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Instructions didn't help, so he wrote his own book

Davey Hulse describes himself as a nervous guy who needs to have something to do with his hands when he's sitting around the house.
"To keep them out of the cookie jar and potato chip bag," he explained.
Knitting seemed like the perfect hobby, so he picked up a pair of needles and a skein of yarn two and half years ago and set out to learn how to knit.
It didn't take him long, however, to get frustrated.
 

Kobbi R. Blair | Statesman Journal
Davey Hulse checks his knitting pattern,
which is on Braille note cards, while
working on a sweater for his wife in his
knitting room.  Hulse, who is blind, taught
himself to knit and has written a book on
how to knit for beginners.

"I hated the instructions," Hulse, 56, said. "I couldn't find anything that really worked for me. I'm a really logical learner. So much of it had pictures with it, and so much of it assumed you knew the nomenclature."
The pictures were of no use, because Hulse is blind.
His wife, Vera Randall, tried to describe what she saw in the pictures, but that didn't always translate.
The Internet wasn't all that helpful, even after Davey came across a group of blind and visually impaired knitters to correspond with.
"It really was frustrating to watch him try so hard," Randall said.
Hulse was on the verge of tossing the whole tangled wad of needles and yarn into a bag and donating it to a thrift store, like so many no doubt have done before. But he was just stubborn enough to stick with it and figure it out.
Today he knits beautiful garments for family members and friends, and is the author of a book called "The Touch of Yarn," which is available online through Lion Brand Yarn Company.
"This book is designed to be what I wish I had had when I started knitting," he wrote in the introduction.
"The Touch of Yarn" is a downloadable book available in large-type and Braille Ready Format,
but it is intended for use by all beginning knitters.
"It's really a nice piece of work," says Nancy Miracle, Web master for Lion Brand Yarn. "Blind or sighted, it's a good book."
Miracle discovered the book as a member of the same online group that Hulse sought help from, the Blind Stitchers.
She is sighted, but participates in the group because Lion Brand — America's oldest hand-knitting yarn brand — is a leader in providing resources for the visually impaired, including free downloadable patterns in alternative formats.
When she heard that Hulse had written a beginner's book for knitting, she asked if she could read it. She was so impressed that she presented it to her boss.
"It's very careful in terms of detail," Miracle says. "He's a good writer, and he takes nothing for granted. That's really important for someone who's beginning.
"Almost all beginning books are written by the expert people, and, as a result, they take a lot of things for granted."
Hulse takes a different approach and describes things in a different way. He uses clock references to describe hand and yarn position, for example. And he includes useful tips beyond just the actual knitting process.
"He has good ideas how to organize your stash, which is a problem for every knitter," Miracle said. "You get so much yarn. You get needles you can't find. Not having the benefit of sight, he really put some thought into how to organize his stuff."
Hulse lost his sight in an accident on Labor Day, 1960, when he was 7. He grew up in Eastern Oregon on a wheat ranch. His father was headed to check out a new piece of property that he had just leased, and Hulse and his older brother, Danny, wanted to tag along.
"Mom wanted us to stay home and try on school clothes, because school started the next day," Hulse said.
The boys went with dad and wound up exploring in some of the buildings on the property. They found an old can of what turned out to be dynamite caps. Danny, who was 10, tried to pry it open using a nail and a steel pipe, and it exploded. Danny died from his injuries, and Davey lost his sight.
Davey eventually attended the Oregon School for the Blind, here in Salem, from second through sixth grade. He finished school in his hometown of Dufur and never stopped doing all the things farm kids do, like fishing and riding horses. He also played the piano and the trumpet.
His mom and dad supported him in everything he did, and he dedicated his book to them: "To my parents who taught a blind child that all things were possible."
It took Hulse about a year to write the book, sandwiching it in between his job and his hobby.
He is the CEO of Braille Plus Inc., a Salem-based company that provides alternate format documents to sight-disabled individuals.
He and his wife started the business in 1992, when he was an ADA coordinator for the state.
He quit his job three years later, and the business has been booming ever since.
Today they have 10 employees and three contractors working for them. Some of their current projects include preparing a textbook in Braille for Northern Arizona University and preparing state achievement tests in Braille for both North Carolina and Utah.
Hulse still makes time for his hobby, and loves to knit gifts for family members and friends.
He became a proud new grandpa this past week and sent the baby boy an afghan and a hooded sleep sack. He also included a miniature sleep sack with doll for his 3-year-old granddaughter, so she wouldn't feel left out.
For his mother, who suffered a heart attack last year, Hulse made a special afghan.
"I love to make things that have stories," he said. "She loves the ocean. I made it in a gull wings pattern in colors that reflect the ocean, blues and whites."
Hulse gives away most of what he makes, but he did have a few examples to show me when I visited his South Salem home.
There was a matching red hat and scarf from yarn made of recycled plastic bottles, a purple "potato chip" scarf with a ruffled spiral pattern and a beautiful black vest that he made for his wife.
The vest took him 80 hours to knit and cost about $50. It is made of a yarn blend of alpaca, Merino and silk, and features a design she chose, with eyelet ribbing and a diagonal fern pattern.
Hulse gets creative with everything he makes.
"There's never a pattern I touch that I don't modify," he said.
He showed me a cream-colored sweater jacket that he is making for himself. It called for an all stockinette pattern, which he thought too boring, so he added a ripple stitch.
"I've got to have more texture. I just couldn't stand to do it so plain."
The jacket is missing a few buttons. He calls it one of his UFOs, or unfinished objects.
Hulse couldn't have finished his book without the help of his "usability checkers," who proofread chapters and offered suggestions. Among them was Deborah Mason, a certified master knitter who lives in Pennsylvania and is blind.
"When I was proofreading," Mason said, "I had needles and yarn in my hands so I could go exactly by the instructions."
Hulse also sent chapters to a retired technical writer in Pennsylvania, his sister-in-law in Florida and his daughter in Iowa.
His wife was his editor and an invaluable resource along the way.
Randall is thrilled her husband is getting this opportunity with his book, especially considering all the frustration he went through when he was learning to knit.
"He's like, 'I can't believe it. I feel like I won the lottery and I didn't even enter,'" Randall said.
"To be approached by such a company as Lion Brand, you couldn't even have imagined it or wished for it even."
The book has been available online for just more than two weeks, and a handful of copies have been sold.
The price is $19.95, and Hulse gets $10 for each copy sold.
Lion Brand is preparing to roll out some publicity for "The Touch of Yarn" this week in the company blogs and the following week in the company newsletter, "The Weekly Stitch," which is e-mailed to 1.2 million people.
Hulse also said there's already talk of translating the book into Spanish.
"Will this book make me rich? Probably not," he said. "Is it fun to know some of my books are running around out there and people are learning to knit? Yeah, that's cool."
"Forward This" appears Wednesdays and Sundays and highlights the people, places and organizations of the Mid-Willamette Valley. To share a story, contact Capi Lynn at clynn@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6710.