Workshop Schedule
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4 Teachers + 3 Days = 1 Great Weekend!!! Workshop Schedule Saturday July 16 Morning Sessions Yarn Substitution Made Easy (with Carol) Master the mysteries of yarn substitution with this fun and engaging class. We’ll start with gauge, then cover the various weights of yarn (fingering to super bulky), discuss the relationship of weight to yardage and plies, and look at fiber and yarn characteristics that affect substitution (e.g. drape, elasticity, weight, halo. We'll finish by walking through some real-life examples by selecting potential substitute yarns for real patterns. Suggested pairing: Take Patty's Gauge class and you'll be a knitting superstar! Skill Level: Good for all levels! Ahead of the Curve: Designing Crescent Shawls (with Melissa) Versatile and practical, crescent shawls are the perfect year-round accessory. In this workshop, learn the secrets of bottom-up design, including a technique for super-easy faux short rows—with no “wrapping and turning” involved! Skill Level: Intermediate Fantastic Cast Ons & Bind Offs (with Patty) How you start and end a project is an important decision. With so many amazing cast ons and bind offs to choose from, Patty has gathered her favorite, most practical ones. Explore great cast ons and bind offs for lace, for rib, for leaving your stitches live ,or for giving you a firm edge. Start and end your knitting with a bang!! Prerequisite: Must know long tail cast on and how to knit and purl. 2 Meshing Around (with Brooke) Mesh lace stitches, or faggot lace patterns, are often used as ground fabrics in a larger lace motif. They also make a great and beautiful allover pattern. Faggot lace patterns are usually made up of one or two columns of eyelets with matching decreases, which gives them a wonderfully simple appeal Quite often mesh stitches are made up of a 1 row repeat, an easy to remember knit! In this class, we'll explore several mesh lace patterns, as well as appropriate uses for them. We'll talk about which stitches are stable enough for a larger knitted piece, and which are best for smaller accessories. We'll also discuss how to read your knitting to avoid mistakes, as well as how to repair mistakes in mesh when they occur. Skill Level: Advanced Beginner; must know basic decreases. Saturday July 16 Afternoon Sessions Multicolor Magic: Making the Most of Handpainted and Variegated Yarns (with Carol) This class is designed for knitters who love hand-painted yarns, but aren’t quite sure what to do with them. We’ll start with an overview of handpainted yarns, including how they’re made, different handpaint effects, and picking patterns for types of handpainted yarns. We’ll also cover pooling—the tendency of many handpainted yarns to create splotches and other patterns of color—and learn ways to deal with pooling and discuss intentional pooling. We’ll also play with some stitch patterns designed to work beautifully with multicolored yarns, including a few unusual (but not hard to work!) stitch patterns that will help move the colors of your yarn around. Feel free to bring any handpainted yarns that are challenging you and we’ll brainstorm together. Suggested pairing: Mosaic Knit- ting. Learn lots of easy ways to play with color! Skill Level: For All Levels Slip Sliding Away (with Melissa) In this fun hands on workshop, explore several stitch patterns that use simple slip stitches to create intricate- looking textured and multicolor fabrics. (Shhh. No one else needs to know how easy they are to do.) Skill Level: For All 3 Patty’s Bag of Tricks (with Patty) There are so many wonderful knitting tricks that make our lives better. Through many years knitting, teaching, and managing yarn shops, Patty’s accumulated quite a few fantastic tricks. She loves it when she’s teaching a class and a student shrieks “I love that tip!” So she’s decided to dig into her knitting bag of tricks and put them all in one class, including how to do a better SSK decrease, to how to avoid the gap at the end of a bind off, to how to easily count cable rows, how to tighten your first stitch, and more. Get ready to find your new favorite knitting tricks from a pro!!! Suggested pairing: Introduction to Lace Knit- ting. Take your lace to the next level! Required Skills: Must know how to knit, purl, cast on, bind off, and know simple increases and decreases (K2tog, SSK, YO, M1). Having knit at least one sweater or having followed a pattern will be helpful but is not required. Introduction to Estonian Lace (with Brooke) Estonian lace is gaining popularity in recent years. In this class, we will learn the tricks of all those wonderful textural stitch patterns prevalent in Estonian shawls. Great tricks for creating and blocking nupps will be discussed at length. Skill Level: Intermediate; must be familiar with basic lace knitting, including yo's and decreases. Sunday July 17 Morning Sessions Socknitter's Tips and Tricks: Going Beyond the Basics (with Carol) You know the basics: now take your sock knitting to the next level. In this class, we'll cover techniques and tricks for making your socks spectacular, including adjusting patterns for fit; tips for working with self-patterning and handpainted yarns; options for toes and heels; a custom- izable sock formula; kitchener stitch (grafting) and more. Students are expected to be familiar with the basics of sock knitting as this is not a “how to knit socks” class. If you just learned how to knit socks and want to expand your repertoire, this class is perfect for you! Suggested pairing: Patty’s Stop Turning. Make your sock knitting fast and fun! Skill Level: For new sock knitters or folks who knit the same simple sock over and over. 4 Ha! Fooled You! (with Melissa) Explore interesting stitch patterns that fool the eye. In class, you'll learn how to create huge embossed cables that seem to sit on top of the fabric—with no cabling in- volved! Also, learn to knit beautiful faux fair-isle patterns using (yes) just one color per row. And, if you've always wanted to play with mitered squares but hate the idea of all those pesky yarn tails, come and learn an easy way to make faux ones using simple slip stitches. Suggested pair- ing: Mosaic Knitting with Melissa. Color and texture the easy way! Skill Level: For All Secrets of Gauge (with Patty) Gauge is one of the most important elements in your knitting. It takes just a few minutes to properly gauge swatch, but a whole lot of time to knit a sweater that doesn’t fit. We will explore all the ways your gauge swatch can (and has in the past) lie to you! We will reveal the difference between yarn gauge and pattern gauge, as well as exploring what to do when a project is knit in the round or in a pattern stitch, or when you just can’t match the row gauge. We’ll even learn how to resize a sweater by using a different gauge yarn. Make every sweater fit your like it was made for you . because it was! Skill Level: All levels welcome! Introduction to Lace Knitting (with Brooke) Lace knitting is often considered to be the ultimate goal of knitters. It is swathed in fear and excitement. In this class, we are going to de-mystify the techniques of lace knitting. Learn how to work yo's in a variety of combina- tions, including double yarn overs, how to make those beautiful shaping lines with several important decreases, and how the 2 techniques combine to create lace pat- terns. We will also discuss the tools of lace knitting, in- cluding yarns weights and fibers, lace needles, markers, and charts. Skill Level: Advanced Beginner; must know how to knit and purl, and be familiar with basic decreases. 5 Sunday July 17 Afternoon Sessions Self-Striping Yarn Studio (with Carol) I’ve spent much of the past year writing a book about self-striping yarns and why they do the things they do and this brand-new class shares many of the tips and tricks with you! We’ll discuss striping and gradient yarns: how they are made, why they stripe or morph from color to color, and differences between various striping and gradi- ent yarns. We’ll cover trouble spots you may encounter when working with stripers and ways to avoid or mini- mize displeasing effects. We’ll finish with a discussion of how to select the right pattern for your striper, along with substituting for stripers in a pattern and design tips. Sug- gested pairing: Self-Striping Yarn Studio with Carol. Learn how to make handpainted yarns your friend! Skill Level: For All Mosaic Knitting: Colorful Knitting the Easy Way (with Melissa) Do you like the look of intricate colorwork but hate the thought of all those bobbins and tangled up yarns? In just three short hours, learn the in's and out's of this deceptively easy technique that uses simple slip stitches to create beautiful patterns. If you’re afraid of color knitting, this fun, hands-on workshop is for you! Skill Level: For All Stop Turning! Knitting & Purling Backwards (with Patty) My favorite knitting trick is to stop turning! If you hate purling, or are unhappy with your uneven tension, or simply aren’t crazy about flipping that 400 stitch basket weave afghan around every time it’s time to do a WS row, learn the joy of never turning! We will learn how to put the knit stitch and the purl stitch in reverse as well as learn basic decreases, short rows and picking up stitches backwards.