Spring Fling 2010 - Part 2

See that light bulb? It's miniature bottle of liquor that I got at the Midwest Miniature Bottle Collectors convention that was taking place at the hotel at the same time as Spring Fling. Now, I would think this was a weird hobby, but I had to remind myself that I flew to St. Louis to a knitting retreat with a room full of strangers. Ahem. Glass houses, stones, and all that jazz. PS - the lady I bought it from told me not to drink it because it's very old. Thanks for the tip.

I bought that bottle because, well, that's exactly how I felt after my 2 classes on Saturday. Particularly the Sweater Fitness Workshop with Anne Hanson. I'm going to swallow my pride & post this not very flattering picture of me with Anne because, well, it's a picture of me with Anne Hanson. Those lights were none too kind to either of us.

I really really try not to be a fan girl to any of the "knitting rockstars" because well, I imagine it gets pretty old for them. And I will admit that while I think Anne's patterns are beautiful, I don't faithfully stalk her blog or know all of her patterns on sight or anything. But DAMN, this woman is a genius. After I signed up for this class & saw that we were doing measurements & such I thought "why am I taking this same damn class AGAIN????" This is the third class I've taken on how to properly measure yourself & design / make a sweater for your shape. But you know, I still am not getting it right so I thought surely I could learn something & well, one day I'd like to not be frustrated with my finished sweater. I was really excited about it & I swear I spent the whole class nodding because everything she said made so much sense. I've tried to explain to people what I learned & when I try to explain it everything that comes out of my mouth sounds so obvious that I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. Anne gave us 7-8 areas of fit that I had just never thought of before. I don't know how to explain it other than to say if you are frustrated with failed sweaters, take this class! You know how sometimes you take a class & it's totally over your head? Or you take a class & you think "yeah, I know this." Well, I think I am at the exact skill level for this class to make perfect sense. I have made enough sweaters (10ish) & have had enough fit problems that I was ready to hear all of the material that was taught. Fingers crossed that this works for me.

The other thing I decided in that class that instead of deciding to do X sweater in Z yarn, I am going to swatch the yarn until I get a fabric that I like & THEN chose the pattern. I think I try so hard to force yarn/pattern combinations that just will never work. I also decided to frog October Frost. SHUT UP!!!!!! It's just never going to fit & I need to accept it & move on.

My second class was Two Handed Knitting, Forward & Backwards with Gryphon Perkins of The Sanguine Gryphon yarn fame. Wow. That's all I can say. My favorite part of the class is when she told us that you could knit lace forward & backwards without turning your work & a student said "I could never do that." Gryphon promptly said "Actually, you are going to do it in about 15 minutes." I cracked up. She made us do stuff that I think none of us ever dreamed of doing or thought that we COULD do. It was interesting & although I doubt I'll be knitting forward & backward without turning my work on a regular basis, I think it will come in handy for certain things.

Gryphon is about the cutest person I've ever seen & she was sweet to boot. Here is a picture of her showing me a different way that I could wear my Aeolian. Yeah, I think perhaps she could pull that off, me, not so much.


Other teachers at the Spring Fling included Wendy Johnson & Jared Flood. I was really torn on which classes to take, but I have taken classes with both Wendy & Jared before. I took some socks classes with Wendy at the Knit Out in Guthrie, OK & I took Jared's Seamless Sweater Workshop at my LYS, The Woolie Ewe. All of the classes got rave reviews & it was a stellar line up.

Sigh. I'm so sad it's all over. I wanna go back again right now! I'm so inspired to knit so many things that I don't even know where to start.