The whole Cat Bordhi Thing

If you don't know who Cat Bordhi is this story won't mean a whole lot. So here's a brief who's who. Cat lives on an island and knits. She thinks in ways of island people - outside the box. This thinking shows up in her ideas about knitting socks. She also used to be a school teacher, This also shows up in her knitting. If you want to see her in action go to youtube and search Cat Brodhi. She has several videos on different knitting techniques. If you want to see very different techniques in knitting socks go to Amazon or your favorite book store and look for her books.

Now on to the story.

Two years ago I headed to Chicago to Stitches Midwest to take a couple classes and enjoy the company of some knitting friend from Ravelry. One class was with Cat Bordhi on sock knitting techniques and I was amazed at some of the ideas she came up with. During class I managed a few minutes of her time and we talked about machine knitting vs. hand knitting techniques and somehow I mentioned I love to use garter rib for socks because it's such a quick rib to knit up.

Garter rib is one row of k2p2 and one row of knit. This creates a knit 2- garter 2 rib. Because you're only purling every other row it goes quite quickly.

Back to the story - Cat said she had never heard of this rib and thought it was a great idea and would try it on her grandson's socks. Cool.
I went home with wonderful memories of Stitches Midwest and naturally did a bit of babbling about the classes at my next knit night. The ladies started teasing me that I was Cat Bordhi's new BFF because I talked about her probably more than I should have. I may have mentioned I taught Cat Bordhi something (the garter rib) during my babbling.

Over the next 2 years it has become a running joke in the group. People join our group and I'm introduced as Cat's BFF. I've lived in fear these past 2 years that somehow this story will get to her and she'll think I believe it and I'll end up with a restraining order where I can't come without 100 feet of her. (I know I'm basically paranoid and this would never happen but - if she did hear about it, I would be embarrassed).

Last fall, one of the ladies in my knit group went to Wisconsin and took a Cat Bordhi class. She took a picture of herself with Cat and declared she was now Cat's BFF. This went on till Yarnover. At Yarnover last month Cat was the keynote speaker and also taught a class at Amazing Threads on Sunday. This same lady and another wrote that they were Cat Bordhi's BFFs on the board in the classroom and convinced Cat to take pictures with them. At this point the whole story came out and even though she doesn't know me from a hole in the wall cause this lady teaches over 1000 people a year, well, I was in disbelief. I couldn't believe they had the guts to do this, I wouldn't. But the gauntlet was thrown down and I won't be stopped.

I wrote Cat an email rather tongue in cheek and thanked her for being so kind about this bizarre group of people and wouldn't it be nice if we could prove who her real BFF is and not these "posers". She's such a sweetheart. I got a return email a few days later saying she hopes we can all get a group picture some day and signed it "Your BFF". Will the story continue? Who knows....

Of course, I still have my Elizabeth Zimmermann stories to keep me warm at night and I've let Meg Swanson know she owes me $.23 from a debt her mother left from the late 1970s. Meg is a kind person too and hasn't thought me too bizarre. Knitters are a very strange group of people, me included!