Monday, February 7, 2011
Wonderful Workshop
We had the most amazing workshop this weekend with Patsy Zawistoski, known in spinning circles as Patsy Z. The weekend was a mixture of 2 workshops - Quick Novelty Yarns and Silk, the Queen of Fibers.
Eleven of us showed up for the weekend where we learned all kinds of things.
We tried silk in just about every preparation, we did faux boucle, real boucle, cabled yarns, Lopi-style yarns, core spun, slub/spiral yarns, "illegal" plied yarns (that is, one single with right twist and one with left then plied together), knot yarns. It was really challenging but everyone was able to do each type of yarn, although with varying success!
These aren't all my samples but all I could quickly get my hands on. I found I'm not very good with the slub yarns and there were a couple of others that I didn't get down very well because I didn't have enough twist in my yarn. I knew I had a problem getting enough twist in my plying but I didn't realize that some of that may be because I'm not getting enough twist in my singles.
I like this photo - a good view of spinning up a storm, right!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Springtime is Coming
In case you don't know it, springtime will be here before we know it.
If you want something to do when the snow melts and the flowers start to bloom, why not plan to join us at the Three Sisters Folk Art School for a whole weekend of classes. (Click here for more information about classes.)
April 15-17 is the date to mark. I'll be teaching a class on Lace Knitting during the weekend, something I'm really looking forward to. If you've followed the blog much, you know how much I love knitting lace and I've got some new inspiration both from spinning and input from the video by Margaret Stove (Spinning for Lace) but also from a couple of new books like Knitting Lace, a Workshop with Patterns and Projects by Susanna E. Lewis and Wrapped in Lace by Margaret Stove.
In the class we'll be starting from the beginning, looking at what makes up lace knitting, the difference between knitting lace and lace knitting (besides the symantics of it all), learning the basic stitch combinations, trying out a variety of different stitch patterns with a variety of yarns and threads. Lace is like any other sort of knitting, It can be very simple and basic or it can be extremely complicated. The great thing is that even simple lace knitting looks fancy! And anyone who can knit can knit lace.
There are lots of different classes including pinhole photography, wood carving and fine metal clay jewelry making. Get some friends together and make a weekend of it!
If you want something to do when the snow melts and the flowers start to bloom, why not plan to join us at the Three Sisters Folk Art School for a whole weekend of classes. (Click here for more information about classes.)
April 15-17 is the date to mark. I'll be teaching a class on Lace Knitting during the weekend, something I'm really looking forward to. If you've followed the blog much, you know how much I love knitting lace and I've got some new inspiration both from spinning and input from the video by Margaret Stove (Spinning for Lace) but also from a couple of new books like Knitting Lace, a Workshop with Patterns and Projects by Susanna E. Lewis and Wrapped in Lace by Margaret Stove.
In the class we'll be starting from the beginning, looking at what makes up lace knitting, the difference between knitting lace and lace knitting (besides the symantics of it all), learning the basic stitch combinations, trying out a variety of different stitch patterns with a variety of yarns and threads. Lace is like any other sort of knitting, It can be very simple and basic or it can be extremely complicated. The great thing is that even simple lace knitting looks fancy! And anyone who can knit can knit lace.
There are lots of different classes including pinhole photography, wood carving and fine metal clay jewelry making. Get some friends together and make a weekend of it!