Designing a Life

What happens when a kid grows up on 80 acres of farmland in Oregon, free to explore the woods and fields (but only after the farm chores are done)? He’s liable to encounter an intriguing crystal, maybe a fossil, perhaps a rare plant. He’s apt to wonder why a yellow rose is growing in the middle of the forest, or who may have planted the gnarled old apple tree that persists in bearing fruit scores of years after it had been abandoned.

That kid was H. Morgan Hicks: son of parents who had fled the East Coast for the Pacific Northwest and a life closer to the land; grandson of distinguished American scholar Frederick C. Hicks, who held influential positions in the libraries of Yale and Columbia Universities in the first half of the 20th century.

Everywhere during his childhood, the younger Hicks detected patterns and sensed colors. He was reading before entering first grade, crocheting before second grade. For those questions he formulated in the woods and fields, he drew on his family legacy and learned to how to perform research to unearth answers.

“I was always being held to a high standard of performance,” Hicks says now, perched on a brilliant, blue-and-green afghan-covered chair in a cozy corner of All Points Yarn. For the last 16 years, this knitting shop in Des Moines, Washington, a community alongside Puget Sound and just minutes from SeaTac International Airport, has been his domain. It is a bustling place, with a table set out in the store’s front room where people can bring in their knitting projects and seek guidance when they make mistakes. The clientele is a cross-section of 21st century knitters: women, men, and families. 

This is a far cry from what Hicks had set out to become. After graduating from high school, he was set to major in library studies at the University of Oregon – but first, in a concession to his East Coast roots, he was sent to a summer session hosted by Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. This is where he took a seminar in classical mythology that sparked his imagination – the stories! the culture! the arts! Then he dutifully returned to Oregon in the fall to commence his college career.  

But when the library science program shut down due to lack of funding, he bounced between other programs – astronomy for a while, because of his fascination with mythology and constellations, and then art education, then anthropology, where he hoped to study the indigenous art of the Circum-Pacific. He also explored the idea of pursuing a degree in men’s studies, which could only be pursued by taking a degree in women’s studies with an emphasis on men’s studies. (This was the early 1980s, when things were confusing.)

After a final quarter in Avignon, France, “where I learned a lot more about living,” Hicks was awarded a degree in anthropology. 

“Anthropology degree holders,” Hicks says now, “have a unique perspective in adapting to conditions.”

Maybe that’s how he ended up working for the Washington State Attorney General’s office when he moved to Seattle in 1983. Maybe it’s how he was able to take a graduate class in weaving while he was teaching in the engineering department at the University of Washington (and eventually earning his Master’s degree in technical writing and engineering.) Maybe it’s how he simultaneously landed a job at the Art Institute of Seattle, teaching English and computer science and portfolio design. And how he was inspired to design patterns for machine knitting, and to teach handknitting classes at conferences across the country.

Those versatile anthropologists, after all – they do what they have to do in order to cobble together a living.

But all of that work can take a toll, and Hicks has had his share of health challenges over the years. After overcoming these, he decided to simplify his life by opening the yarn shop in Des Moines. All Points Yarn has become a community hub for knitters. It is stuffed with skeins of recycled tweed, balls of wool yarn, and wool blends and brightly-colored acrylics, specialty yarns from Italy, sequined yarns from Turkey. Hicks also carries specialty notions: wire buttons, ceramic buttons, hand-carved buttons from Portugal, along with knitting needles and crochet hooks of all sizes. There’s color, there are patterns, there are stories, and there’s creativity.

The community that Hicks had been reaching out to for years is now converging on All Points Yarn. They’re coming with their beginning projects, their half-finished Christmas stockings, and their intractable snafus. They’re seeking advice, words of encouragement, and more yarn.    

“I see life as an adventure – everything is out there ready to discover and explore and do more with,” Hicks says. As a knitter, a weaver – and an anthropologist – it’s clear that Hicks has created this life by design.

Barbara Lloyd McMichael is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest.