Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Spring Fling 2010 - Part 2

Mini Bottle convention
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.
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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.
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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.

4 comments:

Dawn said...

Awesome post....love the pics and you look great....don't know if I'd wear that shawl that way either unless it was raining but then I'd rather get my hair wet than my shawl!:) What a fun time you had...so cool!

Fru-la-la! said...

ohmehgawd..wat is this goodness and how do I get to go next year! Can you even imagine the adventures we could have being in the same place together?!

Robin said...

I'm still in mourning that it is over. Love your post.

chococat78 said...

Fabulous post, girlie :) I have never knit a sweater but I want to learn. I am sad that it is over too. I really wan to go back. NEXT YEAR, BABY!!!!