New brioche knitters, upcoming classes

I left town before dawn last Thursday to teach for the Minnesota Knitters’ Days retreat. Our topics for the weekend: brioche, more brioche, and assigned pooling. All my favorite things!

Look at all the smiling brioche knitters! We worked on Brioche Pastiche, my choose your own adventure pattern for hat or cowl, plain or embellished. (I’m teaching this class again at Hook and Needle on Saturday; if you’re local and want to learn to knit brioche, please sign up!) We also worked on Whale Conga Line, as an introduction to brioche knit flat and syncopated brioche. That’s a lot of brioche!

Ursula and Beth finished their hats over the weekend.

And Janet simplified and fancied up the cowl pattern. I love it!

On Sunday morning we played with assigned pooling, which was a great palate cleanser. It’s fun to let the yarn boss you around…a little. You’re still the boss of your knitting, overall.

The knitters were a great group, with lots of mad skills! (Thanks to Stacey for recommending me; she was in my class at YarnOver Minnesota a couple years ago, and here too.)

Kris’s purple sweater on the left is amazing; I love the lively ribbing pattern on the collar and cuffs.

Sheryl (on the right) is the organizer of this well-run event. This is the 40th anniversary of this retreat; Sheryl was a long-time participant and took over when the previous organizer retired. Many of the participants have known each other through this event for a very long time!

Sheryl’s show and tell sweater was a fantastic example of yarn color dominance. Those stripes aren’t ribbing; they’re 1×1 stockinette stripes.

Linn brought her cardigan to show me what she did with Yarn Snob Keith’s Cabana Boy pooling colorway. I love how the white stripes lightened things up; you can see on the bottom band that the colors are pretty intense! And look how the hot pink pooled on one sleeve, and the orange pooled on the back of the other. You could never get it to do that if you were planning it.

We were at a Franciscan retreat center in Prior Lake, and the grounds were lovely.

Why yes, I choose my seat for the Mount Hood view! And now I’m home, and prepping for this weekend’s classes. Brioche Pastiche at Hook and Needle, and a stranded colorwork class at For Yarn’s Sake on Sunday, based on the Shetland Wool Week Islesburgh Toorie.

Come knit with me!