Road Trip

It is official, next week I will be heading off onto the roads of the Wild Wild midWest on my very first solo knitting road trip! Woo hoo!

I have mentioned it here before, the first stop is the Small Knits Symposium. According to their website the event is about:

“Hats. Cowls. Mittens. Gloves. Scarves, shawlettes, and of course, socks. How we love those small projects, in small and not-so-small yarns. The Small Knits Symposium is an all-weekend retreat focused entirely on those beloved small knitted wearables.”

I am super excited to be attending this small event, sometimes small is better in that you don’t feel like you have to run all over the place to experience all the things. I will be taking classes from both Sivia Harding and Lorilee Beltman and I have every confidence that I will be completely inspired. I signed up for a Mobius class from Ms. Harding and I am hoping that it will finally click. I have tried and tried to figure it out on my own with the You Tubes but it just hasn’t stuck.

After the Symposium I will be heading down to Louisville, KY to visit some family and then I will jump back into the car and drive up to the Cincinatti, OH area to visit Lambikins Hideaway. Through the magic of Ravelry I have managed to form a wonderful relationship with some of the lovely ladies at this awesome store. They have taught a couple of classes based on my patterns and participate in the Ravelry LYS program where they can sell my patterns directly to customers.

Designed for crazy yarn!

They are also celebrating the anniversary of the shop (what a coinkydink) so it is going to be a blast. I will be bringing samples to put up as a “trunk show” and teaching a class on the Roller Coaster cowl. I will be there pretty much all day Thursday May 1st and then in the morning hours of May 2nd. If you are in the Cincinnati area please drop in and say hi, it would be great to meet people. You may find me shopping for yarn.

I can’t stay there all day on Friday because I have to then drive to Indianapolis for  TNNA. TNNA stands for The National Needlearts Association and it is the trade association for all things knitting, crocheting, crosstitchey, ect … and this is their Summer show. This is my first time going but I believe that it will be the total opposite of the Small Knits Symposium. I am guessing that it will be complete sensory overload. But again, I have no doubt that it will be completely inspirational.

TNNA ends Tuesday May 6th and I will return to Louisville for a brief rest and then come back home to Atlanta. All total I will be gone about 2 weeks. Crazy time!

I wanted to put all of this out there just in case there are people who are going to be in the same vicinity that I could meet. If you are going to either SKS or TNNA give me a holler and hopefully we can manage to run into each other. If you are in the Cincinnati area definitely come by Lambikins Hideaway (and I put into my contract that I get to have Skyline Chili at least once – definitely one of my bucket list food things).

If you aren’t in the MidWest – you could still help. I don’t think I have taken this long of a drive by myself in a very, very long time. Do you have any tips for surviving solo road trips? What should I make sure to pack/bring/have in the front seat to save my sanity? Any audiobooks that would be perfect and not with the putting me to sleep? I would love to know!

 

It’s been a-long time.

Tee, hee, hee. Pardon my pun. I was just discussing with my partner that I feel that puns are the lowest form of comedy and here I go picking the low hanging fruit.

I have a plot cooking up in my wee little brain. It has been quite some time since our last knit-a-long and I thought it would be good to start throwing some ideas against the wall and seeing what might stick.

Caladan has great lace!

Last year we did a “bead-a-long” where you could knit any of my patterns as long as it had (or you added) beads. This year I was thinking that we could have a Lace-a-long because the Summer is totally for lace knitting. There is also a distinct bias because I love lace.

Scarab Shawl, all lace – all the time

I started this discussion over in my Ravelry Group but thought I would bring it up over here too just to get the idea rolling. This is currently in the planning stage and I thought that would be the plan for April – planning. My thought was for the KAL to run through the summer, starting some time in May.

We have already cooked up the idea of having two categories, one for new projects and one for WIPs. So if you have a partially completed piece that you have been meaning to get to, this could be your motivator.

Please feel free to add some input in the comments or come on over and join the conversation on the Rav group. I want to have some fun and I am sure y’all have some great ideas that I have not thought of.

Seasonal Knitting

Does knitting have seasons?

I know that all of the magazines have Winter, Spring, Summer & Fall issues and therefore have to create themes to differentiate these issues – but is seasonality a real “thing” for the knitter? I pretty much knit what I want when I want to and the whole seasonality thing confuses me.

Of course, I don’t want a lap full of pounds and pounds of afghan in the middle of the Summer, but if I want a sweater by Fall then I better get to knitting. What is the point of beginning a sweater in the Fall/Winter, is it for next year?

As far as my knitting goes, it is always time for lace. I love knitting lace and cannot see stopping it for the Winter because it isn’t the right season. So, here is the discussion I hope to start, and I welcome any and all thoughts on the subject  – please respond in the comments or check out this thread in my Ravelry Group.

The question is, does the season affect your knitting choices? If so, please explain how/why/etc … A secondary question would be: What kind of projects would you want to see for this Spring?

 

ps: I totally just googled effect vs affect to make sure I used it right. Isn’t that special?

pps: Happy New Year!

Yarn Ogling

Without diving into my past posts (never look back) I am not certain, but I believe I mentioned to y’all that I went to Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival. Not wanting to taunt those not lucky enough to go I haven’t made a big deal about the trek, but I thought I would be remiss in not sharing the spoils.

Believe it or not, I didn’t buy very much yarn. It was all so much to take in it was nearly impossible to make any decisions, but I didn’t come home empty handed. And if you are anything like me then you would love to look at some pictures of yarn. I know people who can look at pictures of yarn all day. I mean, I have a close friend who looks at pictures of yarn all day. 😉

In trying to decide what to purchase I attempted to restrict myself to things that were outside of my comfort zone. And the last thing I need is any more sock yarn. So here are a few of the items I decided not to catch & release.

Brooks Farm Yarn Surrey

This is a DK weight yarn with a fiber composition of 50% Wool, 50% Alpaca and a skein size of 420 yards / 180 grams.
I normally do not go for what I call “barber poll” yarn – but this yarn is just so beautiful. The thing that normally turns me off is that the two plys are frequently drastically different colors and I believe it is the mono-chromatic color that really drew me. When you add the fact that the center ply is a single while the much thinner wrapping ply is tight. The whole thing is beyond soft and I cannot wait to work with this yarn.

Sliver Moon Farm DK, 8oz

The lovely lady who was my tour guide for Rhinebeck introduced me to this new-to-me dyer and I cannot decide whether or not to thank her. Another DK weight yarn, the base  is a fairly typical awesome smooshy 100% wool superwash yarn, but the colors were just beautiful. I was torn between two skeins for like, 10 minutes before I finally made the decision. But what is really amazing on this is the put-up and price. It is 560 yards and the skein was under $40. Yeah Really!

Bittersweet Woolery, Consort

Teetering out on the edge of my comfort zone, lace weight silk. From independent dyer Bittersweet Woolery it is 100% silk with 875 yards/100 grams. I want to love knitting with lace weight yarn as much as I love the look and feel of lace weight yarn – I just haven’t gotten there yet. Something about the teeny needles and the teeny thread just terrifies me. But this is beautiful stuff. Again with the beautiful colors from this dyer, but this time there was no question what I would be buying. This color called to me across the booth and this yarn has very interesting construction. It is very tightly cable plied, and looks almost like mono-filament. The drape on this thing is just insane and it feels like water in the hand.

Now what I need to do with these yarns is have a little “getting to know you” time, and I thought I would invite y’all along to see the conversation. What I do is wind the yarn and then have a little swatch-a-thon. I cast on and knit some garter and then some stockinette. I change needle sizes and see what that does. I knit some texture, cable & lace to see what the yarn likes and dislikes. This helps me better understand the yarn and learn what it wants to be when it grows up.

So what I need to know from you is

1) do you think this would be a fun spectator sport &

b) which of these contenders would you like to see put through their paces?

Please feel free to put in a good word for your choice in the comments.

Something new

The photography class went swimmingly and I want to thank those of you who took time to make suggestions, I tried to incorporate some of what you suggested in the time I had. Out of curiosity, would y’all be interested in me posting some of what I covered in class here on the blog?

OK, on to the next thing.

This morning I just took a big step in my evolving design process and sent a new pattern off to a professional tech editor. Which is not to say that I haven’t tech edited previous patterns, it is just that I have been relying on the generosity of some very talented knitting friends. But one can only do that so long before you are asking too much of friendship. And, it is possible that a non-friend type person might be a little more … shall we say … blunt about flaws in my personal style. And you always need a reality check, eh?

But I am way nervous about this, it seems crazy but it is similar to the way I feel about getting a cleaning lady to come in to my house. It is something that will probably never happen because the amount of cleaning I would have to do to get the house in shape for the cleaning lady …

Because really? Do I want the cleaning lady to think I am a total slob are  you judging me? Perhaps knitting my most recent shawl while watching a Netflix Hoarders marathon was a bad plan?

Regardless, I think it is the same neurosis. Before I sent my draft off I checked and re-checked and then checked some more, with the same obsession level I have during the final re-check of a pattern just before I push the upload button for Ravelry. It is an irrevocable act, and it terrifies me.

His supermodel pose. Don’t know it it would work on a pattern though.

Here is a picture of my silly kid modeling a not-ready-for-prime-time experiment. Which is my way of totally changing the subject.

AUGUST!

August is going to be … interesting. Next month will be the 1 year anniversary of my publishing my very first charging-people-money pattern and I think I want to have a bit of a celebration. The new shawl that just went to the editor will be nearing the release date and I want to have some fun.

I was thinking of maybe trying a real a-long or maybe something creative. Is there anything that y’all would like to do? The center of operations for any activities will be here on the blog and my Ravelry group. (requires free Rav membership). Whatever we do – it should be interesting!

Inquiring minds want to know

I have this problem, it is known in some circles as “helium hand”. It is a condition that rears it’s ugly head in group situations. The irrepressible need to “give back”, when volunteers are requested – the helium in the hand causes the hand to raise itself above the head and get you into trouble.

This malady of mine has resulted in me signing up to teach a class this weekend for the Atlanta Knitting Guild my guild. Now, this guild is full of highly skilled and experienced knitters and I am pretty sure I don’t have much of anything to teach them with regards to knitting – which is why I have elected to offer a class on photographing your knitting. Woo Hoo.

I have a lot of pretty good idea of what I am going to talk about, but I thought I would pop up a question here and see if the internet peanut gallery had any advice. If you were to take a photographing your knitting  class – what kind of information would you be looking to get out of the experience? What would you want to learn? What is it that I may have forgotten to include in my class?

If you could share I would be most grateful!