canopy bags designed for packing tents which we are using to pack the tapestry frames.  We think we can keep these under 50 pounds, but they are oversized. 

The baggage after that is all run-of-the-mill: a suitcase and carry-on for each of us, plus a personal item.  Here’s what it looks like all in the same room:

Fingers crossed it all gets to the same place we’re going. 

Wish us a bon voyage – I’ll let you know how works out! And if you want to know sooner than that, come join us at one of the beautiful BC theatres listed above. I’d love to see you there.

Keeping up with The Knitting Pilgrim

Hello friends,

2024 was a busy year for The Knitting Pilgrim – so much to look back on, and to look forward to. 

One of the biggest events was our tour out to the East Coast, first to Corner Brook NFLD and CBNuit (as covered in my newsletter from mid-October) and then immediately moving on to the PEI Fibrefestival in Charlottetown.  As part of a resolution to keep on top of sharing my touring schedule and experiences, I have captured some highlights of my time in the birthplace of Confederation to share with you, and am looking forward to heading out to the West Coast of the country in April.  More on that to come!  But first, some memories of PEI:

Since my initial visit to PEI in the summer of 1994 when I had a gig in the musical Dads In Bondage (later known as Dads, the Musical) at the Charlottetown Festival for the summer, I have always considered the Island to be God’s country.  Beautiful land, great people, and fabulous food.  My visit this past October reinforced all those impressions.

I decided not to take the ferry to the Island this time around.  This turned out to be a good choice, as on my way to the Confederation Bridge I heard that all the ferries had been cancelled.  Saved myself some time there. Upon arrival on the PEI side, I celebrated with a photo at the iconic lighthouse where the bridge meets the Island.

Then it was off to the airport to pick up my projection operator David Docherty.

David and I had some time before we checked into our hotel, so we grabbed a bite to eat at a seafood place on the corner of Queen and Water streets – about as downtown as you can get in Charlottetown. As we returned to our trusty touring vehicle, a passing gentleman paused, pointed to the magnificent 2012 Kia Rondo, and asked me if that was my car.  My chest swelling with pride, I said “Yes, it sure is.”  He indicated the right front tire and said, “you might want to get that looked at.”

Noting my Ontario license plate, he said “I’m not sure that will get you home.”  Oy. Good point. Remember I mentioned great people of PEI, above?  We had a number of very friendly folks express concern about that tire before I could get it repaired the next day. A few phone calls later, I had an appointment at Andy’s Tire where they happened to have a tire that fit a 2012 Kia Rondo. If you’re ever in Charlottetown and need some tire repair, I give Andy’s five stars.

The night before the Fibre Festival kicked off, I attended a lovely meet-and-greet for the exhibitors and workshop leaders where local oysters were on offer, paired with cider from Double Hill Cidery of Caledonia, PEI.  As a huge oyster fan, I was tempted to park myself beside the oyster table and enjoy as many oysters as I could get my hands on. But my mother raised me better than that. So, I restrained myself, had a couple, and then lurked politely in the background. Until it became apparent that no one else was eating the delicious morsels, and they were piling up in a dangerous fashion. Encouraged by Julianna, the oyster shucker, I did everything I could to help out. Happily, I was joined by fellow Torontonian and very talented knitting designer Kate Atherley -- another oyster aficionado who appreciated the opportunity to enjoy these seafood treats almost as much as I did.

The next day, Friday, was all about performing The Knitting Pilgrim.  Our venue was one of the ballrooms of the fabulous Delta Prince Edward Hotel where we had plenty of space and excellent technical support.  Here’s how our set-up looked in the Bedeque ballroom.

This was the first show I’ve done for an audience made up pretty much exclusively of knitters.  They didn’t really need the intro to knitting lesson that is threaded through the play, but they definitely got all the knitting jokes.  They were a wonderful crowd, and we received some lovely feedback.

On Saturday, I enjoyed hosting a Colour With Kirk workshop with very friendly and very accomplished knitters, though I’m kicking myself for not remembering to get a photo of the group of us.  Drat. 

That evening David searched out a neighbourhood pub to engage in a post-event debrief, and we were fortunate to run into the folks from Briggs and Little.  We enjoyed a lovely evening together – great people, good food, and a satisfying local IPA or two.

Despite our busy schedule, there was one thing on my dance card I had not yet taken care of: a dip in the Atlantic.  So, first thing on the morning of Sunday October 6th, I crossed the province (all 22 kms of it) to Brackley Beach. Strangely, I had the place pretty much to myself. I enjoyed a lovely – if brief and bracing – swim.

It was then time to head back to Ontario. This featured a return crossing of the Confederation Bridge. It’s quite a trip: 13 kms of driving over the Atlantic. Looking right or left makes one a bit woozy, so I just zoned in on the centre line for the 12-minute trip and all was well.

Thankfully, the new tire did its job, and I arrived back in Toronto after a lovely drive and having listened to about 17 podcasts. 

According to my odometer, my fall 2024 Maritime tour was 5,114 kms. Kudos to our Kia Rondo. 

Our next big tour is slated for April of this year, when we’ll be touring British Columbia for a month. Here’s the schedule as it stands:

If you’re in BC, please join us at one of the venues above. More touring information—and international no less—to come soon.

Thanks for reading, friends. Stay tuned!

2398 kms to CBNuit, and worth every metre

There are few places I would rather be than the Maritimes. And so, when the opportunity presented itself for a third tour of The Knitting Pilgrim to the Atlantic provinces, I jumped at the chance. 

First up was CBNuit, in its eighth year of bringing an inspiring and magical evening of art to Corner Brook, NFLD.  

Of course, the first order of business was getting there. Good thing our trusty 2012 Kia Rondo was up to the task—we have been out to the Maritimes twice, as well as all over Ontario, clocking in at over 90 shows so far. As we began the trip, the odometer, below, read 254,099 kms.

Our trusty 2012 Kia Rondo’s odometer at the beginning of the trip

It was a two-day trip out to North Sydney, NS where I would catch the ferry.  My route took me through New Brunswick, which was fortunate, as it allowed me to stop by Briggs & Little Woolen Mills just outside Harvey, NB, where I picked up a box of their beautiful 100% wool sport weight yarn to use in the two workshops I’d be leading during my trip. I also had the bonus of some catch-up time with Leah Little during the hand-off.

Leah Little of Briggs & Little

The ferry was next.  I had to queue at the ferry docks at 9:45 for an 11:45 departure, so I spent the night at a motel in North Sydney to be sure I’d have a nice short drive in the morning. I am fancy.

I am accustomed to The Amherst Islander, the ferry in Lake Ontario between Millhaven on the mainland, and Stella on Amherst Island.  It can hold 45 cars. The ferry I took from North Sydney to Port aux Basques was a bit different.  It can hold 570 cars (or 190 trucks). Here are a few shots to give you some perspective:

Happily, the trip to Port aux Basques was on calm seas, and a two-hour drive brought me to Corner Brook, where I met up with my projection operator, Hussein Esmail, who took this shot, just to prove that I made it.

By the way, you’ll note that the show scarf is getting longer. For the most part, I knit one colour per performance, so you can see that we’re approaching 100 shows by the look of it.

Having picked up all that fantastic Briggs & Little Yarn, I now had to get it ready for the workshop. Much wool-winding was done in my very nice Airbnb on West Street in the heart of Corner Brook’s downtown.

On Saturday, Sept 28th, the day of CBNuit, I had a great time with these fabulous folks in my Colour With Kirk workshop.

And then later that night, we performed the Knitting Pilgrim at First United Church on West St.  We had a good show and received lots of great feedback. 

First United Church, Corner Brook, NFLD

It was an interesting experience performing in a venue that functioned as a CB Nuit exhibition space. People were free to come and go as they pleased.  I will admit that it was a bit alarming to watch people get up and leave five minutes into the show. Nonetheless, I counseled myself to not worry about the people coming in and out, but to just tell the story to the folks who stayed… and that settled me down, and things were just fine from then on.

After the show, as I chatted with people on stage who had come up to get a close look at the recently revealed tapestries, I got amazing feedback from the audience, which is always so wonderful. A couple of people approached me and asked questions like “are those all hand knitted?” and “who knit those?”  When I told them that they were, and that I knit them, they were gobsmacked. It occurred to me that a few people had not seen the show at all. They’d entered the church after the performance had finished and were seeing the tapestries as an art exhibition, like many of the installations they had been enjoying up and down West Street.  Many people just sat in the pews of First United and gazed at the panels, taking them in. This was a brand-new experience for me—previously, the only people to see the tapestries had also just seen the show.  It was a huge relief to know that the Stitched Glass tapestries could stand on their own, without The Knitting Pilgrim to give them context.

The next day, Sunday, Sept 29th, I took in the 8th annual All Nations Pow Wow held on Grenville Campus. 

We were asked not to take any photos of the actual ceremony, but I did attend a Dene games demonstration afterward where I got this great action shot of CBNuit Co-Founder and Executive Director Louise Gauthier embroiled in a neck-pull with a member of the Tupiq A.C.T Inuit circus troupe (Louise won, by the way).

Inspired by Louise, I gave it a shot as well.  And take it from me – it is harder than it looks.

From there, it was back onto the ferry for the six-hour dash across the Cabot Strait back to Nova Scotia.  I took this shot from the observation deck of our ship, Ala’suinu, as we were preparing to dock at North Sydney. The ferry you see here is the Blue Puttees which makes the voyage between North Sydney and St. John’s in about 16 hours. I like this photo because it gives a pretty good idea of the size of the vessel. It’s big, and can hold its own in the Atlantic Ocean.

At this point I had a couple of days off before heading to Charlottetown for the PEI Fibre Festival.  More on that in my next newsletter, but I can tell you that in addition to knitting, the Rondo and the Atlantic figure prominently. Stay tuned!

A heads-up about some exciting upcoming things

Here are three things I’m looking forward to. 

First, this coming Saturday, Oct 19th, Claire and I will be appearing at the Stirling Book Company in Stirling, ON.  Claire will be holding a book chat about At Last Count (chosen very first Book Club selection), and I will be supporting her with a knit-along.

Second, on Monday, Oct 28th at 10:00 Claire and I will be holding a workshop at the Playwrights Guild of Canada 2024 Conference on turning your passion into a play.  In our case, it was my passion for the craft of knitting.

And third, we have three more performances of The Knitting Pilgrim before 2024 wraps up.  Here they are: 

For links to the above venues, click here.

Thanks for reading, friends. We’ll talk soon…

The Patchwork Pride Flag flies on -- with ups and downs

Hello friends, 

It has been two weeks since we raised the Patchwork Pride Project flag on June 15, and I am happy to report that as I type this, it is still flying proudly from the bell tower of Morningside High-Park Presbyterian Church, 4 Morningside Avenue, Toronto, ON, M4K 1X5. Having said that, I can also admit that the flag flying has not always been smooth sailing (if you’ll pardon my shameless mixing of metaphors). 

Full disclosure – we encountered a few setbacks here and there following the installation. The good news is that with a little ingenuity and stick-to-itiveness we’ve been able to keep the Patchwork Pride Project in place.  

I thought you might be interested in an account of our bumpy ride dealing with repairs and renovations along the way.  

The first thing that occurred to us was that we might need some sort of tie-down feature on each corner of the flag to stop it from slipping along the pipes from which it hung. Thankfully, we figured this out just before we raised the flag up the tower... but only just. As a result, we didn’t make the corner tie-downs as sturdy as they should have been. Sure enough, when we arrived for Sunday service the next morning, the tie-down at the top right corner of the flag had given way, allowing the flag to shift to the left along its hanging pipe. You can see what I mean in the photo below. Also note that none of this stopped us from getting a great group shot of the entire congregation following the flag’s dedication. Our good friend Georgia Kirkos of jorjas photography offered to take the photo for us—along with other beautiful shots of the work.

Following that group shot, we climbed the tower to reattach the offending tie-down and strengthen the others. The tower climb, by the way, is not for the faint of heart or the claustrophobic. In order to access the tower, one must squeeze through a hole measuring approximately 1 foot wide by 2 feet high, awkwardly placed among the huge old pipes of the MHP pipe organ. Here’s a shot of it taken after wiggling through the “S” shaped channel in the thick stone wall. 

Four of us made it to the summit, pulled up the flag, and restitched the tie-downs. Here’s a shot of our intrepid first repair team having completed the mission. Left to right: my son Emmett, nephew Ben, and brother Marc. Well Dunn, team! 

Seeing that the wind had caused the flag to slip a bit, we figured we should do something to anchor the bottom pipe to the tower to be sure it wouldn’t flap up too high should the wind pick up. So, we ran some paracord from each end of the bottom pipe, fished it through the belfry windows above and behind the pipe, and tied them off. That oughta do it.  

It didn’t. 

See below: 

The above shots were taken on Tuesday June 18th. The wind had come up, and it blew right through the tower (which has windows on all four sides), causing the flag to act like the main sail on a pirate ship. Obviously, we had given the flag too much slack in the cords that secured it to the windows. Our solution was to anchor it to the stone embellishments above and to either side of the church entrance (circled, below), but first we had to wait for the wind to die down. By the time it did, the flag had been blown out of position: 

Once again, I enlisted my brother Marc the firefighter (who had some experience with ladders) to help me tie the anchor cords to the stone door embellishments. Of course, behind the first embellishment we found a nice big wasp’s nest.  

Thankfully, it was home to last year’s wasps. Two trips up and down the ladder (after crawling into the belfry to reposition the flag and then release the cords), and the job was done. Now, when the wind came up, the flag stayed pretty much in place. Success! But then we worried that the constant play of the paracord back and forth across the rough stone would fray the cord. I cut up some of the remaining PVC pipe and ran one side of the cord through that. But there were still some parts of the cord contacting the stone. Marc had the solution waiting for us in his garage: some old garden hose. Here’s what the final rigging looked like. Not pretty, but it got the job done. 

Feeling confident about the Patchwork Pride Project, now flying well at MHP, I was able to find some time for a quick day trip to Crieff Hills Retreat Centre to reinstall their tree sweater (aka a Rainbow Yarn Bomb] for Pride 2024. I’m thankful for Crieff’s renewed interest in hosting the installation—last year, their Rainbow Yarn Bomb was the only one of three that survived—the other two were vandalized and stolen. They were thrilled to have the installation return. Thank you, Crieff, for your support.

Finally I could rest easy. Which was just tempting fate. On Sunday June 23rd, a particularly windy day, Marc rode by the church to check out how things were looking, and sent the following photo: 

Not only had the bottom right tie-down given way (again), but the flag had been so buffeted by winds that about 8 inches of the bottom right corner of the rip-stop nylon backing had...well... ripped. The next day, once the wind had died down, back up the tower Marc and I went (we’re getting pretty tired of that access door by now), and below is what we found: the tie—downs we had reinforced the week before had pulled away from the backing, and the resulting hole that was left started an eight-inch rip exposing the bottom corner red square.

I got to work cutting a long piece of ripstop nylon to patch the torn section, and Marc thought it might be worthwhile to drill through the bottom PVC pipe and install tie-downs every few feet to take the pressure off the two tie-downs at each end. Great idea. I performed a Frankenstein-like stitch repair on the backing, and Marc took care of the drilling and extra tie downs. Up close, it was anything but beautiful. But thankfully, no one was going to see it up close.

Funny story: while all this was going on, our eldest’s girlfriend drove by the church as she does every morning on the way to work, and sent a panicked text message to Claire saying, “the Pride Flag is gone!” She was relieved to hear it had just been hauled up onto the roof for repairs. 😅 

And that, my friends, was that! Fully repaired, reinforced and re-mounted, the Patchwork Pride Flag continues to fly proudly. It will do so until early July, when we can assemble a team (who is willing to crawl through that infernal access door) to take it down. We’ll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, here’s a calendar-worthy shot of the project taken by Georgia Kirkos of Jorjas Photography. Enjoy. 

Patchwork Pride Project Flag is Flying Proud

Hello Friends,

The Patchwork Pride Project is up!  It was a near thing, but we made our deadline of 12:00 noon on Saturday June 15th.

The week leading up to the big day was filled with day-long sewing sessions. Even after our piecing party on Sunday June 9th at Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church, there was much more assembling to do. Thanks to all those who put in countless hours Monday to Friday sewing all 1008 squares together.  Here are some of those very helpful folks.

[From L to R: Sandy Takeda, Mary Coopland,. Phyllis Goodfellow and Claire Ross Dunn].

Here’s how the Flag looked assembled, lying on the rip-stop nylon backing which needed to be added next. 

[Karen Ingram is tacking several spots of the flag to the backing while Janice Craig and Mary Coopland discuss how to deal with the corners}. Kudos to Mary, who was our tailor extraordinaire and took the lead on dealing with the backing, which was many, many metres of rip-stop nylon. First she sewed the backing, complete with sleeves on the short and long edge so that the flag could be hung horizontally or vertically. Then she sewed the flag to the backing, avoiding any gathering or bunching which threatened to throw the whole thing out of whack.

Unfortunately, the sewing machine was only able to sew the perimeter of the flag to the backing, so we needed to go through the entire piece, “tacking” the knitting to the nylon with small groups of stitches at regular intervals.  This, as you can imagine, took some time.  (Note the two pairs of readers being sported by yours truly. 🙄)

On Saturday morning, we arrived at the church bright and early to take care of adding the final design touch to the flag – the purple circle representing the intersex community.   

We got help from friends Tommy (They/Them) and Ken (They/Them), which was much appreciated, because we were literally counting down the minutes to the installation. Finally, the sewing was finished! 

Now we had to get the flag onto the church tower.  First step: insert a PVC pole in sleeve along the bottom of the backing, and then roll it up.

Next step: lower the top pole from the top of the tower where it had already been installed, and insert it to the top sleeve of the backing.

The rolled-up flag was then hoisted up the tower from whence it was unfurled.  Here’s how that looked in the moment:

Success!

I offer my deep and profound thanks to all the people who contributed to this project.  This could not have happened without everyone pitching in.  Looking back, I can honestly say I did very little.  All I did was put the word out. So many people responded so generously with their time and talent – knitting and crocheting squares, sewing, assembling, and engineering – I just tried to keep up. And, once again, a very special thanks to my partner and love of my life, the incomparable Claire Dunn, who once again watched as one of my little ideas ballooned into an enormous production and selflessly pitched in to support and carry us all over the finish line.

Our Patchwork Pride Project flag is flying proudly.  We’ll keep you up to date with what happens next. 

Be excellent to one another,

Kirk

Patchwork Pride Project Continues Apace; Installation Day Fast Approaching June 15

Hello Friends!

The Patchwork Pride Project continues apace… and what a pace!

When we embarked on this project, I had a vague idea of asking the community to send in a few coloured 6” by 6” knitted or crocheted squares, and we would do something with them.  I wasn’t sure what that ‘something’ was. I thought it might be another tree-sweater – a kind of patchwork pride quilt covering some upper branches of one of the big Maples on the Morningside-High Park property to replace the one that was vandalized, then stolen, last year.

Then I thought I might be a pennant:  a bunch of triangles attached to a rope, which we could string up high around the building to keep them away from the hands of whoever vandalized the original yarn bomb.  I explained this to Claire, who suggested instead, “how about a Pride Flag?”  Great idea!  And the present iteration of the Patchwork Pride Project was born. 

I sketched up a design of the flag on my Stitch Painter Gold knitting software.  It was 12 squares high, by 23 squares wide.  That’s 276 squares.  That felt like a lot.  We had about 8 weeks before Pride month, and I thought we’d be lucky to make it.  I enlisted Claire, and we both started knitting squares in a panic.  But the response from the knitting community was great, and in no time at all we had reached our numbers.  So, I went back into Stitch Painter and made the flag bigger.  There are 6 stripes to the flag, and if you make one wider, you’ve got to make them all wider.  The second version was 18 squares by 23 squares, or 414 squares.  Oy. Claire and I panicked again and kept knitting. 

Apparently other people kept knitting, too, because the squares just kept coming in.  414 was soon in the rearview mirror.  I made the flag longer. 18 by 30:  540 squares.  We blew by that.  Oy!  This is me posing with about 350 of them in our living room:

I didn’t want to widen the stripes again, because that meant adding another square to each stripe, which would put us at 24 squares wide… which would be 12 feet.  So we made the flag longer again.  40 squares long.  We needed 720 squares. 

By Friday June 7th, the day before the deadline to drop off squares at the church, we had 719 squares.  Claire and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  It looked like we would make it.  With a spring in my step, I went to MHP to get ready for the piecing party that weekend. My plan was to spend a bit of time laying out all the squares on the floor of the Fellowship Hall so I’d be ready for the piecing party the next day. I stepped up to the door of the church where I found the bin I’d left there for squares drop-off. It was full. Exciting. Then I let myself into the church office and found all kinds of boxes, bags and packages filled with squares piled on the desk and the chair. I couldn’t believe it.  In all, 356 more squares had been delivered. I immediately called my brother Marc to join me. I knew I was going to need some help.

 

So the flag got bigger.  In all we received 1176 squares, which is just unbelievable. We sorted everything into piles of colours and hoped the numbers would work out. The flag now measures 24 by 42 squares, for a total of 1008 squares.  Here’s how it looked laid out on the floor, ready to be assembled:

Sunday June 9th arrived, and the piecing party was a big hit. The congregation of MHP was joined by members of the local, online, knitting, and LGBTQI+ communities, and we had a wonderful time sewing hundreds and hundreds of squares together. Here are a few shots of that event:

 

And the work continues! As the response was so strong and the flag has grown so big, it has taken us longer to assemble it than planned.  We are continuing to meet at the church, day and night, sewing together squares, and then attaching them to the ripstop nylon backing that will ensure the flag retains its shape.  Here is the intrepid group that got together at MHP on Monday:

We put a dent in the work… but only a dent. Most of us took strips of squares home to work on in the evening. This is how the Dunn dining room looked last night.

If anyone would like to help, we would love to have you.  Please reach out to me at www.kirkdunn.com , and I can tell you when we’ll be on site working away.  Snacks provided!

We’re madly sprinting toward our deadline of this Saturday, June 15th, when the Patchwork Pride Project is due to be hoisted into place at 12:00 noon on the tower of Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church, 4 Morningside Avenue, during the community yard sale and BBQ on the church lawn.  Put it in your calendars – we would love to see you there!

Patchwork Pride Project Preparations

Hello Friends,

May is behind us already.  How did that happen? Here in Toronto, where it seems that we often go straight from winter into summer, many of the days were cool and temperate, and actually felt like Spring.  A welcome respite to the expected higher temperatures of climate change.

And as time speeds forward, we get closer and closer to the installation of the Patchwork Pride Project Pride flag.  In every spare moment, Claire and I have been madly knitting 6” x 6” squares.  Here I am squeezing a square into a TTC ride to a family function with our son, Emmett, who is home from the UK for a month.  Great to have him here, and really happy that he and our eldest, Fin, will be present to see the Pride Flag raised on June 15th at Morningside-High Park.

The squares have been arriving fast and furiously from all over the continent.  They have come in from all over the GTA, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and even California.  We originally planned for a flag 23 squares long by 12 squares high, or 276 squares, but we blew past that number pretty quickly.  So, we increased things to 23 by 18, or 414 squares total.  Sure enough, the response to the project has been so strong that 414 faded in the rearview mirror.  Now we are aiming for 30 by 18, which is 540 squares.  I am happy to report that we have surpassed that number as well.  Here I am with somewhere around 450 of those squares:

 

If you’ve still got squares to send, please, by all means, DO send them in by June 8!  We’d love to have as many as possible to choose from.  And those that aren’t used in the flag will be sewn together in a small pyramids and then attached to some cord and hung as pennants.

 

The Pride flag is presently expected to be approximately 15 feet long by 9 feet wide. Yowza!  The trick now becomes figuring out how to hang it. This is the question that wakes me up in the middle of the night for what Claire and I call “The Four AM Fret.” A well-known phenomenon in our house, given all the projects we juggle.

The flag will need to be mounted on a backing so that it doesn’t stretch out of shape. One of our prolific Patchwork Pride Project contributors, Phyllis, suggested rip-stop nylon, which she had used in the past to make kites (Phyllis, we think, can do anything). We touched base with Ada Hopkins, the textile conservator who mounted the Stitched Glass tapestries for The Knitting Pilgrim, and she agreed with Phyllis’ recommendation.  I have now become the proud owner of an entire 12-yard bolt of black rip-stop nylon, purchased from Len’s Mill Stores.  Claire’s cousin Mary will be bringing her sewing machine to the piecing party, and once the size of the flag is finalized, we’ll start in on the backing.

But how to actually fly the flag?  We had picked the tower of Morningside-High Park as the best site:  a neighbourhood landmark, nice and tall, and right at the top of Ellis Avenue. 

 

Trouble is the flat section of the tower that extends from its base to its apex is only 12 feet wide, and our flag will be at least 15.  I was puzzling out how to account for this when my good friend and fellow Elder at MHP, Alex Fensham, suggested we hang the flag lengthwise.  Great solution.  I purchased some PVC tubing from Home Depot, and we decided we could hang it from that.  Next came a site visit inside the tower to see if we could suspend the flag through the windows of the Belfry.  Here’s a shot of Alex checking it out.

 

And of course, seeing as we made the effort to climb three different ladders to access the tower, we HAD to take in the view from the top.  Here’s how the neighbourhood of Swansea looks from the top of MHP:

The Village of Swansea, as seen from the tower of MHP

 

Needless to say, all of this is moot until we put the Pride Flag together.  We have (at least) 540 squares to sew together, so we could use some help!  We will be holding our piecing party at 12:00 noon, Sunday June 9th at Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church, 4 Morningside Avenue, Toronto, ON, M6S 1C2.  Lunch and refreshments will be served, and if you can make it, we’d love to have you.  Kindly RSVP to www.kirkdunn.com to help us prepare to host you. 

Until then, Happy Pride Month! 

Knit City, The Yarn Harlot, Cabin Boy Knits, and Squares Glorious Squares

Hello friends,

I had a fabulous time at Knit City Toronto this past weekend. 

Started things off with an excellent workshop on Knitting with Speed and Efficiency with the incomparable Yarn Harlot herself, Stephanie Pearl McPhee , who was engaging, funny, charming, and an excellent teacher.  Turns out my baseline knitting pace is about 28 stitches per minute. Stephanie took us through the foundational techniques for lever knitting, which she says – if we stick with it – could get us up to 60 (the pros can hit 120). 

The caveat, of course, is that we’ll have to make a big change, and we’ll have to stick with it.  To that end, Stephanie offered a couple of observations that I thought were dead-on and bear repeating (and have applications in life far beyond knitting).

First, as an adult learner, I need to be prepared to suck at this new skill I’m developing. Seriously.  I completely stink.  I am terrible at lever knitting. But if I can get past the discomfort of repeated disappointment and frequent failure, great things await.  Here’s hoping.

Second, the process of accepting change is very similar to the five stages of grief:  Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.  I hit the first two in the workshop, no question.  I think I’m in the Bargaining stage right now (“If I don’t quite hold my right hand that way, I’m sure it will be fine…”).  Not looking forward to the next stage, but would love to see the final one.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

The other thing I did over the weekend was spend time in the Knit City Marketplace.  I said hello to my friends at the Toronto Knitters' Guild, who did a booming business welcoming new members at the entrance to the convention hall.  The vendors’ booths were an absolute delight of all things fibre.  I had some lovely chats with folks at Wonder Twins Fibre Arts,  Revolution Wool Co., Lichen and Lace, Fibrani, and The Creative Knitter .  Check them out.

Cabin Boy Knits

Mostly what I did was hang out with my good friends Christopher and Jamie from Cabin Boy Knits on both Saturday and Sunday.

Their booth, as you can see, was overflowing with some of the most beautiful yarn you could imagine – and all of it naturally dyed.  Despite being under strict orders from Claire ( not to add to my stash, I could not resist a few skeins of Goldenrod, and also absconded with a Cabin Boy Knits apron and knitting project bag (those last two items technically do not qualify as stash, so I figured Claire couldn’t be too upset).

The Patchwork Pride Project (Squares, Glorious Squares!)

I am indebted to Christopher and Jamie who were very friendly in inviting me to set up in one corner of their booth with a little poster about my current Patchwork Pride Project, and where I could collect 6-inch squares from knitters who wanted to contribute to it. The Patchwork Pride Project will be a knitted and crocheted Pride Flag we’ll be assembling at Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church on Sunday June 9th.  I had plenty of conversations with very engaged knitters who passed by the booth and were shocked and appalled at the fate of the original rainbow tree sweater yarn bomb, and very supportive of the project.  Knitters are great people. That’s just a truth.

Speaking of the project, we’ve got an update squares count, and I’m thrilled to report that we’re in great shape.  In fact, with many of the colours we’ve surpassed the numbers we needed for our 6 ft. by 11.5 ft. original flag design.  I’m thinking that means we need to shoot for the next size of Pride Flag.  Where the original plan was to have a flag 12 squares high, the next step up is 18 squares high.  This boosts the number of squares we need, but it also gives us a flag that is 9 ft high, rather than 6 ft – a much bigger statement!  I have no doubt that we can make it. 

If you can contribute any squares in any colours, we’d love to have them—and acrylic is best, given this installation will live outdoors. Of course, we’d love to knock down the numbers in the biggest gaps, but we will take anything.

Here's how things look:

And a quick reminder of our timeline: 

Please have your contributions in to Morningside High Park Presbyterian Church, 4 Morningside Avenue, Toronto, ON M6S 1C2, by Saturday, June 8th. 

We will be having a piecing party on Sunday, June 9th at 12:00 noon.  Lunch will be provided.  And if you are planning on joining us, please drop me a line via the contact form at www.kirkdunn.com by way of an RSVP so we can plan accordingly.

We’ll take the next week to figure out the engineering necessary to hang the flag on the Church tower, and we’ll be installing it during the Community Yard Sale on the lawn of the church on Saturday June 15th at 12:00 noon.

Would love to see you there!

Here’s to knitting the world together…

 

Kirk

The Patchwork Pride Project Countdown, Cabin Boy Knits, and See You at Knit City

The Patchwork Pride Project Countdown, Cabin Boy Knits, and See You at Knit City

The Patchwork Pride Project continues to pick up steam.  Deliveries of 6” squares have been arriving and I am so thankful. It’s funny how thrilling it is to tear open the package to reveal the unique hues of the rainbow colours each package contains.  I know what’s going to be in there, but I also don’t. (I now totally get the popularity of unboxing videos.)

Some squares have been crocheted, some knitted, all of them gorgeous.  Here’s what we’ve got so far:

You may notice that some of them have some sparkle to them. 

That’s mostly Claire, who has raided the ‘sparkle’ bin of my stash which I’ve had for about fifteen years but never used.  She figured that since this installation was going to be outside, it would be good if it featured some material that would catch the eye. She’s absolutely right.  Claire’s squares (she’s knit a whole whack of them and shows no sign of stopping) are some of my favourites.

The present plan is to assemble the squares into a New Progress Pride Flag, which is the Pride Flag that looks like this: 

Here’s the patchwork plan:

I’m thinking we can crochet the purple circle on once it’s assembled.  The flag is 23 squares long by 12 squares high, which means we need 276 squares in total (final dimensions:  11.5 ft. by 6 ft.). It looks a little misshapen above, because those are rectangles, not squares -- but that’s how my Stitchpainter knitting software program works.

Here is today’s tally in chart form outlining how many of each colour we need, and how many we have, and how many we’re missing. If you think you can fill a gap, that would be tremendous.  And don’t worry about us ending up with extra squares.  We’ll either make another patchwork yarn bomb to accompany the flag, or, if we get enough squares to do it, we’ll just make the flag bigger! I’ve worked out what the larger flag needs in terms of number of squares, and we’ll wait to see how we fare in terms of square collection. If we look like we’re heading for the larger flag, I’ll post a new table.

I will update this chart in my next few newsletters or on my website so we can keep track as we approach the deadline of June 8.

I’ve included the knitted square pattern I’m using below (but you can do whatever you like, as long as the result is 6 inches x 6 inches.  Please send your squares to Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church, 4 Morningside Ave, Toronto, ON M6S 1C2, by Saturday June 8th. 

We will be piecing the project together on Sunday June 9th, at 12:00 noon at the church – lunch provided, if you’d like to join us.  Thank you!

Knit City, May 18-19, 2024

If you’d like to hand off your squares in person, here’s another option: This coming weekend, May 18th and 19th, Knit City Toronto will be taking place at the Westin Harbour Castle. I have to good fortune to be hanging out with Christopher Walker and Jamie Godin of  Cabin Boy Knits at their booth on Saturday from 10:00 to 1:00, and then again on Sunday from 10:00 to 12:00 noon.  If you’d like to stop by and drop off your squares in person and say hello, that would be fabulous.

You would also get the chance to look through the fantastic offerings of Cabin Boy Knits.  How gorgeous is this yarn?  (And Jamie and Christopher aren’t too bad themselves.)

Cabin Boy Knits

I first met Christopher when he did a presentation about the history of yarn dying in Ontario at the Toronto Knitters Guild  -- where I made sure I had a good chance of winning the skein of yarn he offered as a door prize by buying arms-lengths of raffle tickets to skew the odds in my favour (totally worked, by the way – I won the beautiful hand-dyed hank). 

After Christopher and Jamie heard about my installation “Stitched Glass,” they invited me onto their Cabin Boy Knits Canadian Interview Series to talk about The Knitting Pilgrim, and we had a fantastic chat.  You can see that here.

Years later, it was Jamie’s turn to win a draw – this time for the Henslow’s Sparrow Pillow I had knit as a door prize to support the launch of Claire’s first novel, At Last Count. Truthfully, that is a longer story than I have time to tell here, with a few funny ups and downs and twists and turns, but by the end of it, it was my pleasure to present Jamie with the pillow.  Here we are on the steps of Cabin Boy’s wonderful cabin.

If you’d like to hear the entire Henslow’s Sparrow Pillow story in four-part harmony, stop by the booth this weekend, and we’ll tell you all about it – it’s a great yarn!

Patchwork Pride Pennant, The Knitting Pilgrim, Pacific Contact, and KPT Ep 123: Pushed Aside: Women and LGBTQ and Christianity, Pt 2

Patchwork Pride Pennant

The biggest new project afoot is the Patchwork Pride Pennant, which we are going to hang at Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church in time for Pride 2024. If you’ve been following along here, you’ll know that I put up three Rainbow Yarn Bomb installations last year for Pride, and two of them (one at Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church, one at Todmorden Mills) were vandalized and stolen—a giant disappointment. The one that succeeded in staying up was located at Crieff Hills Retreat Centre.

There was wonderful support after the theft of the two yarn bombs. Lisa Easley, a knitter who lives in Georgia, reached out via my website and offered to re-crochet one of the yarn bombs herself, providing the yarn and all the work involved. I am thrilled about this and look forward to sharing her work when she sends it.  We plan to place it on the same tree that hosted our original yarn bomb, just further up – past where the trunk splits into two big vertical branches.  We are hoping that no one will be able to do it mischief there.  A massive thank you to Lisa for her support—and her crocheting. It’s a lot of crocheting.

Crieff Hills has asked for another Rainbow Yarn Bomb this summer, so I’m excited about that.

And at Morningside-High Park, fellow knitter and congregant Sandy Takeda and I have decided to try something new: what we’re calling a Patchwork Pride Pennant, made of knitted 6” squares, all the colours of the rainbow—something we can hang on the building up high so unhelpful interlopers can’t easily reach it. We’ve put out the call and have an amazing number of knitters who have reached out to knit squares. Would you like to join us?

Here's the very straight forward pattern:

Feel free to leave the tails on the squares — we can use them to help sew them together. We need all the squares delivered by Saturday June 8th, 2024 so we can assemble the pennant at a Pennant Party the next day, Sunday June 9th. Lunch will be provided. We will definitely need some assistance — so if you can drop by Morningside-High Park Church, 4 Morningside Avenue, Toronto, M6C 1C2 at 12:00 noon, we would welcome the help!

You can either deliver your squares to the church, or you can hand them off to me directly May 18-19 at the Knit City Toronto marketplace, Westin Harbour Castle, 1 Harbour Square. The ever-wonderful Christopher Walker and Jamie Godin of Cabin Boy Knits have invited me to hang out at their booth and have volunteered to be a drop-off location for Patchwork Pride Pennant squares. The more, the merrier.  If neither of those options works for you, please reach out to me via www.kirkdunn.com, and we’ll figure something out.

And if you’re at Knit City, please do stop by the Cabin Boy Knits booth, whether you have Patchwork Pride Pennant squares or not. Their hand-dyed yarns are to die for.

The Knitting Pilgrim at Brantford’s Sanderson Centre and Central Presbyterian Church in Hamilton

Most recently, we performed The Knitting Pilgrim at Brantford’s Sanderson Centre (April 17) and Central Presbyterian Church in Hamilton (April 20).

We had a lovely time. Here’s a testimonial I received via my website the day after our show at the Sanderson Centre which moved me:

And here I am, pre-show, at Central Presbyterian.

We welcomed our new projection operator, Hussein Esmail, to the show. Hussein joined me at our last two shows and was a complete natural. In fact, the IATSE crew of The Sanderson Centre couldn’t believe that he had only ever run the show once before that performance. If you’ve seen the show you’ll know that it has a TON of projections (and if you haven’t seen it, a list of shows both past and upcoming, is on my website here).  I am eternally grateful to the projection operators who work on KP with us. They save my butt on a regular basis and do the things I cannot do. In other words, I take care of the talking and the knitting—they take care of everything else that happens on stage, including lighting, sound, and the live knit cam.

Pacific Contact

Last week, Claire and I attended the Pacific Contact artist-presenter conference in Kelowna, BC. Here I am working on my Star of Bethlehem wrister pattern on the airplane over… I am still trying to finish it and get it onto Ravelry. Any day now, I swear.

Claire tells the full story of our time in BC in her newsletter (we are now a house of newsletters—one more thing on the pile!)—and if you’re not signed up to her newsletter, give it a go—it’s great (you can sign up here). I can safely say this from experience—not that I’m biased at all.

I’ll just say that we had a great time, I enjoyed the BC craft beer, we saw a ton of great showcases and booked Knitting Pilgrim shows for our BC tour in April 2025, which we’re very excited about.

The Knitting Pilgrim Talks

Claire and I continue to release The Knitting Pilgrim Talks episodes on YouTube and podcasts everywhere you find what you like to listen to.

Pushed Aside: Women and LGBTV in Christianity Pt. 2

In episode 123 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with Rev. Daniel Brereton of St. John’s Dixie Anglican Church about the section of the “Stitched Glass” Christian tapestry depicting a female figure reaching up to the figure of Christ, yet being pushed aside. In the background are pink triangles, representing the LGBTQ+ community and their similar experience of being ostracized by the church. Rev. Brereton talks about the link between women’s rights, gay rights, and their essential threat to the patriarchy of a capitalist society that would rather focus on the biblically insignificant issue of gender rather than the bible’s fundamental message prohibiting idolatry, greed, and the misuse of money.

“It’s not a coincidence that gay rights always follow on the heels of women’s rights. Until women are acknowledged as equal, you can’t even start talking about differences in sexual and gender identity.” – Rev. Daniel Brereton

Episode 123 is available on YouTube here: KPT 123: Pushed Aside: Women and LGBTQ in Christianity Pt. 2

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.

Pride Project and Ep 122 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks: Pushed Aside, Women and LGTBQ in Christianity

Hello Friends,

Happy Spring to you all! Here we are at the end of March, which means (among other things) that Pride month is just over 60 days away. Time to get moving on the next Pride Project.

As many of you will remember, two years ago, we installed a rainbow yarn bomb on the majestic maple on the property of Morningside High Park Presbyterian Church at the head of Ellis Avenue.

Alas, it was torn down.

The yarn bomb was repaired, and my brother Marc and I reinstalled it last year… only to have it torn down again within 24 hours.

This year, as Pride month approaches, we are looking forward to our next yarn bomb installation. Something a little bit different, and something that won’t be nearly as easy for unhelpful hands to reach.

Here’s the idea: We are looking for as many 6 inch by 6 inch knitted (or crocheted) squares as we can get, in as many colours as possible. When Pride Month rolls around, we will take stock of what we have, and decide how best to join them together in a multi-hued rainbow craftivist creation to be installed as high as possible on the MHP grounds — it may be on a tree, a sign, or even on the building itself. We’ll figure it out when we get there. The important thing is to have lots of squares to work with. Here’s a sample of what I’ve been able to knit in the past week of knitting on the TTC, while sitting in the church pew, or just hanging out with friends and family:

If you’d like to be part of the project, we’d love to have you!

All you need to do is knit (or crochet) as many 6 inch by 6 inch squares as you’d like. The more colours, the better. You can execute them any way you’d like, but if you’d like a pattern, the one I’m using is below.

It’s a very easy pattern, and because it is knit on the diagonal, you don’t need to guess at how many stitches to cast on — you just cast on the required three stitches, then knit until your piece measures 6 inches across, then start decreasing. No need to worry about gauge, or needle size, or yarn weight, or nuthin’. Easy peasy!

I’m using 4.5 mm needles, but you can use what you like. All we need is an end product that is 6 inches by 6 inches. Here’s the pattern. Very simple — check it out:

Cast on 3 stitches.

Row 1: Knit

Row 2: Knit

Row 3: K1, Yarn Over, Knit to end of row. Repeat this row until your work measures 6 inches across one side (both sides will be the same).

Next row: K1, Yarn Over, K2tog, K to last 4 stitches K2tog, K2. Repeat this row until 6 stitches remain.

Next Row: K1, Yarn Over, K2tog, K2tog, K1.

Next row: K1, K2tog, K2tog.

Cast off.

Once you’ve finished your squares, reach out to me, and we’ll work out how to pick them up from you. You can also feel free to join our knitting circle every Sunday morning, 11:30 AM following the service in the Morningside-High Park fellowship hall. Coffee and cookies provided. Can’t wait to see what we come up with!

the knitting Pilgrim talks

We continue to release new episodes of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, which explore the imagery of the Stitched Glass tapestries in conversation with faith leaders and academics.

Pushed Aside: Women and LGBTQ in Christianity Pt. 1

In episode 122 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with Rev. Janet Ryu-Chan of Morningside-High Park Presbyterian Church about the section of the Christian tapestry depicting a female figure reaching up to Christ yet being pushed aside. Rev Ryu-Chan speaks of what it felt like to grow up in a patriarchal denomination of Christianity, her experience as a female member of the clergy, and how differently she’d be treated if she were a six-foot tall white man.

"I never saw myself as a minister, because I just never saw any female ministers, no female Elders." - Rev. Janet Ryu-Chan

Episode 122 is available on YouTube here: KPT 122: Pushed Aside: Women and LGBTQ in Christianity Pt. 1

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.

The Knitting Pilgrim Talks Episode 121: The Dove of Peace and Reclaiming Symbols

This past week’s episode of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks was #121: Dove of Peace and reclaiming symbols, with Rev. Daniel Brereton.  The timing for this section is good, as the Christian church moves into Lent – 40 days of reflection on the journey of Christ towards the cross -- and toward Easter.  Here’s an image of the full Christian window, with a close-up of the Dove of Peace section:

In speaking of the image of the dove on the tapestry, Rev. Daniel reminded me of the peace that Jesus brought, and how it was different than the ‘peace’ of this world, which is often accomplished through war and subjugation.  The people of Jesus’ time would have been looking for a saviour, a messiah, to turn the tables on the Romans and subject the Romans to just that kind of worldly peace.  Even today, Rev. Daniel pointed out, that’s the kind of peace most of us look for.  The superheroes of our movies succeed by being more violent than the villains. And we think that’s okay, because at least they’re ‘good’ (very similar to the idea that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun).  But this was not the kind of peace that Jesus offered.  He offered a peace of love, forgiveness, distributive justice, service, and sacrifice.  And he disappointed a lot of people... which got him killed.

Today, we can look around us and see that the peace the world gives – peace through subjugation – is not working very well.  The peace that Christianity, Judaism and Islam speak of is a peace of kindness, caring for the stranger, and distributing the world’s resources in a just and inclusive way.  In this season of Lent, as Christians remember the journey of Jesus toward the cross, we know that things often get worse (much, much worse) before they get better.  Do we have the courage to push for real peace and follow that same path?

The Dove of Peace and Reclaiming Symbols

In episode 121 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, Kirk speaks with Rev. Daniel Brereton of St. John’s Dixie Anglican Church about the image of the dove at the top of the Stitched Glass Christian tapestry, and how Jesus offered his followers peace… but not the kind of peace they may have wanted. They talk about the importance of remembering both the painful history and the powerful hope of the faith’s great symbols.

"Superheroes in movies manage to save everybody by being even more violent than the villains. And Jesus disappointed a lot of his followers by not being that kind of leader." -- Rev. Daniel Brereton

Episode 121 is available on YouTube here: KPT 121: The Dove of Peace and Reclaiming Symbols

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.

New Mittens and Ep 120 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks: "Holy Days"

Hello Friends,

With the Knitting Pilgrim performance at the APCE conference in St. Louis in the rearview, and my work on the Knitting as a Spiritual Practice workshop tucked away, I’ve had some time open up to work on a knitting project of my choice. What to do? My most downloaded pattern on Ravelry has been the Twilight Forest Fingerless Gloves, and a number of people have told me that they would like to see the same design in a full mitten.  Rather than work out the mitten version on the same pattern, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and knit up the next iteration of the “Little Town of Bethlehem” wristers I created for Christmas of 2021 when COVID gave me the opportunity to go on a knitting kick around the holidays. Here’s a photo of that original prototype before I sewed it up. Soon thereafter the wristers were sold at FACTS (Fashion Arts & Creative Textiles Studio) in Blyth, ON, many thanks to Jennifer Triemstra-Johnston who runs things there.

It’s another version of the starry night theme which allows me to play with the gradations of all those hues of blue, which I love.  Hopefully you can also see silhouettes of some low buildings which give the idea of a small Middle Eastern town.  And then of course, there’s the star of Bethlehem – but it occurs to me that could easily be omitted if you didn’t want these mittens to be exclusively associated with Christmas.  Perhaps even replace it with a crescent moon?

Because of the asymmetrical images on the design, the mitt is worked with the intarsia technique of leaving colours dangling off the back, which means that it is much easier to knit flat than in the round.  This was ideal for the fingerless glove:  after knitting the flat design, I just needed to fold it in half, and sew up the seam, leaving a hole for the thumb which I knit into the piece via picked-up stitches later. Here’s how it looked in process, front and back:

This time around, things are a little more complicated.  I still knitted the design flat, but then I needed to add a top to the mitten. I decided to follow the same process I did with the fingerless glove, but instead of casting off at the top, I slipped the live stitches onto some double-pointed needles, sewed up the seam, and then finished the top as I would a regular mitten knit in the round. 

Things were a bit fiddly there at the end, but that may have been because I had five double-pointed needles going, which got pretty crowded. I’ll try it with three double-pointed needles on the next one and see if that makes things easier. Nonetheless, it seems to have worked out.  Now, it’s time to go back and pick up the thumb. 

I’ll let you know how it all turns out...

In the meantime, just a friendly reminder that I was obliged to change my Instagram account, and I can now be found at @kirkdunnknits on that platform if you want to follow me as I go.

the Knitting Pilgrim talks

We continue to release new episodes of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, which explore the imagery of the Stitched Glass tapestries in conversation with faith leaders and academics.

episode 120: holy days

Holy Days

In episode 120 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with Rabbi David Seed of the Adath Israel Congregation in Toronto about importance of Holidays—or ‘Holy Days’—in Judaism. We discuss a section of the Stitched Glass Judaic tapestry depicting a shofar, a menorah, and a lulav—ritual items central to Jewish holidays, which are days set apart as being separate, unique, and which give us an opportunity to reflect on the gifts we have been given in this life…particularly, the gift of time.

"What Judaism is saying is that we have to mark certain days as being separate, apart, unique…so that we pause, and we have an opportunity to reflect on what we have been given." — Rabbi David See

Episode 120 is available on YouTube here: KPT 120: Holy Days

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.

APCE 2024 in St. Louis, and The Knitting Pilgrim Talks Ep 119, "Burned at the Stake"

Hello friends,

Here we are with one twelfth of 2024 under our belts — and it’s been a pretty full year already.

Claire and I had a fabulous time at APCE 2024 in St. Louis, which was held at the very impressive Union Station hotel — the city’s former train station. The shot below is of me knitting in the foyer, and gives you some sense of the grandeur. It was impressive.



Full disclosure, there were a few tense moments when our Projection Operator, Zev Shoag, had his flight out of Toronto canceled due to fog and it looked like he might not be able to make it for the show. So, while I was working through registration and attending conference meetings and events, Claire was working the phones and social media platforms looking for a back-up theatre tech in St. Louis who knew how to run Q-Lab and whose idea of fun it would be to be thrown into the deep end of running a 65-minute show with hundreds of sound and video cues with almost no rehearsal. Kudos to Claire, she did indeed find two back-ups… who fortunately we did not need, because Zev finally made it to “The Gateway to The West” — at 2:00 AM on the day of the show. Phewf!

Happy to report the show was a hit, and we’ve had people reach out to us to express an interest in bring The Knitting Pilgrim south of the border. If you know of anyone below the 49th parallel who might want to add themselves onto a Knitting Pilgrim tour, please let them know they can reach out via www.kirkdunn.com.

The other success of our St. Louis experience was the inaugural presentation of a “Knitting as a Spiritual Practice” workshop.

Not much of a surprise there, really, because when asked about how they would define spirituality, the workshop participants talked about feeling linked to something greater, a sense of compassion, love and enlightenment. It didn’t take long to connect those things to knitting — an act of creating, of linking loop after loop, knitting items for others that express care and compassion in a rhythmic, calming, mindful way that opens us to inspired thoughts and ideas. We might say that knitting cannot help but be a spiritual practice… whether we realize it or not.

Once the workshop and the show were under our belts (both took place on the 25th), I was free to enjoy the last two days of the conference. It was a refreshing and rejuvenating experience to be among hundreds of people, focused on celebrating their faith and actively looking for ways to seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God in a spirit of radical inclusion.

the knitting Pilgrim talks

We continue to release new episodes of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, which explore the imagery of the Stitched Glass tapestries in conversation with faith leaders and academics.

episode 119: burned at the stake

Burned at the Stake

In episode 119 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with Rev. Dr. Stuart Macdonald, professor of Church and Society at Knox College, University of Toronto, about the section of the Stitched Glass Christian window tapestry depicting a corruption of the burning bush: a figure being burned at the stake. While the church’s response to heretics or non-believers is no longer so drastic, Stuart and I discuss the kind of thinking that can lead to such extreme responses to theological differences.

“If you can persuade people the way they can deal with their fear is to attack someone else, that’s pretty powerful. ‘If we only get rid of this group’ -- and that can be a heretic, a witch, a communist, a capitalist… The labels change, but what we are doing is very similar.” — Rev. Dr. Stuart Macdonald

Episode 119 is available on YouTube here: KPT 119: Burned at the Stake

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.

A New Year, with new frontiers. And The Knitting Pilgrim Talks Eps 117 (The Qu'ran) and 118 (Bamiyan Buddhas)

Hello friends,

Welcome to 2024! This brand new year is bringing with it some brand new frontiers — as all new years should. Monday morning, Claire and I will pack The Knitting Pilgrim set and props into our trusty Kia Rondo, and begin the 12-hour trip to St. Louis and the APCE (Association of Partners in Christian Education) 2024 conference, where I’ve been invited to perform the show and present a workshop titled “Knitting as a Spiritual Practice.”

Of course, I’m looking forward to the first presentation of The Knitting Pilgrim south of the border, and can’t wait to chat with the audience members after the show. What I’m REALLY excited about (okay, I’m slightly terrified, too) is the workshop. When the invitation was extended, I jumped at the chance. I have been contemplating knitting and spirituality for a long time, and have wanted to build a workshop about it, because this is what The Knitting Pilgrim — and my knitting practice — is all about.

I see spirituality as the understanding that we are all inextricably linked by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. For me, knitting is a physical manifestation of spirituality. Knitting is an act of creation, linking things together, making them or repairing them. It brings comfort, peace, and care to the knitter — and to whoever is the benefactor of the knitter’s craft. The repetitive, contemplative action of stitch after stitch dissipates stress, and invites enlightenment and insight — literally, in the meditation of knitting, we often achieve inner-sight: we see inside ourselves. And when in flow, we know that what we are doing is possible, though perhaps difficult, and our sense of time disappears. We forget ourselves. We feel part of something larger. And we create something beautiful.

During the workshop, we’ll be working on a small piece based on a blessing painted on a small wooden block Claire and I received years ago from a good friend of ours, Deborah Huber-McBride, a Canadian Presbyterian minister who works with an order of Nuns in Versailles, France — Les Diaconesses de Reuilly. Here’s a shot of two versions of the “Peace Patch” and their inspiration:

As I mentioned, I’m a bit nervous — or is it curious? — about how the workshop will turn out. But hey, I’ll be working with folks who are into spirituality and knitting… It’s hard to see a downside there.

We’ll let you now how it goes.

In other news, it pains me to say that my kirknitsofficial Instagram account is no longer under my control. Sadly, some nefarious individuals are now using it to push bit coin. It’s a long story which I won’t go into here, but the good news is that I have a new account, and you can find me on Instagram at kirkdunnknits. Please feel free to unfollow the previous account, and follow my new account, kirkdunnknits. Hope to see you there.

the knitting Pilgrim talks

We continue to release new episodes of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, which explore the imagery of the Stitched Glass tapestries in conversation with faith leaders and academics

episode 117: the Qu’ran

The Qu’ran

In episode 117 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with Imam Jihad Turk of the Bayan Islamic Graduate School about the holy book of Islam, The Qu’ran. We talk about the history of the Qu’ran, its importance to Islam, and its consistent thematic message to Muslims about how they should live their lives with justice, compassion, mercy, truth, and beauty.

“The (Qu’ran’s) very first commandment is to read. This inspiration...transformed a society that was largely illiterate within just a couple of generations to being one of the most prolific civilizations the world has ever seen.” -- Imam Jihad Turk

Episode 117 is available on YouTube here: KPT 117: The Qu'ran

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

Episode 118: Bamiyan Buddhas

Bamiyan Buddhas

In Episode 118 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I welcome back accomplished physician, scientist, theologian, and Muslim community leader Dr. David Liepert as we chat about the section of the Islamic tapestry depicting a 6th century statue of Buddha in the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan, and how the Taliban twisted the Islamic prohibition on idolatry to justify its destruction.

"It’s just tragic how easy it is to do bad things in the name of something good." -- Dr. David Liepert

Episode 118 is available on YouTube here: KPT 118: Bamiyan Buddhas

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.

Project Menorah wraps up, and The Knitting Pilgrim Talks Ep 116: The Body of Christ

Hello, Friends,

Last night, Thursday, December 14th, was the final night of Hanukkah, and the last night of Project Menorah. For this year, anyway. Here’s how things looked in the front window of our house:

The Hanukkiah flags, or pennants, knit up pretty quickly, they were a pleasure to create, and very easy to hang in our window. Not that much work at all, really. Claire and I were deeply touched by the feedback we received from our friends — Jews and non-Jews alike — who told us they appreciated our support, and echoed our deepest hopes that peace and understanding will emerge from this terrible time. To echo one of the hashtags of Project Menorah, Only Love Lives Here.

We will be back next year.

the knitting Pilgrim talks

We continue to release new episodes of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, which explore the imagery of the Stitched Glass tapestries in conversation with faith leaders and academics.

episode 116: the body of christ

The Body of Christ

In Episode 116 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with the Rev. Dr. John-Peter Smit about a section of the Christian tapestry depicting the Body of Christ – a euphemism for the Christian Church. We talk about the challenge the church faces to incorporate many disparate views of the faith, and the mystery of the sacrament of communion through which Christians can experience the holy. Rev. Dr. John-Peter is the recently retired Regional Minister for Congregational Health for the Synod of Central, Northeastern Ontario, and Bermuda.

"For Christians, we always have to be cautious not to get too arrogant about what we believe. At the same time, we have to stand for what we believe. Particularly when we encounter hate." - Rev. Dr. John-Peter Smit

Episode 116 is available on YouTube here: KPT 116: The Body of Christ

Or all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim, or Spycraft, please reach out to me at www.kirkdunn.com.