After Louis Boria heard about the student knitters of Hartford, he came to Connecticut with a message — and a challenge.
“Fall in love with your passion. Love yourself first,” Boria — the founder of his own knitting company, Brooklyn Boy Knits — told students at New Visions School in Hartford during a recent visit when he explained how knitting became an obsession after he awoke from a vivid dream in 2011.
“I had never so much as tied a knot let alone knit or purl,” recalls Boria, who wore his trademark “fisherman’s cap” during his Hartford visit. After teaching himself to knit using YouTube videos, he took his knitting projects everywhere. A photograph of him taken by Broadway performer Frenchie Davis knitting on a subway train last year went viral.
Boria challenged the students to knit as many blue hats as possible for #HatNotHate, an anti-bullying campaign that has embraced his message together with his artistic flair and passion for knitting. The students would first have to learn about the “stockinette stitch,” which requires alternately knitting and purling rows.
“No one should have a fear of doing what they love because of fear of judgment from others, or what others may think. For me, one of the best ‘side effects’ of my knitting is that I’m helping to break down barriers and expectations about gender roles. Loving what you do shouldn’t be limited by what’s considered ‘normal’ based on gender,” he says.
Boria, 43, promised the students at New Visions that he would return this spring to help them refine their knitting and purling skills so they, too, could perfect a “fisherman cap" for themselves.
When he came to New Visions, Boria brought blue yarn, knitting needles, and a challenge to the dozen or so students in the knitting club, an elective class for expelled Hartford students who learn to knit for two hours each Tuesday morning at the alternative school, where the motto is “find your purpose."
[To read the rest of this article by Patrick Raycraft, click here.]
[Photo: from courant.com]
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