Newsletter: Feature
Hi everyone! I’m Adrienne Rieck (pronounced “reek”), but everyone in the fiber world calls me by my nickname, Annie 🙂 I’m so excited to be working with Kathy Roletter behind the scenes of the Beginner Certification Course. Kathy asked me to share a bit about myself with you. Here goes . . .
I have been knitting since I was a little girl. My Irish grandmother (that’s her in the photo with me 🙂 ) taught me when I was about 7 or 8 years old – slippers for a Girl Scout badge. I still have the pattern and I’ve been knitting pretty much ever since. Growing up as a first-generation American in an Irish home, I think you can’t help but learn hand work, although the love of it skipped a generation from my grandmother to me. Besides knitting, I love bead and silk ribbon embroidery, have dabbled in counted cross stitch and needlepoint, and know how to crochet. I’ve tried rug-hooking, but it’s not for me – neither is textile weaving (except for continuous strand). I am also a spinner and have a wheel – a Lendrum – and I have had the pleasure (and luck!) of studying with Toni Neil, Patsy Zawistoski, the late Anne Field, and Judith MacKenzie. I occasionally teach beginning spinning, and how to knit socks on two circular needles, and I was a regular attendee of the Missouri Fiber Retreat before it ended in 2017, which is where I first learned about CSMs.
I am the proud owner of an Erlbacher Gearhart Reduced Ratio circular sock machine (serial #2019-1433). I was lucky enough to attend CSM classes taught by Jamie Mayfield and Sue Vunesky at the Missouri Fiber Retreat the first year they taught there. I didn’t pull the trigger on a machine that year, but was ready to do so in 2017, when I planned on attending the same retreat and classes. A kidney stone prevented me from attending, and my sock machine dreams were put on hold. Then, in April 2019, I decided to attend the Erlbacher Gearhart “homecoming” event in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I went there on a fact-finding mission and to decide if I really wanted to spend the money to get a CSM. Jamie paired me with wonderful mentor, Sandee Plocharczyk, who sat me down at a reduced ratio machine and proceeded to teach me how to make heels. I made heels all day for 2½ days. Seriously. Two and a half days of heel after heel after heel. Here is a photo of a few of them!
I made my decision to buy a machine and it arrived shortly before the COWS crank-in in central Illinois that summer. I unpacked it and set it up for the first time at that event, and paid for some private lesson time with Jamie, which I have to say was a very smart move on my part. The one-on-one time spent with Sandee (the woman has the patience of a saint) and then with Jamie (she is an amazing and wonderful teacher) made a huge difference in my CSM learning curve. I made my first socks that weekend. I joined the CSKMS not long after, and when the inaugural Beginner Certification Course was announced in February 2020, I knew it would be a way for me to cement my beginner knowledge and hopefully move forward as a circular knitter. The course was everything I could have hoped for and more, and I passed! The time spent researching questions and cranking samples allowed my skills and knowledge to take quantum leaps and I’m looking forward to participating in the Intermediate Certification Course when it is offered.
In addition to the fiber arts that I love, I raise and show African violets – they came before the spinning, but not before the knitting – and produce a bi-monthly video podcast called All About African Violets. I’m also a bagpiper (yes, really). I retired early in March 2020 (I had one great week of retirement and then the world went sideways) and was formerly a business and competitive intelligence researcher in support of business development for a mid-size national law firm headquartered in Chicago. I live in the Chicagoland area and my sweetheart lives in Pensacola, Florida. I love wooden jig-saw puzzles, and I am a champion de-tangler of necklaces, a transferable skill that has served me well on a number of occasions when the yarn swift and/or cone winder has gone terribly wrong . . . 😉
You can find me on Ravelry as Annie97
On Instagram as AdrienneRieck
On my blog, Knit and Run, at https://knitandrun97.blogspot.com
On Facebook as Adrienne Rieck https://www.facebook.com/adrienne.rieck
And on my podcast at https://allaboutafricanviolets.com/