Hand Knitting Blog & Knitting Patterns
Fantastic events all week. Gudrun and I dropped into the Shetland Museum and watched Linda demonstrate Fair Isle Knitting using a knitting belt. She brought along some baby hats from her collection. The one on the right was worn my her mum in the 30’s and Linda wore it when she was a teenager, and styles were a close-fitting cloche.
Vogue Knitting Live was so much fun. I met my talented friend designer Kat Coyle in Real Life!
My book signing was right next to Sally Melville!!!
In the Marketplace, Anna had set up the divine Mini Mochimochi Land, complete with gnomes harvesting corn.
Jeanne DeCoster of Elemental Affects pure American Shetland Wool goddess and Kat and I ate at a Food Truck!!! Yay LA!
My high school friend Mary got the VK Live VIP treatment.
And my students were THE BEST!!!!!
I only took pictures on my phone, loser!
I met many many wonderful designers and yarn industry movers and shakers I’d worshiped from afar, too many to mention but I must include exquisite Catherine Lowe who took me under her wing. I love you Catherine! Next VKLive event is NY don’t miss it! I won’t be teaching but I might just show up and take classes. I love taking classes!
And now?
What better place to spend a week in September than Maine?
This year I’m Artist In Residence, which means I’ll be at Fiber College the entire time.
…except when I visit nearby Belfast Maine to get yarn, ice cream, embroidery thread or beer all of which will make me a better knitter.
Searsport has a lot to offer too – a fabulous Maritime Museum, and the charming Left Bank Books. Many beautiful towns, Camden, Rockport, Blue Hill and Deer Isle are all just a hop, skip and a jump away; and of course there’s spectacular Acadia National Park.
Please leave a comment here to enter to win free admission to one of my classes at Fiber College. To make things interesting, share with us what colors you imagine when you think of Maine, or your favorite place to visit in Maine.
You’ve got two weeks, because I’ll be out of internet range, on a remote island in the San Juan’s of Washington State … so! The winner will be randomly chosen on 8/09, 11:59 P.M. and will also receive sweet gift bag of Shetland wool from me, which I’ll present to you at Fiber College.
I’m teaching one class each day.
Friday September 11 – Color in Traditional Fair Isle Knitting
In an intensive three hours, we will explore color relationships in traditional fair isle knitting by knitting a simple wristlet. Choose to follow the “rules” precisely, or use them as a jumping off point to develop your own signature color palette.
Saturday September 12 – Colorful Andean Accents
Some of the most interesting elements of Andean knitting are the decorative edge treatments. We will learn to make a charming checkerboard edging, a darling scalloped edging, and cheerful “instant” popcorns, which can be knit in as you go, or added as an afterthought.
Sunday September 13 – Color Session
Learn more about color in a relaxed knitting circle atmosphere. We’ll touch on the principals of color theory by arranging a huge pile yarn by hue, value and saturation. We will knit speed swatches to experiment with our colors, discovering the importance of color placement.
There are so many great classes to take! Weaving, tatting, spinning with Katherine Cobey!!!! Rug hooking, Latvian Braid, Irish Crochet, Hula Hooping, Silk Screening, Dying, Quilting with Mary Ellen Kranz!!! Book Making, Wood-cut Printing, Silkscreening, and more more more!
Be sure to visit all the stops on this blog tour to read what other instructors have to say about this lovely event.
A random winner will be drawn from each site!
Monday July 25 Beth Brown-Reinsel http://knittingtraditions.com/blog/
Tuesday July 26 You’re here!
Wednesday July 27 Amy Herzog http://www.amyherzogdesigns.com/blog/
Thursday July 28 Ellen Mason http://odacier.blogspot.com/
Friday July 29 Gale Zucker http://ezisus.blogspot.com/
Tell all your friends!
Squam is only 9 days away, my the time is flying by. I’ve been fooling around with a limited palette of colors – yarns which have which been rolling around in my bag for a while now. It is fun to see the different color relationships that develop. But what happens when your pattern goes terribly wrong? When perhaps you forgot to increase after the ribbing whilst watching just one more episode of your favorite Masterpiece Theater….and didn’t notice till you’d gone too far….All is not lost! My Squam students will get the first glimpse of the fix and I’ll share it with the rest of you the week after Squam.
Did you know that if you can’t attend the whole Squammy shebang this year, if you live nearby you can come to the Saturday Evening Art Fair? It should be great fun with 38 vendors, raffle prizes and….FREE BEER! Holy Cow. See you there!
“Visit Mary Jane and Follow Her Adventures”. Hmmmm…more like visit Mary Jane…. and…mmm….stretch….yawn….
Really why does she even bother?
Life is sometimes much too fluid to stop and ponder and write about it. I know it is a good exercise to write everyday…and I do…only not for public consumption….Kind readers, you will be rewarded, with patience, my book is nearly ready to print, and the release is set for October.
Lots of activity that I have not written about, since I was too busy enjoying it.
I taught at Webs: YARN MECCA
I love my students, we learned so much together! I love the staff – several of them took my classes including Tina-fabulista who introduced me to the amazing Gail Callahan whose book Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece everyone should own…. And OMG (it is in the dictionary now, so I can use it) what about the warehouse?
TDF : to die for; Alt: to dye for..I guess it usually means Tour de France…anyway, a sightseeing venture not to be missed.
Ok…Title : “Place Keeper”….which means: more to come…
Photo Above: Blueberry Barrens on Appleton Ridge…daredevil antics… stay tuned.
Note: the white at the bottom of the picture, including what this text is written on, is snow, and we’re getting more tonight.
I know.. I’ve been missing …but in Action. One proof is that nice little blue dot above…Announcing my article in the Spring Interweave Knits. I’m so happy how it turned out. Quick, run out and get it to find out my Fair Isle Knitting tips…gleaned from years of knitting, but also an intense few months of swatching for…MY BOOK!
200 Fair Isle Motifs.. yes indeedy…you can even pre-order it here. 200 swatches…believe me…that is a lot. Charts too.
I’ve pretty much been a homebody, working on these and other still secret stuff. A perfect winters labor, especially with all the beautiful snow we’ve gotten. I had some devil bouts of procrastination, including following an ancestry “tip” and tracking my mom’s side all the way back to….well…I got so far back I was terrified I’d be a Mayflower person, rest assured…I hale from the folks who were banished from Plymouth Colony. Phew.
I got out of Dodge once recently, for SPA in Freeport, which really was a vacay for me. My dear friend Odacier treated me to a birthday sleep-over at a darling bed and breakfast. I met new Old School friends Caro and Deb, and their room full of stylin’ knitters. We even got a “private showing” of the Knitting It Old School trunk show, in the bathroom…trés jolie. There were old old friends like Beth happily out and about, and kinda old friends like Misa, Julia and Tamara, former student friends…Sara gave me gorgeous fingerless mitts, with an afterthought thumb that she un-vented all on her own. Fave – O – rite vendors. A fan-ticking-tastic Champange & Chocolate party thrown by Fiber College Goddess Astrig and more-more-more. I only regret missing meeting Elinor and her wee one, I left home late and then I was stuck in traffic…I thought they might all be headed to Spa!
You can see I’ve been feeling stitchy, embellishing mittens for my upcoming class at Webs…check. it. out.
Three Classes of fun:
Soon too…March 17 and 18th…
spa out-takes:
