Stitches Report

I wanted to post a quick report about Stitches Midwest, at least enough to say that an interesting time was had by all. We had quite a large representation from our Guild but I wasn’t sure I would run into any of them as I travelled separately from the others. We did run into each other all over the place, making it feel a little like we were taking over! Everyone seema to have really enjoyed their classes. I'm a little sad I missed the Guild meeting on Sunday to hear everyone's reports.

One thing that made the weekend a little more interesting - as if it needed it - is that there was a “Wizard’s Conference” right next door, evidently one of the Comicons. So there were people dressed up all over the place like animé characters and comic book characters. Quite a few Star Wars characters (those seem to be the most popular) but also Batman and Spiderman and, for the ladies, the most popular seemed to be some sort of I-Dream-of-Genie belly-dancer sort of character. One lady in my class came in laughing because she’d just passed a Spiderman with his “head” off smoking a cigarette. Priorities, eh?! Of course, there were numerous comments on the interesting combination of the comic book fans and the knitters. One thing held in common was the amount of money that must have been spent. Wow. Either there are a lot of broke people today or there were a lot of rich people this weekend (or maybe a combination of the two).

I had a wonderful, wonderful class with a lady named Beth Brown-Reinsel. She was so sweet and encouraging and a wonderful teacher. Here are some of the samples she brought to show us:



The class was more than I could have asked for. I learned so much and enjoyed so much the project we did, which was a Danish sweater. The sweater’s history is a bit cloaked in mystery.

They know who knitted it (the wife of turner (sic) Hanson) but not who he was or what he did. The

original – here’s a picture of a reproduction – was made with a worsted weight wool and a fingering weight wool. So it has some interesting definition and effect on the color work. Beth was able to study the original and created the pattern for the large sweater from the original. But for the class, she designed a miniature version that allows the knitter to practice all the components of the larger version – twinned knitted cuffs for the sleeves and neckline, half gusset, color work, following a color pattern and knitting a facing for the neckline slit.

I had a ball and here is the finished product (before blocking):


I’ll post later once I get it blocked. I’ll also post a note of a few of the things I learned during the class and a few more thoughts.