I promised to devote some time to the TIPS session on color and style trends by Trisha Malcolm from Vogue Knitting last time I posted. I always look forward to this part of the show and I’m apparently not alone; the room was packed!
The color of the year remains the hot color of the fall fashion world:
Day two began with six 30 minute info-sessions called TIPS. I was so hooked (no pun intended- honestly, I don’t like puns…) on Tunisian crochet the day before that I sat through 2 of the 6 sessions from the Denise Interchangeable Needles peeps and learned even more. I’m hoping to pick their brains a bit beyond that before I leave. We already have their crochet set in the shop and it was designed with Tunisian in mind. If you have the knit set, no worries, we’ve got the crochet hooks to snap onto your knit cables. I’m tellin’ ya, die-hard knitters, you’re gonna like this! Funny thing about Tunisian Crochet; there are so many variations. I’m hoping to make one more stop at the show that I think you’ll enjoy even more and then I’ll rest on the Tunisian for a bit. Promise. Actually, I kinda think I’m saving the best for the last, but “the jury’s still out on that.”
Another interesting TIPS session I attended was Classic Elite’s presentation “We love our iPads” and we do, don’t we? I want to write a whole post on this so I’ll make this one brief. I did a previous post on i-phone apps and some of them carry over. The news to me was flipboard. I have been using pulse and loving it, so I’ll have to explore the differences then write an update with all that were mentioned. Can you tell by now I’m just having too much fun???
More tomorrow on the rest of the sessions. My favorite: Trisha Malcom from Vogue Knitting on Trends.
So I’m leaving a little (well, a lot, actually), out of this day, but there will be more to come.
ummmm, plus I just realized I didn’t get my homework done for class first thing tomorrow. Now “hate” is a pretty ugly word I try to avoid at all costs so let me just say I really “detest ” and try to avoid classes that require homework. Yet- here I am. With homework. Not done.
I’m in Columbus, Ohio this week for The National Needlework Association (TNNA) show and I usually try to keep you updated while I’m here, so here goes- I actually arrived on Wednesday, so I’ve been here a couple days now. I won’t go on about the flight; never enjoy hearing others uncomfortable flight plights so I won’t take up space and energy with mine.
We’ll move straight to the fun stuff.
Education classes typically start on Thursday and run throughout the show, which officially opens Saturday morning. Over the past few years I’ve taken less classes, but this year I’m indulging myself with endless crochet classes!
tunisian crochet swatches
This was my first day: six hours of Tunisian Crochet! I was pretty much brain dead by the end. But is was really fun! You can bet we’ll be seeing some new classes at Wildflower this summer.
Speaking of brain dead, I’m really not much better now, so I’ll make this short. Just want to send you an image of my hotel room ceiling. I’ll write more about this fantastic room later.
We got some great yarn in from Pagewood Farms a few months ago that Renee and I fell instantly in love with. She preferred the “lanas grande” and I the “rustic spun.” We both coveted the grey.
pagewood farms yarns
Renee bought all four hanks of the lanas grande grey (it’s shown here in natural) and set to swatching right away. Since what she really wanted was a big comfy kimono type jacket, I encouraged her to go with the biggest needles we could find. 50mm needles were pretty limited in the shop that day, but I found one straight pair of plastic ones to get her started. It was instantly apparent there was no going down in needle sizes- she needed the 50′s to do the job.
She then joined our sweater workshop the following Saturday and got started narrowing down a stitch pattern and planning her design. She was very receptive to input from all around the table, which was good because lots of input she got! It was fun for everyone to take part in the process. Here you see her chosen swatch- turned on it’s side. She was planning a jacket and decided to knit side-to-side to keep those strong vertical lines. After measuring and discussing, she settled on 27″ for her length.
first swatch
When I noticed Julie starting to measure the circumference of the plastic needles, I knew something was up. Just a little background: Julie owns a metal shop here in Manhattan and has a brother that’s pretty good with a lathe (and has a metal shop) in Salina, so the wheels in her head started turning as Renee was explaining she’d need longer needles to knit the pieces…
The day after this is I left for my design retreat in the woods for a week (taking the coveted grey rustic spun with me, but that’s another story)- After I’d returned, Julie surprised us all with these:
julie's needles
In the meantime, Renee had worked up a larger swatch, washed, blocked and weighted it before calculating gauge and joined us at the next sweater workshop to begin. Her gauge was 1 stitch and 1 and a half rows per inch! We had a lot of laughs as she got started that day. Sheila even started timing her: Knit rows were the quickest at under a minute a row! Oh, I should add that 4 skeins didn’t make the kimono- she quickly realized she’d need a little more than twice that much to finish.
While lots of laughs were left uncaptured by film that day and many to follow, here are a few we had along the way- followed by the finished product in a short movie.
Time for another update on the volunteer challenge from a few months ago.
Sally was the next volunteer to complete the challenge.
She didn’t want me to photograph her the day she brought it in, so you see just the bag.
market bag using premiere and fizz
Sally was given a ball of Crystal Palace “Fizz” and chose a skein of smooth cotton/tencel blend, Classic Elite’s “Premiere“, to go with it for a festive spring market bag. Once again, if you want to make this project, we’ll give you the pattern when you purchase the yarn.
A week or so later, Judy Hedman came in to bring in her challenge: the Playful Penguin pattern from Fiber Trends.
playful penguin
Her challenge yarn was “Brazillia” in black (the eyelash yarn) and she added “Cascade 220″ for the felting yarn.
Next shown is Audrey’s challenge: an eyeglass cover using “Fjord” from Crystal Palace. She found this pattern on the Crystal Palace website.
eyeglass case using fjord
And last for this update is Kennita’s “Cat’s Eye Poncho” for Kathleen’s challenge. The yarn used is “Belair” from Muench. Kathleen added a smaller size for children or to be worn as shoulder wrap.
cat’s eye poncho with belair
That’s it for this update on the challenge. We still have a few more out there and will post when they are completed.
Jan McNeil (two time winner now) has done it again! She is our latest pink card winner, shown here with her winnings.
Jan's winnings
Jan loves Lantern Moon products so I knew she’d enjoy “Isabella”, a silk needle case to store her circulars and straights, along with some sheep greeting cards and the palm leaf tote- all from Lantern Moon. She also won a book entitled “Knitting Lessons” by Lela Nargi.
Earlier this year, after the implementation of the new point of sale system in the shop, we had a volunteer training and appreciation party for all those that help out in the shop. These people are invaluable to me in that they allow me my little escapes (like my recent design retreat in the woods last week) throughout the year. At the party, each were given a gift and a ball of yarn with the challenge to come up with a design that only uses one (preferably one or two) to no more than four balls of yarn.
Mal Hoover was the first to bring in her challenge:
Mal's Volunteer Challenge
back view of tam
tam in crystal palace "musique"
The yarn used is from Crystal Palace yarns, “Musique” in the wildflower colorway. Mal said the tam didn’t take long and was a lot of fun to knit up. If you’re interested in the pattern, we will give you the link with the yarn purchase.
And while we’re talking about Mal…
Did you notice that beautiful entrelac sweater she’s wearing? It’s done in Noro’s “Silk Garden.”
Had to take this pretty much in close to darkness, with my phone, and as you can see… with one hand pinned down. You can almost make out the knitting needle dangling from my left hand. This is my kitty “Mirror”, who is always on my lap when I’m in this chair.
We had a great photo shoot last weekend, thanks to Steve, Brittany and Emily. Here are a couple images from the session. If all goes well, they’ll be added to the newest designs in the next few weeks.
I find it interesting how various knitters stay on track when following a pattern. We’ve all had times when our focus alone just isn’t enough. The obvious ways that come to mind are various stitch counters, from the katcha katcha to the iphone apps available today. In teaching here at Wildflower, I’ve witnessed some unique ways knitters have of keeping in place.
Our hedgehog class was a true test in tracking. The first time I offered this class, I scheduled it for two 3-hour sessions a week apart. Everyone did just great with the first part; completing the body in the first session. We were then to return the next week and begin the back shaping. What I hadn’t realized was how intensely everyone would need to concentrate from that point on in the pattern to avoid mistakes. Seriously, very few words were spoken during the class. I felt like I’d just handed out an SAT test or a college mid-term; the class was so quiet. If you’ve ever taken a class from me, you can imagine the constraints I was under not to chatter away! I learned a lot in class scheduling that day. All the techniques are learned in the body, so there’s really no need for more instruction. Now Hedgehogs are taught in one 4 hour class, allowing everyone to concentrate alone on their shaping.
Here are some of the methods used for keeping track:
See all those notes Jan makes?
And Renee goes row by row:
Cathy’s was probably the most surprising to me. Along the lines of an abacus, she uses buttons to keep track.
From time to time, I’ve been intrigued by other methods as knitters come in for help or work on their projects. One I found especially interesting was Linda’s, who writes out page by page her shaping steps, creating a little booklet of her own language.
Linda's method
Mine are probably more random than any shown here. I tend to cross-hatch heavily in all directions resulting in seemingly utter chaos! If you have an unusual way of keeping on track, I hope you’ll share it here.
