Let's remix this business ~ By guest blogger Kelly Lightbeam

Has anyone seen the movie Pitch Perfect?  It's about this college A Capella singing group, with a leader who is painfully perfectionistic and rigid. Enter the main character ~ a non-conformist, who specializes in creating musical mash-ups by mixing different songs together.  She joins the group, and shakes everything up, encouraging the other singers to let go of their outdated song sets, and embrace her ideas.  Ultimately, she inspires them to incorporate new ways of blending songs and lyrics, to create a masterpiece performance that wins them first place in the A Capella competition. 

Well, this very thing happened to me recently.  Instead of A Capella, it was a fiber related transformation.  I had been spending more and more time at a nearby knitting shop called StevenBe, run by the amazing Steven Berg, when I learned of the upcoming tour that he had arranged with Stephen West.  Officially, it is called the Stephen&Steven tour, offering classes all over the country, running from mid June to mid August.  I attended the kick-off cocktail party for the tour, an inspirational trunk show, and a class called the "Dynamic Duo", which was a free-form class to help you take your knitting and break away from patterns to create your own designs.

The dynamic duo themselves : Stephen West and Steven Be

I have been gushing about them ever since!  My husband teases me about it mercilessly, and anyone who I talk to on a regular basis has heard about them.  I was so inspired by these two incredibly talented knitters.  Steven Be is all about being a "Yes-Knitter" and letting go of worrying about mistakes ~ He says "Try not to make them again, but use them as opportunities."   Stephen West is more of a visionary and he has a gentle approach, which I was very drawn to.  I've been knitting his patterns ever since the class, but I find that instead of knitting the patterns as they're written, I've been doing my own mash-ups.  I combined his Welty shawl with the Starshower Cowl, which I'm really liking.  I started Lumpy Space, but found that the first panel I knit wasn't quite the color combination that appealed to me, so I think it will become the basis for a free-form garment.  This is such a deviation from the knitting of my past, which was very calculated, adhered to the pattern perfectly, and was free of mistakes.  I'm growing as a knitter!

This brings us to the most recent knitting mash-up ~ After knitting eight repeats of  Streusel, I decided to rip it out and restart it as a poncho.  I'm incorporating elements of the Etched Rio Wrap into the Streusel pattern.  I am really looking forward to seeing how it turns out!  I cast on seventy stitches, fourteen of which will consist of the lace pattern.  I don't have much done yet, (who knew that a puppy would take up so much time?), but I will do another update when there's more to see.

Thank you Melissa and Kelli for the opportunity to write about Stephen and Steven ~ I was told to "Scream from the mountaintops" and share about all the things that have me fired up :)

That's all for now!
Kelly Lightbeam