In the next ten years, CKC will strive to become everyone’s digital museum for knitting and crochet, and the primary resource for reliable and interesting information about makers past and present, and their individual contributions to craft history. To ensure CKC meets this goal, we have identified four vital areas of growth and development for CKC in our next decade.  These are:

• Discovering, Uncovering Our Histories
  • CKC will continue to center makers’ skills, knowledge, and agency in how our craft histories and what we have made are preserved, studied, interpreted, and exhibited by ourselves and others. 

• Becoming a Better CKC Community
  • CKC will continue to expand its representation of the diverse people and communities who knit and crochet, historically and today, by improving the representation and participation of BIPOC, LGBTQ, and other previously marginalized makers and communities in CKC’s leadership, content creation, and in all CKC’s endeavors.  

• Enhancing Health and Wellness Through Crafting
  • CKC will explore and share the vital role that crafting plays in health, wellness, and rehabilitation, historically and today.  

• Finding the New and Next in Knitting and Crochet
  • CKC will continue to help makers document their histories as they happen, improving opportunities for their innovations, work, activities, creativity, and perspectives to be appreciated and preserved before they are lost.  

In the Anniversary Lecture Series, CKC will feature up to six guest speakers whose work and personal contributions to the art, craft, scholarship, and history of knitting, crochet, and related arts offer interesting perspectives on the values and interests CKC has identified as important to achieve success in our next decade. 

In 2016, The Center for Knit and Crochet created their inaugural online exhibition exploring Sanquhar glove. The exhibit was curated by Beth Brown-Reinsel and Angharad Thomas.

Beth Brown-Reinsel has been passionately teaching historic knitting workshops nationally, as well as internationally, for over 35 years. Her book Knitting Ganseys has been deemed a classic.Beth’s website, blog, and eNewsletter can be found at knittingtraditions.com. In addition, she hosts two retreats in Vermont each year, and a cruise or land tour somewhere in the world. (See her website for more info!) She lives in Vermont in the US and loves New England winters!

Angharad Thomas is a designer, maker and researcher. Originally a geographer, Angharad has a master’s degree in knitwear design and a PhD which examined Welsh textile production, design and sustainability. Angharad has spent much of the last fifteen years researching, designing and knitting gloves, in tandem with her role as Textile Archivist for the collection of the Knitting & Crochet Guild. Her gloves have been exhibited and her designs and articles published in the consumer press in both the UK and the USA. Angharad also gives talks and workshops on glove knitting, both in real life and online. Her book ‘A knitter’s guide to gloves’ was published by Crowood Press in 2023.

Terri will talk about her work as a writer and researcher, a teacher, a community advocate and pastor, and as the co-creative force behind her family’s yarn business.  Be inspired by Terri’s wisdom, her passion for creative expression in all its forms, her ability to build vibrant communities around her many interests and areas of expertise, and her role as a Board member of Project Knitwell, a recognized leader in therapeutic knitting.

Terri J. Haynes, a native Baltimorean, is a writer, business owner, freelance graphic artist and former Army wife (left the Army, not the husband). She is the owner of AT Haynes House Yarns, a hand-dyed yarn company located just outside Washington, DC. Terri is also a multi-published author. She writes historical fiction, contemporary romance and wrote reviews for Publisher’s Weekly for almost ten years. Terri has also taught creative writing to both elementary and college level students. She holds a master’s degree in theology and served in several pastoral roles including senior pastor of the church she and her husband, Brian, planted in 2010. Terri has three wonderful adult children who bring much joy and laughter to her life.

Terri J. Haynes (www.terrijhaynes.com) is the owner of AT Haynes House Yarns (athayneshouseyarns.com), a wife, a mother, a minister, the author of six novels, a creative writing teacher, and so much more.  Terri published Passages of Hope in November of 2022, and The Daughter of Shiloh in October 2025. 

BETSAN CORKHILL is a former physiotherapist and founder of STITCHLINKS.COM, est. 2005.  When Betsan stumbled across the large amount of anecdotal evidence about the benefits of knitting and crochet, she wanted to know if there was science behind the claims. The idea of Therapeutic Knitting evolved from her research to establish an evidence base, with the aim of applying the meditative, creative, and social benefits of knitting in a guided manner to improve emotional and physical healing in those who are fit and well as well as those living with health issues.  

Today, STITCHLINKS.COM functions as a locus of support for individuals, groups, and clinical practitioners using knitting and crochet as therapeutic activities to enhance recovery, health, wellness, and personal empowerment.  Crafts like knitting and crochet have historically been used as adjuncts to other more traditional forms of treatment for mental and physical illness, however, the lack of research behind their benefits has meant that they have been ignored in evidence-based medical practice. 

Betsan will discuss the importance of having the meditative and restorative powers of these crafts to soothe, heal, and connect us supported for the first time by clinical evidence of their own inherent mental and physical benefits.*  

Betsan Corkhill is the author of Knit for Health & Wellness: How to Knit a Flexible Mind and More, Flat Bear Publishing, 2014 and Crochet Therapy: The Soothing Art of Savoring Each Stitch, Abrams Books, 2016, as well as several other related self-help and wellness titles.  She is also a certified Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing trainer, and a Lifestyle Health and Wellbeing Coach. 

*Please Note – Betsan Corkhill’s talk will be pre-recorded for this event to avoid connectivity issues.  She will participate in a live Q&A.  

Dr. Angharad Thomas is a scholar, geographer, designer, and maker who lives in Yorkshire in northern England. She will discuss her passion for knitting gloves, including her extensive research on local and regional glove knitting traditions from the UK and around the world.  

A retired university lecturer in art and design, Angharad Thomas recently published a book that links her extensive research on gloves – including liturgical gloves – with practical information for makers. It is A Knitter’s Guide to Gloves, published by Crowood Press, 2023.  

The modest title hints at a powerfully important guiding value of CKC – that makers make the best scholars of knitting and crochet, because scholarship based on deep personal understanding and experience of these crafts, their history, and the materials, techniques, and perspectives that define and expand them, has enduring value to the craft community and to the public.  

Dr. Thomas attended CKC’s Founding Symposium in 2012 and was co-curator with Beth Brown-Reinsel of CKC’s first exhibition, Sanquhar Gloves: A Living Scottish Tradition, 2016. She is a long-time volunteer archivist for the Knitting and Crochet Guild of the UK, a sister organization to CKC, and the caretakers of a fascinating historical collection.

Photos:  Angharad Thomas at the Dales Museum, Yorkshire, UK, 2019; and her book, published in 2023 by Crowood Press, Ltd.

You can find out more and follow Angharad Thomas at Knitting Gloves, a World of Design.