The Fifth Annual Fiber Festival is dedicated this year to the life and creations of Maria Bovie. She and her family spent every summer in Jamaica for over 50 years. She had two daughters and a son. The rest of the year they lived near Princeton, New Jersey where her husband taught, and where their heated and insulated house was. The home they came to in Jamaica isn’t winterized, but the land upon which the home stands stretches out overlooking the mountains, having many beautiful and loved gardens and rolling hills and a pond.

I met Maria the first summer my shop was open in 2002. I had a tacky newsprint and magic marker sign on the front porch announcing a knitting circle. Maria managed to get up the steep steps, using her cane, and entered my life saying “I wish to join your knitting circle. But I hate to knit. I crochet”. Shortly after that, it was she who corrected my grandmother’s teaching of the American method of knitting to the “right and proper” Continental method (even though she hated knitting). Maria was a German immigrant and told of her grandmother who knitted and read books at the same time (clearly knitting by the Continental method – what better proof that it was more efficient than that it could be done while reading?). It took me a year of practicing this new method of holding and wrapping the yarn, but it was so worth the effort (I haven’t mastered knitting and reading at the same time – yet). My carpal tunnel doesn’t get aggravated, and my knitting goes much more quickly and smoothly now that I’ve adopted the “correct” way to knit. This makes me laugh, because when I teach others to knit, it is always with the understanding that there are as many ways to knit as there are people, and the way that works best for you is the best way to knit – for you. Maria taught me my best way, for which I will forever be grateful.

Soon after we met, Maria began bringing her hand crocheted and knitted items to sell in my shop – caps, vests, and dolls. It was the dolls which drew the attention of so many. She crocheted them and added fabric skirts, or fashioned legs and curlicue arms for them, added embellishments like bead earrings or buttons or braided hair. She liked to take away loom waste yarns to incorporate into her creations. She told me she didn’t make them for the money, but that she had to make them. If you love making things with yarn, you’ll probably understand the sentiment. Her dolls were idiosyncratic reflections of the woman herself – quirky, unique, independent, and beautiful. She suggested I display them hung from an embroidery hoop so that they could dance together in a circle. It was often difficult for admirers to choose just one – the dolls wanted company. I sold 100 of her dolls in a period of three years. Two of them were on their way to Norway. One went to Long Island to be a Kitchen Witch. Many were purchased to be comfort agents for friends, or tokens of love from mothers to daughters. There is a social worker in Boston who has a family of them. One was black and was to bring good luck to her new person. I often begged Maria for more. I have one which she gave me crocheted from blue alpaca which she bought when we visited a local alpaca farm together. There are many fortunate people who have one or more of her special dolls, significant in so many different ways. Mostly they are pure expressions of who Maria was, and I am glad they’re out there in the hands and hearts of so many people.

Maria, with the help of her son Eric, loved to take her creations to the farmer’s market in Londonderry, and she participated in the Jamaica Fiber Festival as a vendor for at least two years. After she died, Eric told me to direct the money from sale of her items in my shop to benefit the renovations to the Jamaica Town Hall. Since October 2007, almost $300 has been donated in her name which will be used to help run the Fiber Festival. Since the inception of the Fiber Fest in 2003, proceeds of this event have been donated to the Town of Jamaica for further renovations and updates to our Town Hall. There will be more to give this year, thanks to this generosity.

Maria was a musician and a photographer as well as an avid gardener. But her fingers, which remained nimble to the end, gave the most evidence about her love of yarns. She had an indentation in her left first finger, where the yarn moved across it, as she held the tension just right, as she worked the yarn. It was permanently imposed there, holding the yarn exactly in the right place.

She had a full and fulfilling life, I believe, and I miss her, as I appreciate her friendship and the many gifts she brought. I hope I have an indentation in my finger from so much knitting when I’m almost 94.

Margaret Silvia




Notes from Kathleen Meeks :

My memories for Maria Bovie: I remember the very first time I met Maria. She came into my yarn shop in West Wardsboro and walked up to the counter and looked at me with those intense blue eyes and introduced herself. We had a very nice visit and after awhile of sitting on the front porch in rocking chairs, knitting and talking, Maria said to me "You do beautiful work with your knitting but you do a terrible job sewing things together! I will show you the correct way to sew your articles together". Thank you Maria, I will always be grateful. She next invited me to her home for lunch and we had an outdoor lunch. I would go up to her home and pick blueberries.

She asked me to take her to a concert at Marlboro College because she didn't want to drive at night. We packed a picnic and off we went to Marlboro. It was a very lovely night and we had such a good time. I met her husband and her son. Palmer was pretty aloof but her son was very pleasant.

It seemed that long stretches of time would pass but then, Maria would just appear, I saw her at the Jellybean Tree shop in Saxton River. I saw her at the Wardsboro 4th of July parade. It was always as if it had only been a few days. Maria came and sat with me at one Jamaica Fiber day and she and her son had a booth next to me the next year. Her son needed to take Maria home because she was very tired by lunchtime so I watched their table until he came back.

The last time I saw Maria, she and her son drove up to the farm and she wanted to visit the sheep. I had them drive out to the barn and I had the sheep come up to the fence so she could pet them. I can still see her funny little hats, dolls, etc. that she so enjoyed creating. Just to say her name makes me smile because I still see those sparkling, intense blue eyes looking right at me like she could see into my soul. Bless you Maria and I hope you are in heaven knitting up a storm.