Anne Berk’s Continuing Adventures in Annetarsia

Anne Berk‘s Continuing Adventures in Annetarsia was what today’s Yarn Thing with Marly Bird was all about. Its not been two years yet since Anne was here sharing her new book Annetarsia, and today we get to catch up with all that has happened since.

Anne Berk with Steven Be, at Stitches West 2016, where he personally picked colors for her Shawlvest for her.

In her day job, Anne is an optometrist and shares an office with her husband, Bill, another optometrist. Bill’s hobby is photography, which is interesting as their hobbies together are detail oriented as well as their occupations. Bill actually came up with the term ANNETARSIA as it’s Anne’s uncomplicated method of intarsia. Anne considers herself a teacher with a desire to find a way to solve problems for knitters. Encouraging knitters to try something that only looks daunting, or creating techniques for modern knitters, such as knitting intarsia in the round, has been the challenge she studied and pursued to pass on to others. ‘It’s really not hard’, she says, ‘You just have to try it in a different way.’ Most of what she does is recreate other people’s designs in Annetarsia, such as recently, in her blog you can see she recreated Steven Be’s Shawlvest. Which means, to us, that it’s a technique that translates to other projects.

Recently, Annetarisa Knits, which is not brand-new has had new things happened to it and with it. For instance, it is now available with the Knit Companion app, if you purchase the e-book. The publisher of the hardcover books went out of business and sent her all that they had left of what they’d printed, now she is enjoying mailing copies out personally so she can sign them and wonder how much fun the receiver will have with creating new knitting projects. The photography in the book was done by Bill and the editing by their son, so it was a family project.

As a teacher, Anne gets to travel to share new techniques with us. Such as with Stitches (her next adventure will be to Stitches Texas in September) and to Vermont with Donna Druchunas for a wonderful retreat happening at the Trapp Family Lodge (which is full already, but there is a waitlist). She’s also been invited to share her love of knitting with us in Craftsy Classes. The first was Next Steps in Intarsia and then Simply Stunning Colorwork and in fact will be filming a new class in the next few days! So that will be something we will be watching for. Anne recently was a featured instructor at Yarnover, the Minnesota Knitter’s Guild, where she was one of two full day courses and her class was full! The keynote speaker there was Meg Swansen, and Anne said she was sought out by Meg to share her excitement for Annetarsia Knits. 

Anne finds that we tend to make things feel so much harder that it really is. For instance, we may feel the fiber content is important for doing intarsia, when really even something we may feel is complicated can be done with a any kind of yarn. Anne really feels that if she can help someone feel empowered, those feelings that a technique is hard just fall away.

To spend time with Anne, in Marly’s experience, is a learning opportunity. Marly spoke of the first time they shared a room at a Stitches Event, which for Marly was very soon after learning to knit, Marly watched her intarsia technique and came away with the knowledge that she could do it herself, as a newer knitter! Recently, they shared a room at Stitches South, and Marly brought with her an afghan sample for her mitred-squares course. Anne got out her favorite yarn needles and worked in all those ends (if you saw this during Marly’s Facebook LIVE, you know there was A LOT) in an hour!

Anne Berk can be followed at her website, annetarsia.com, and in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, She also has a designer page and group in Ravelry. You can purchase Annetarsia Knits from her directly, through her website.

If you did not hear the earlier episode, here is the link to that from July 2014, and if you missed today’s episode, it is still available as an archive, too, where it aired originally: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/yarnthing/2016/05/03/anne-berks-continuing-adventures-in-annetarsia or in your favorite podcast catcher, like iTunes or Stitcher Radio.