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For Meg Swansen, knitting is a passion, almost a religion. What she preaches, though, is a brand of liberation theology handed down from her mother, just like the skill itself.
"Knitting is self-empowerment," Swansen explains. "You choose the colors, the shape. You're creating. . . . You do what you damn well please, and if you're satisfied, it's perfect.
"It's a subversive thing, this hand-knitting deal," she continues mischievously. "If you start doing this with knitting, you might start doing it with something else."
At 54, this guerrilla knitter her wit honed sharp as a No. 1 needle has achieved a quiet celebrity extending far beyond her rustic Cary Bluff home and this nearby central-Wisconsin hamlet (population 600).
Designer, writer, editor and publisher, too, "she's one of the best-known and highly regarded knitters in this country," says Melanie D. Falick, author of the handsome new coffee-table tome, "Knitting in America." Falick admiringly profiles Swansen, along with a score of other artisans.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Swansen at length in a front-page, 1995 feature on knitting camps, many of them patterned after the original started in Wisconsin decades ago by Swansen's mother.
The fiber-arts publisher Interweave Press, of Loveland, Colo., taps Swansen as a consultant, seeking advice about and reviews of knitting manuscripts.
"I can't think of anyone who compares to her (Swansen) in the world of knitting," says Linda Ligon, Interweave's president and editorial director.
"Meg's making quite a reputation for herself, because she's picking up where her mother left off. She's very respected in the knitting world," acknowledges Carol Wigginton, manager of the fast-growing Knitting Guild
of America. The 12,000-member guild will hold its convention in Milwaukee in March 1998.
Swansen's mom is Elizabeth Zimmermann, grande dame of 20th-century knitting. A British native, she came to America with her German beer-brewing husband, settling first in New Hope, Pa., then Milwaukee in 1949.
While August Zimmermann worked his way up to the positions of brewmaster and vice president at Schlitz, his wife attended to their three children, kept at her hobby and, in 1959, launched a mail-order business supplying knitters with pure wool and circular needles.
She developed a percentage system of stitches, imbuing knitters with the knowledge to adjust patterns and to...