Tag Archives: red alder fiber arts retreat

I had a great time at Red Alder last weekend. I taught 4 classes, took a class, shopped the market, and enjoyed the company of many fiber artists. There are a ton of pictures on my Instagram; pop over there to see them because they won’t all fit here!

I taught 3 brioche classes and one assigned pooling class. No class pictures, because I was too busy.

Nancy Marchant gave the keynote address, talking about her knitting career. She is deep into woven knitting now. She referenced an article about brioche that she wrote in 1992 for Vogue Knitting magazine.

Later that evening, a passerby in the lobby asked us if there was a bread convention because they saw the brioche sign. Ha!

When I came home, I wondered if I still have that magazine, and yes I do.

It was interesting to read the article; brioche terminology has come a long way. BRK didn’t exist yet; Nancy called it k2tog, but noting that it was just one stitch. Nancy Marchant did so much work with the brioche stitch, her terminology is pretty much the standard for brioche knitting. I think I breezed right past the article in 1992; I was more interested in the recipe for knitting hats at that time.

Always fun to express appreciation in person!

I took a class with Xandy Peters on center-out knitting. This is the kind of class where I know I could figure it out myself, but need a class to make me sit down and actually do it. We looked at three cast ons.

The first was a circular cast on that is much tidier than the one I’ve been using. Xandy affectionately called it the cat butt cast on; you can see why!

The second was Judy’s Magic Cast On (JMCO), done so the stitches on the second needle aren’t twisted. I use this infrequently, so it was nice to refresh my memory. The trick for remembering this is to think of swimming the forward crawl, so that the yarn is going over the needle each time. No twist!

The third cast on you don’t need to know if you can do JMCO, so I just kept knitting my rectangle (on which I probably messed up the increase corners, whoops).

We also talked about increase rates for knitting to lie flat, 4 increases every round on average, but you can arrange them/space them out as you like. Four increases per round, 8 increases every other round, etc. The sample pictured above is to remind me of that.

I wore my two new brioche plus pooling/algorithmic knitting shawlettes, among other things.

And test knitter Anne-Marie wore her Trailing Leaves cowl.

I sang a song about gauge one evening: Don’t Knit Twice, It’s Alright. I also sang with Amy Snell: Teach Your Knitters Well. Fun!

Maker’s Mercantile hosted my books, so we sold and signed a bunch of them. Anna from my class bought this one.

I visited my favorite window at the federal courthouse, which is in the old train station. The glass art is by Dale Chihuly.

We had a spectacular sunrise on Saturday,

with Mt. Rainier casting a shadow on the clouds. Stunning!

And it’s the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. This was the last Red Alder for John and Becky; they are handing over the reins to my singing buddy Amy and her business parter Karen. Look for more Red Alder next year, February 12-15, same location at the beautiful Hotel Murano in Tacoma, Washington.

Now I’m home, and I need to prepare a presentation for the Tigard Knitting Guild for Thursday evening. Aaaaaand, GO!