There are Many Types of Genius

It's spring and that means that children across the country have finished their state wide testing.  In Connecticut our students take the CMTs or Connecticut Mastery Tests.  These tests often show how bright students are -- but only in a very few areas -- like math, vocabulary, reading and analytical skills.  Unfortunately, these types of test make us think that those few areas define what makes a person smart.  This weekend I got to see many types of genius at work.  Some of these people I've known for many years and others I just met.  Perhaps you know people who are geniuses, too.  I wish standardized tests could measure these areas too - creativity, problem solving, kindness, diplomacy, color selection, patience, business savvy, consideration and ingenuity.  Many of the talented people at Knitting Central would fall into this category (I'm sure they did well on standardized testing, too).  But the creative genius really came out this weekend as Cynthia hosted Charlene Schurch at Knitting Central

Charlene is in the center front row with the bluish-gray shirt and black pants.

Let me tell you why Charlene is such a genius.  Her mind works so quickly and she manages to combine both right and left brain to create these amazing socks.  She thinks so fast that it's hard to keep up with her sometimes - because you don't want to dare miss a single morsel she is sharing.  She talks about the anatomy of a sock - and she really does mentally dissect a sock into its basic parts and works out the puzzles in her mind to come up with creative knitting ways to make socks better.  She really noodles on how to improve every single aspect of the sock.  And as if that weren't enough, when she creates a pattern, she thinks up how to best make the single pattern work for children, men and women.  It all makes sense when you discover that Charlene was an engineer in a previous life.  Her books are so well configured that you can tell that a creative engineer (e.g. right brain/left brain) came up with these books. 

And since she shared so much of her creative genius with us, I came away with this.  I thought I knew a bit about socks before these 2 workshops.  Boy was I wrong!  If I learned anything this weekend, it's this:  I learned how much I didn't know!

Here's Charlene modeling the Cuban Heel.  It's a triangle on the top of the heel that allows you to have a great pattern on both sides and front of your sock all the way down to the instep and beyond.  It really takes your sock to the next design heel. 

Here's another view of the Cuban Heel which Charlene nicknamed "the sexy heel"

Here are the knitting swatches I made on Friday and Saturday.  The red and white cuff down sock from Friday's class was in yesterday's post. 

• The pink one is the toe-up with Judy Becker's Magic Cast On and a reverse heel flap.
• The white one has three heels on it - a) Cuban Heel; b) short row heel; and c) heel flap heel with garter stitch edges.
• The green and white one is a study in color work heel - a) pin stripe two-color heel with garter stitch edge; b) Eye of Partridge 2 color heel; c) Fair Isle heel flap; d) Pin Stripe turned heel and the beginning of EZ's Shaped Arch  (FOOTNOTE - It's not really an EZ pattern.  It's a Meg Swansen design called Two-Color Arch Shaped Stockings that was published in the Fall 2006 Vogue Knitting.  You can find the errata and corrected pattern HERE. )