It’s been a wildly knitterly month, and I’m just now coming up for air. Madrona Fiber Arts Festival, Rose City Yarn Crawl, Lantern Moon Retreat, and a side trip to Skamania in between, whew!
Back to the beginning: Madrona!
Lovely as usual. I took one class and taught three.
Above, my swatch from Tuck, Twist, and Roll with Candace Eisner Strick. Lots of fun bits to add to dress up your knitting. I especially liked the twisted cast on, a little different than the one I’ve used before.
I taught a class with my Athena Entrelac Cowl, and mini classes on sassy novelty stitches and blocking. I love designing knits that are relaxing and zen to knit, with just enough excitement to keep your interest. Dressing up knits is fun!
But Madrona is more than classes, much as I love them. I saw glass artist Carol Milne in the Rotunda, and she was finger knitting with wax loops, the first step in her knitted glass pieces. I saw how she first wrapped the wax around a knitting needle to form the loops, then looped them together to form knitted fabric. From there it’s cast in plaster, wax melted, glass poured, and then broken out. It’s quite a process, but the resulting work is so beautiful.
I was really looking forward to picking up my new project bag from ChickenBootsUSA. This size, the Double Double, is great for a 2 cake project, and I love the Blue Kitty fabric. The clear bottom means I can tell which project is in the bag (I’m a big bag swapper). The interior pocket keeps my notions separate from the knitting. Perfect. This is my fourth, but probably not last, Chicken Boots bag.
I got to visit my Nymphaea Shawl at the Bead Biz booth. I designed this for Bead Biz last year. Laurinda Reddig designed a crochet Nymphaea at the same time.
Side note: Laurinda and I are teaming up for a Nymphaea Fall Retreat, Nov. 9-11 in the Columbia River Gorge. Come knit or crochet your own beaded shawl with us! Details at this link.
Back to Madrona, also very striking in the market: Tammy Burke’s scarf using planned pooling. What a cool thing to do with a variegated yarn! Briefly, you make a swatch to see how many stitches you get from each color in your repeat, and then plug the numbers into this planned pooling website. Play around with it and figure out how many stitches to cast on to make your colors pool into an interesting pattern. Tammy’s scarf is crocheted, but you can also do this with knitting. We’ve been having an interesting discussion via Instagram. I love the connections made at Madrona, and how they carry through during the year.
Someday (hopefully next year) I want to take a class from Galina Khmeleva, Orenburg Lace master. She is both funny and wise.
Kate Larson was one of our speakers, and she shared her journey of art, fiber, and farming. She shared some of her Border Leicester locks with me; they just want to jump into being yarn!
We had a grand time! I love dressing for Madrona, too. Having the right things to wear with your knits is important. And no, I’m not taller than Franklin Habit, but I was trying to capture his legs. Extra legs. (He brought them to show off some new leggings he designed for Skacel.) I do love his sartorial sensibility, too.
OK, back to my knitting. More blogging soon. Have you been to any knitting events lately?
PDXKnitterati 
Seems like everyone else went to Edinburgh Yarn Festival. Franklin Habit is dressed for same. I of course went nowhere. But I did stop at Knitty City (NYC) this week.
Ah, but Madrona was way back in February, and Edinburgh Yarn Festival is current news! I’m just behind; it’s been crazy busy.
I’d love to do a NYC swing; there are some fun shops there! I lived in Queens a lifetime ago, and didn’t partake of the Manhattan offerings.
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