Knitting in the Heartland recap
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 10:07AM Knitting in the Heartland was great fun this year! I attended Franklin Habit's keynote address which was all about antique knitting patterns. Boy, I'll bet that sounds tedious and boring to non-knitters. But to be true, I found it fascinating and the idea of deciphering old patterns is endless intriguing to me. Some local knitters are planning a knitalong of his pineapple bag and I am seriously considering tackling it myself.
I wasn't able to get into any of Franklin's classes before they sold out, but I did take Spinning for Knitting with Jacey Boggs. I've taken two workshops with her in the past on textured yarns so this was the opportunity to learn a bit more on the technical side of spinning. If you are a spinner, you need to take a class with Jacey. Even if you aren't interested in creating textured yarns (also know as art yarns), her technical knowledge of spinning is superb. I've learned so much about the process of spinning from her. Plus she is so generous with her time and knowledge and is incredibly inclusive of all types of spinners and knitters. We did an interesting experiment with spinning and then knitting swatches of Z-twist and then S-twist singles. There were marked differences of whether twisted was added, removed or stayed the same during knitting the swatches based on whether one was a Continental or English knitter. I knit in a style known as Eastern Uncrossed. My method seemed to match up with the Continental knitters which wasn't surprising to me since I hold the working yarn in my left hand. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with my spinnning and how it relates to my knitting.
The vendor market was huge this time around. Which was really great for the students and shoppers. Perhaps not so good for those of us who were vendors. Too much competition meant only two sales for me for the entire weekend but I had fun anyway and learned so much about booth presentation. I shared a booth with my dear friend Christine, the TreasureGoddess. She has amazing handspun art yarn and handdyed fiber and yarn especially the most luscious lace yarn you can imagine.
I debuted some new embroidered pieces this time around and was lucky enough to sell one. I'll be taking some photos this weekend and adding them to my Etsy shop. Here's what they looked like in the booth.
I'll be adding some of the pieces to my shop soon. If anyone has any ideas or requests for words or phrases they'd like to see embroidered, let me know!
Reader Comments (2)
Those embroidered knit art pieces are FABULOUS in person!
Teri
25 years ago... is that possible ?
Hope all is well and happy ka-nitting,
mike