Teachers
EDIE ECKMAN
Edie Eckman is a best-selling author, teacher, designer and editor who loves both knitting and crochet. She teaches around the country and online. As a teacher, designer, blogger, and technical editor, Edie is on a mission to ensure that pattern instructions are as clear as possible to the greatest number of knitters and crocheters possible. She is a lifelong learner, and considers her students the best teachers ever. Her books include The Crochet Answer Book, How to Knit Socks, Knit Socks for Those You Love, Around the Corner Crochet Borders, and others. Find her at www.edieeckman.com.
KATHY ZIMMERMAN
Kathy Zimmerman — an accomplished knitter, teacher, and nationally-recognized knitwear designer — is the owner of Kathy’s Kreations, Ligonier, PA, a LYS specializing in quality yarns and accessories for knitters and crocheters. Her designs have appeared in Knit Simple, Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting magazines, as well as her self-published Ravelry shop, the Kathy Zimmerman store. A freelance designer for various yarn companies, she is best known for her designs featuring textures and cabled stitchwork patterns. Kathy has taught at Knittreat every year since it began.
BONNIE MEANOR
I grew up in a family of makers. I had one sister and my mother made most of our dresses as well as her own – often from the same piece of fabric. The several years she made our bathing suits (ballooning cotton with elastic at various places) was really a high light. She gave me a threaded needle and waste fabric to “sew” to keep me from getting into the machine and pattern cutting when I was 3. My grandmothers (one from Cincinnati and the other from Herkimer, NY) taught me to crochet when they visited us in Detroit when I was about 7. I would buy a stamped pillow case for my Hope Chest at Woolworths even though I didn’t know just what a Hope Chest was and embroider the stamped pattern then make up crochet edging. These seem to have all disappeared by the time I did know what a Hope Chest was. My father’s 2 sisters taught me to knit when I was 11 and that hit just the right chord even though I continued with sewing things to wear and some embroidery. I wanted to take knitting as one of the electives offered in High School, but my father insisted that was something one learned at home. I loved the knitting and knit through classes in college and started helping dorm mates with mistakes and changing patterns to suit myself as well as learning new things from women who were much better knitters than I was. I read about knitting and took an occasional class while working and raising kids, then my dream arrived and I opened a yarn store as the knitting obsession hit in the late 1980’s. I read a lot, took classes at the trade shows and figured out customers problems and taught them how to do various stitches and techniques. I continue to love knitting and take classes and teach others what I know.
KIM GARVER
Kim Garver, educator knitting techniques/restorer of vintage sock knitting machines – ten years dedicated to teaching others in the fiber community.
Qualifications: Fostering skills to enrich lives and learning, through the fiber arts community, is a continuing and intergral part of my business. I am an internationally known sock knitting instructor and have a long history of teaching in the Fiber Arts field. I have been conducting workshops and teaching various “olden way” methods for 10 years. My greatest accomplishments are the success of my students, it is a gift God gave me and one I fully embrace. I’ve taught workshops throughout the mid west and eastern regions of the United Sates for different organizations and fairs relegated to the fiber community. I have conducted live International webinars for the last three years and have a number of students who have travelled from Japan, Germany and England to attend my in-person workshops. I am flattered to be a world renowned educator for vintage style techniques and machines.
NANCY CHASTAIN
I have been making jewelry for many years. I am a self taught silversmith as well. I live in Tucson, Az. I enjoy teaching and making jewelry and always looking for something new to get into. I recently learned to do a painting with pouring paint.