NORWAY — Kim Hamlin, co-owner of Fiber and Vine on Main Street, was named the state’s second-fastest knitter and the fastest English-style knitter in a recent competition sponsored by the Maine Downtown Center.

“I had never knit before an audience. People were rooting me on,” said Hamlin of the crowd that gathered at the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland last month. About 50 knitters participated in the third annual event.

Ann Gaylor of Rockland edged out Hamlin by 12 stitches to win the top prize.

“We were so close,” Hamlin said with a laugh. That is, until her numbered racing bib blew up in her face during a gust of wind and she dropped a few stitches.

The knitters, who sat together in a semi-circle on a stage, were provided yarn and needles with 50 stitches cast on and with four rows knit.

The competitors, known as pickers or throwers depending on whether their predominant knitting hand was left or right, stitched furiously in front a large crowd. The event was judged by staff from Over the Rainbow Yarn, a shop in Rockland.

“I’m a thrower,” said Hamlin, which means she’s a right-handed knitter. Her style is known as the English style because the yarn to be knit is carried in the right hand versus the left.

Because Gaylor is considered a “picker,” a left-handed knitter, Hamlin topped her and others as the fastest English-style knitter in the state.

Hamlin said she is readying for next year’s competition and wants to get a group of knitters together to compete and perhaps to set a world’s record individually or as a group.

“I can’t wait to participate again,” she said. “I knit all the time. I guess you could chalk it up to conditioning for next year’s competition.”

Hamlin is an accomplished artist and knitter who has designed numerous knitting patterns and has been published in a number of knitting books.

An Oxford Hills native who studied dance at Bennington College, she still performs professionally as a dancer. A graduate of Oxford Hills High School, Hamlin lived in Brooklyn for a while as a craftswoman, but returned to the Oxford Hills a few years ago. She, with her business partner, Scott Berk, have since launched Fiber and Vine, a yarn and wine boutique that occupies one of the storefronts in Norway’s Opera House.

The Maine Downtown Center, which sponsored the festival’s knitting contest, works with downtowns across Maine, including Norway and 28 other communities, to foster vibrant town and city centers.

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