Reporting Our Progress to TNNA

If you are coming to TNNA, join us for an update. This week industry leaders in the world of knitting and crochet will convene in Long Beach California for the winter sales show of The National NeedleArts Association, TNNA. TNNA is a member organization consisting of manufacturers, wholesalers, distributers and retailers of quality yarns, tools, books and supplies that support all of the needle arts. TNNA’s Yarn Group sponsored the Symposium: Knit and Crochet Heritage Museum: A Work in Progress, November 8-10,2012, Madison Wisconsin, where the Center for Knit and Crochet was formed. The Yarn Group of TNNA “is an industry-encompassing group that promotes the growth of the yarn industry, creates awareness and appreciation of the craft, and encourages partnerships between members of the community”. Karen Kendrick-Hands, President of the Center will report on the progress since establishing the Center for Knit and Crochet at the TNNA’s Member Meeting and the Yarn Group’s Meeting and will be in TNNA Lounge Sunday afternoon for personal updates.

Start-up progress by the  Center for Knit and Crochet

The Center was incorporated as a Wisconsin non-stock corporation on Dec. 13, 2012. The CKC Advisory Board, created at the Symposium, is an interim board of nine volunteer members who are shepherding the Center’s initial phases of development. Interim Treasurer Marilyn Huset, a CPA, secured our federal ID number, paid the Symposium bills and established our bank and Paypal accounts so that we can receive your donations. Our legal counsel has advised, that when, the Center is declared to be a 501(c)(3), all contributions made from the day of incorporation forward will be retroactively tax-deductible. While there is no guarantee that your deduction will be tax deductible if the Center fails to become eligible for tax exempt status as a charitable organization 501(c)(3), we hope that you will consider making a donation to help us defray the legal fees and application fees that are associated with this process, and the other expenses we are anticipating as part of start-up, which are outlined more fully below.

Our Vice President, Jennifer Lindsay, is heading the effort to review best practices for museums and other similar entities in order to draft Bylaws for our organization that will define membership categories, rights, obligations, and benefits, and other essential operating principles. Before being approved, the draft Bylaws will be reviewed and approved by the Bylaws Committee, the CKC Advisory Board as a whole, and our legal counsel Preparing the Bylaws is required as part of the application to receive 501(c)(3) status from the US Internal Revenue Service.

Thanks to the TNNA’s Yarn Group, who provided a generous grant of seed money to fund our Symposium in November, and to the hosting support provided by the Wisconsin Historical Society and its Foundation, some of the money raised from Symposium registration fees and Book Festival sales will help finance start-up costs. CKC Advisory Board members and symposium attendees are donating their time and talents to facilitate the process of establishing the center as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt entity, and to provide other essential services in accounting, logo design, creating and editing web and newsletter content, and developing a taxonomy or nomenclature that can be used as a basis to develop a digital collection of objects. A big “thanks” to the Center’s Secretary, Nicole Scalessa, and her sister for developing the Center’s new logo.

Social media efforts – all volunteer to date – have garnered a following on line of over 800 on our Facebook page, nearly 190 in our Ravelry Group, and 123 blog followers, the Center pays money to maintain a web presence and to create, host and circulate the on-line newsletter.

However, starting a non-profit organization also entails spending money to retain legal counsel to advise us on filing our 501(c)(3) application, and to pay the filing and registration fees. Initial start-up expenses (legal fees, filing fees) will exhaust most of our current funds. In addition, the Center pays money to maintain a web presence and to create, host and circulate the on-line newsletter. Donations during this provisional start-up period, will ensure that we can cover these expense.
The Center also needs to plan and budget for future growth and development – to consult professionals in web design, photography and image hosting, and to create a provisional web site that will allow us to communicate more effectively. There will likely be costs associated with sharing and vetting the knit and crochet taxonomy or nomenclature we are developing to underpin the digital repository. There are also costs associated with other essential outreach, e.g., the development and sharing of guidelines for preserving and documenting knitting and crochet at home, or as a function of your local guild or group.

Finally, we will be planning a second Symposium. Jack Blumenthal of Lion Brand Yarn, has offered to host the next Symposium at Lion Brand Yarn’s New Jersey facilities. Your donations will keep our dream alive of creating an organization – the first of its kind – that will properly preserve and promote the art, craft, and scholarship of knitting and crochet. Once we are able to confer memberships, we can apply any donations you have made toward an annual membership in the Center for Knit and Crochet, and we will, of course, be looking for additional sources of funding, like grants and other donations, that we can secure to help us on our way.

“Center for Knit and Crochet” is Born!

November 8-10, 2012

Dateline: Madison, WI.

One of the illustrious participants wrote about last weekend’s Symposium for Exploring the Feasibility of Establishing a Knit and Crochet Museum and the Wisconsin Book Festival. Since I am still  under the weather, (blessedly not everyone realized that I was the whole time), I will offer a summary based on her draft in order to spread the good news of the fruits of our labors:

The symposium began Thursday afternoon with a reception,

Dr. Ellsworth Brown’s welcome

followed by welcome and opening remarks from Dr. Ellsworth Brown, the Ruth and Hartley Barker Director of the Wisconsin Historical Society; and Karen Kendrick-Hands, Symposium Chair (that’s me!).

The lobby was graced with four cases filled with knit and crochet treasures

Curators’ Choice

from the Textiles and Costume Collection of Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection of the School of Human Ecology at University Of Wisconsin-Madison.  The exhibit was curated by Leslie Bellais, WHS, with assistance from Liese Pfeifer, Collections Manager of HLATC.

Susan Strawn, PhD, presented an interesting power-point montage of photos of knitters throughout the years titled, “The Knitting Image:  Popular Media, Art, and Industry Look at American Knitters.” Susan is a professor of Apparel Design and Merchandising at Dominican University in River Forest, IL.

On Friday,  Melissa Leventon, in her keynote address, “So You Want to Start A Museum,” spurred us to think deeply about the feasibility of establishing a museum.  Melissa provided a number of examples of successes and failures of museum undertakings.  Melissa’s advice included:

*          start small

*          location matters

*          be visible

*          have easy access

*          know your audience before you commit.

A common thread throughout Melissa’s talk was: “It always costs more money and takes more time than you can imagine.”  The immense expense of owning a building and maintaining a collection made us much more receptive to the concept of honoring knit and crochet by creating a digital space with the attributes and offerings of a physical museum – an alternative championed by Dr. Ellsworth Brown.

Jennifer Lindsay, M.A., History of Decorative Arts and coordinator for the Smithsonian Community Reef (a collaborative fiber art exhibition created for the National Museum of Natural History’s exhibition of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef in 2010), advocated creating a virtual museum when she first got involved with the project in 2011.  At the symposium, Jennifer discussed the virtual museum’s form and content as an opportunity to integrate institutional knowledge with community knowledge more deliberately and openly than museums are doing on-line now.  She recommended we collaborate with museums and other collectors to develop a global, pan-institutional digital collection of historical and contemporary objects that could be augmented and critiqued by members of the community using recent advances in technology and in social net-working.  Jennifer referenced the Australian Dress Register (“ADR”) developed at Sydney, Australia’s Powerhouse Museum , which currently includes examples of dress from 45 collections, and allows the public to add objects and supporting information upon approval.   The ADR provides excellent resources to support outreach and education, including how to photograph, store, preserve and catalogue items of dress.   Jennifer suggested that a  virtual museum would promote appreciation and scholarship of knitting and crochet most effectively by facilitating a robust exchange of information about the techniques, materials, and evolving social history of knitting and crochet between museum professionals, collectors, scholars, artists, and passionate practitioners. She noted that it can also be used to test the feasibility of developing a physical museum at a later date.

Emily Pfotenhauer briefed us on the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, a digital collection among Wisconsin museums.  From a practical perspective of having set up a pan-institutional digital collection for decorative arts media, Emily emphasized the importance and value of a standardized, structured “metadata” – the information about stuff – that is  searchable, sortable, interoperable and sharable.“  Emily talked also about the International Quilt Study Center and Museum as a possible model,

Karen, Susan and Melissa were joined by Trisha Malcolm (Vogue Knitting) and Jack Blumenthal (Lion Brand Yarns) on a panel, moderated by Sheryl Thies, that addressed The Values of Heritage and Why It Matters.

The strength of the gathering, beyond the fine presentations, were the interactions and synergies among  the more than 50 participants, including June Hemmons Hiatt, author of “The Principles of Knitting;” Gwen Blakley Kinsler, founder and first president of the Crochet Guild of America; Dr. Angharad Thomas, Textile Archivist of the Knitting and Crochet Guild of the UK, (who came all the way from the British Isles);  Jolie Elder, past president of Atlanta’s Knitting Guild; Julia Grunau, owner of Patternfish in Toronto, CA; Nicole Scalessa, IT Manager for The Library Company of Philadelphia; Beth Casey, owner of Lorna’s Laces and Chair of TNNA’s Yarn Group, our primary sponsor; Karen Searle, fiber artist; Lily Marsh, a doctoral student in American Studies at Purdue University who is researching Elizabeth Zimmerman, founder of Schoolhouse Press; Kathleen Mullins, Executive Director of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House and the Henry Ford Estate; and Sheryl Thies, knitting designer and author. Members of  Madison Knitters Guild, the local guild with over 500 members, provided both informed participation and many of the volunteers who made the event possible.  ‘Passionate practitioners’ came from near and far to learn and help this initiative  succeed. Of course the risk of listing is omission, so I welcome concepts correcting gaps,  and apologize in advance!

The most important work was done Friday afternoon and Saturday morning when all the participants joined, under the guidance of an expert facilitator, to address our interests, excitement and concerns regarding the feasibility of establishing a knit and crochet museum.

Friday’s Facilitation with Bert Stitt

Our facilitator asked us to consider:

*          vision – what we see as a final product

*          mission – the things we must do to make the vision real

*          purpose – why we do it

*          goals – what we will accomplish

*          action – what we must do

These hours were interesting, intense and enlightening. After extensive discussion we selected the following name and tagline.
[International] Center for Knit and Crochet:
To preserve and promote art, craft and scholarship

As the Saturday session concluded, we  formed  a seven member temporary board, and  consented together to pursue nonprofit incorporation and 501(c)(3) status.

We have already started drafting the incorporation papers, even as other members pursue developing a vocabulary and categories for our “metadata” and a set of best practice guidelines for private collectors and local guilds to ensure the preservation of important knitted and crocheted objects intact with their stories in their local context. We will follow-up with virtual brainstorming session to generate and prioritize scope, project, program and partnership ideas.

Stay tuned for a new Logo, and Web page to reflect our collective vision and strategic directions.We will publish a more detailed symposium summary, and ways that you can  get involved with and contribute to the Center for Knit and Crochet.

We are an amazing collection of talent, intellect, passion and energy!! We hope that you will join us on this amazing journey.

 

June Hiatt, Book Festival and Earned Media

The Symposium starts this afternoon!!

Amazingly, June Hemmons Hiatt, author of the masterwork,  “The Principles of Knitting,” now in its second edition, is coming.  Trisha Malcolm of Vogue Knitting shared the info with her and she is coming.  As a History scholar, June sees this effort as important.  We are thrilled (and humbled) to have her attend.

We have a great facilitator to guide our discussions so that we emerge with strategic directions on Saturday.  So exciting!!!

The Wisconsin State Journal had a great article this past Sunday.  Check out the pix of the Curators’ Choice Exhibit, and a preview of the work over the next three days.

I can tell that this Project is being taken seriously, because a developer of software to manage digital collections has emailed us with an urgent sales pitch – all the way from New Zealand!!

The Symposium closes with a book signing.  The following authors of Knit and Crochet Books, that build our skills, inspire our designs, and keep our hooks busy and needles clicking will join us.

Mary Germaine, Therese Chynoweth, Beverly Gordon, June Hemmons Hiatt, Judy Swartz Marcus, Janet Rehfeldt, Myrna Stahman, Susan Strawn, and Sheryl Thies.

Drop by to meet them.

Sorry no time to upload .jpgs or links!!!

Thanks for the well wishes from around the world, as we “cast-off” to make history.

Are You On the Fence About Whether to Attend the Symposium?

The symposium, during which we will talk about whether there should be a knit and crochet heritage museum, what that might look like, and next steps to take, is bearing down on us. I wasn’t really thinking about its proximity to the 2012 presidential election only two days earlier when i selected the  dates of Nov. 8 -10. NO, I based it on when there was no home football game for UW’s Badgers.  That said, the election countdown clock applies to registering for the Symposium as well. For those who have decided to attend, but haven’t reserved your hotel yet (or registered), the block of rooms being held at the Lowell Center will be released this Saturday, Oct. 6.  This is the most convenient lodging to the Symposium, and you should reserve TODAY!

For those not sure you should attend, Becky Holmes, a technical writer, ardent knitter [Ravelry name, Vanillamilkshake], and so much more  . . . makes this persuasive argument:

I was curious about the knitting symposium but not sure whether or not I wanted to commit the time and money to attend the event. Having now met with Karen Kendrick-Hands, the driving force behind this event (and the museum itself), I am convinced that it will be an excellent use of my time and money. Karen is a zealous advocate for preserving knitted and crocheted items and ephemera such as patterns and she will win you over to the cause.

I had a lot of questions for Karen about this project: “What kind of museum do you envision?” “Will it be located here in Madison?” “What role is the Wisconsin Historical Society playing in the symposium and the museum?” “What role can local Madison knitters play in this project?”

It turns out that answering the first three questions is part of what we will do at the symposium. Museums in the 21^st century can take many forms, including digital only. A bricks and mortar building with exhibit space is another option. We will investigate these and other questions over the course of the event.

The last question, “What role can local Madison knitters play in this project” was what hooked me into signing up. This event has the support and participation of industry and museum experts, both local and national–if this project is going to work, it’s going to be these people who get it going, and I didn’t want to squander the chance to be an early supporter. When I thought about paying the $175 fee, I considered the fact that events like this can’t be organized for free, and if paying my fee helps the event come off, then it’s worth it. However, if you are interested in attending the event but don’t have the funds, Karen still needs volunteers to help with breakout sessions and registration; send her an e-mail message at knitheritagemuseum@gmail.com.

I hope to see you November 8-10 at the Wisconsin Historical Society. I’ll be wearing handknits.

Trisha Malcolm of Vogue Knitting and Jack Blumenthal of Lion Brand to Speak

I am so excited that Trisha Malcolm’s , VP and Editorial Director of Vogue Knitting, has accepted our invitation to speak at the Symposium, the panel is complete.

Trisha was one of the first yarn industry leaders to respond enthusiastically to the concept of a Knit and Crochet Heritage Museum, “It’s about time.  A brilliant idea.” If Trisha Malcolm believes that this project is vital to the future of knit and crochet, we can not fail.

Jack Blumenthal , VP of Lion Brand Yarn will join Trisha on the panel to discuss how our knit and crochet heritage empowers the future of our beloved  art/craft, and the industry that supports it. Jack knows the importance of preserving history. Lion Brand has been around since 1878 and is America’s oldest yarn brand. For us passionate practitioners, it is a great opportunity to ponder the continuum of interests in our community.

Just assembling the symposium has been a massive undertaking, and I know that much more work lies ahead. The Symposium is all about knowledge sharing, team building and a reality check to figure out the best place to begin.  It is an exciting time to envision a unique museum, getting off to the right start in the digital age, before we are blessed/burdened with objects that are simultaneously assets and liabilities.   Come help us to develop a twenty-first century institution to honor an ancient fiber art.

Be sure to visit our new static pages on the left-hand column of this blog page (a little technological empowerment is a dangerous thing in an amateur’s hand. Thanks Paul!). There is a new media release about the Symposium, as well as lots of new event details, including our classy brochure.