I am a person who loves knitting and all fibrey pursuits, surprise! Other than knitting and spinning,my favorite activities are reading, history, old music and films from the 40s, messing around with my camera, and plonking on the ukulele, not necessarily in that order.
As for my own history, I will go back even farther than my knitting life since that has been rather short…
I have always been interested in fibre arts, and when I was 14 years old, I participated in fibre classes at my local Art Museum (High Museum in Atlanta, GA) which resulted in pieces that were shown in the museum shop. After this introduction, I was never without fibre work in one form or another, but I didn’t find my way to knitting until the year 2000. By that time, I had worked in the graphic design field for several years and had a degree in painting and printmaking under my belt, so it wasn’t a huge stretch to begin designing with my new skill.
After contacting members of the West Coast Knitters’ Guild online, I became a member. One day a large box full of fine undyed yarn was donated to the guild, and since no one seemed to know what to do with it, I offered to handpaint the yarn and make lace shawls to sell as a fund-raiser project for the Guild’s yearly charitable contribution. A discussion arose about whose patterns to use for these shawls, and since copyright was an issue, I offered to design new ones. Several of my most popular lace shawl designs resulted from this guild project.
Knitted lace is my first and enduring love, and when I learned how wonderfully lace combines with beads, I began incorporating beads into most of my designs. Socks and fingerless gloves have become the latest additions to my design repertoire.
In 2004, I began to branch out with designs published elsewhere than under my own name. Please look here [link to page] for the growing list of these designs which have appeared in books, online magazines, and a variety of subscription clubs.
I am proud to be part of the 2009 Rockin’ Sock Club Knitters World Domination Tour, along with Cat Bordhi, Cookie A., JC Briar, and Melissa Morgan Oakes, and I will be teaching at the Make One Yarn Studio’s Lace Retreat this year as well.
Please use the contact form if you would like to know about new Sivia Harding designs as they are released. I love to hear from folks and especially love to see pictures of your versions of my stuff, so please share!