About Us
Kellie (L) and Gwen (R)
Our History
Welcome to Two Sides of the Same Stitch, the shared blog of Gwen Bortner and Kellie Nuss (Kellie is on the left, Gwen on the right). We met many years ago while teaching at Stitches and immediately became great friends finding many things in common. In particular, we love to teach, we love discussing the details and various options for all things knitting and yes, we love that we are both serious knitting geeks!!
We came up with the name Two Sides of the Same Stitch because that is what knit and purl are: opposites sides of one stitch resulting in innumerable fabrics. Like the knit stitch, we are kind of the same, yet opposite. Gwen lives on the West Coast, Kellie on the East Coast; Gwen is left handed, Kellie right handed; Gwen has no children, Kellie has five children; Gwen is an extrovert and loves to tell stories, Kellie is an introvert and patiently listens. But even with all the differences, we both love the creative, technical, beautiful, intriguing aspects found in the world of hand knitting.
After 4 years of blogging together, we decided to make it official in 2014 and became business partners as well. Thus the beginning of Two Sides – Two Points. Our first joint venture was to create a membership site focused on continuing education, EduKnit.com. Since then we have also been developing a pattern line that can be found on Ravelry.
Our People
As we started analyzing who was reading our blog we came to a realization that we aren’t necessarily for everyone. The folks who read us faithfully aren’t just knitters, they are curious knitters. They are the knitters who have lots of different projects on the needles at the same time. Partly because they look for variety in their knitting, but also because each project is an opportunity to learn something new.
Our readers come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and levels of knitting experience. As such, we try to not ever focus on just one level. Besides, where a knitter might be highly experienced in one area, that same knitter can be a complete newbie in another.
Because our readers love the educational side of knitting, each post (one from each of us, each week) focuses on education and the sharing of knowledge. This can take many forms, but here are some examples:
- Providing technical tips, hints or skills to improve your knitting.
- Sharing knowledge of a book or product in the form of a review.
- Giving a “behind the scenes” glimpse into the knitting industry.
- Telling our personal adventures in the world of knitting, teaching and just living.
Our Hope
Through knitting, we have developed a close friendship, not only with each other but one that our families share as well. We would love to get to know each of you better too! Every interaction gives us that opportunity.
The best way to stay in regular contact is to subscribe to our email list. When you do, you will receive a series of emails that highlight some of the posts we think are most valuable as well as providing tips and tricks including some great video tutorials. Reply to any of these emails with thoughts, questions or your own valuable insights and the conversation begins.
Another options is leave us a comment on a post. We love comments (not the crazy spam comments we get tons of every day – but honest to goodness reader comments) and we love to respond to them!
Or if you just want to drop us a note via email, you can do that too!
Our goal is to help create better knitters and support the yarn industry, but we can’t do that without you. So thanks for checking us out and we look forward to getting to know you better.
