The One Where I Frolicked – Toronto Knitters Frolic 2017

This is the one where I frolicked…….and took zero photos. Wah, wah. Insert face palm. I am a bad blogger.

I am currently on the Executive for the Toronto Knitters Guild and did have a small hand in organizing the social media/podcaster area for this event, plus I am also a volunteer so I did feel a bit pulled in various directions. Luckily I had the foresight not to sign up for a class on the Saturday.

I’ve said this before but I haven’t felt a strong pull to buy yarn lately. I’ve mostly been trying to keep my purchases to PSPs (project specific purchases) and I already have enough stash and pattern matches in my queue to keep me busy for a couple of years. So I was quite restrained with my purchasing this year.

This is what I walked away with. The stitch markers at the bottom of the photo were gifts.

I bought some more Soak Wool Wash. They always have a booth at the Frolic and I like to support them by buying directly rather than through my LYS. They gave out sample of their new Pineapple Grove fragrance in our Sunday goodie bags, but I purchased my usual non scented.

 

I was happy that Yarn Indulgences was one of the new vendors this year. I’ve knit with their yarn before for my test knit of Mina Philipp of Knitting ExPat Design’s Sugar Plum Shawl. Their yarn has been harder for me to squish locally so they were on my priority hit list. I grabbed this lovely neutral skein of their Indulgent Fingering 100% Merino base in the Antler colourway.

My plan is to pair it with the gorgeous red skein I got last month from Prairie Dye Studio and perhaps they will become a Summertide Shawl by Helen Stewart for me.

I’ve never tried knitting from a sock blank so I went ahead and treated myself to a OOAK sock blank from Bling Your String. This is a 75/25 SW merino/nylon blend in the Seeds colourway. It’s not a colour I would have picked for myself but my friend Ashley was there to slap my hands away from my usual colour box so I could branch out a little bit. I just bought the one she told me to.

I don’t have a separate picture of the book I got from Needle Arts Book Shop, one of the few places I’ve found that carries Japanese stitch dictionaries and knitting books. I’m not expecting to design or knit anything from this book in the next while, I just love to drool over the beauty of the detailed and intricate stitch patterns.

I was lucky enough to win a prize in the raffle draw and I got this amazing prize package from Natalie of Remembrances Pottery. If you are a knitting podcast addict like myself you will likely have seen podcasters using her sock mugs or other yarn ball and sheep mug designs.

Apparently this was meant to store knitting needles and other tools, but I’ve been using it to drink tea. There is no handle so it does get hot, but I’ve discovered that when it cools down just enough for me to hold, the tea is the perfect temperature for me. Yes, I’m Goldilocks in disguise! Thank you Natalie for my new tea mug and the beautiful buttons.

We had a multi podcaster meetup on Saturday afternoon and despite having very little time to tell people about it, there was a nice turnout. We had some podcasters come in from out of town and in the future I hope this trend continues. Honourable mention goes to Sue from the Two Tangled Skeins podcast who was unfortunately in a bad car accident on her way to the Frolic. Hope you are recovering well.
I’ll list the attendees here so you can check out their podcasts:
You Tube video podcasts
But I’m Knitting – Ramona (no, not me – another Ramona)
Dye Another Day – Christina (regrets from co-host Amanda)
Knit Night with MekaMika – Shameka
Knitting at Tiffany’s – Tiffany and Aryn
Randomly Knits – Jaci & Kari (feed will come from the former Knit Pug YT channel)
Rosehaven Yarn Shop – Lesley
SpinningWoollyYarns – Sydney
Sticks + Twine – Eric
The Canadian Knitter – Sarah
Two Tangled Skeins – Selma (regrets from co-hosts Sue and Lynne)
Three Sisters Knit – Margaret & Shelagh

iTunes audio podcasts
Knit1 Geek2 – Karen & Maggie
The Stitch Sisters – Katy & Val

Sunday morning I took a Colour Tetris class with Kim McBrien Evans of Indigodragonfly. She is really funny and a great person to be around so I knew I would enjoy the class. I didn’t want to include many photos of my notes since I consider that proprietary material for Kim, but here are a couple of the colour palettes I landed on after some of the fun exercises we did to get us thinking outside the box and paying attention to emotional and visceral reactions to colour rather than what we thought would “go together.”

Sunday afternoon, the guild put together a lovely high tea social. We had Sally Melville and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee as our featured speakers and they gave us a lot of insight on the past, present and future of knitting by sharing some of their journey with us. After that we had a fashion show featuring some of our local talent. I was asked at the last minute if I would model some of the items so I’ll show you some of the photos taken by my friend Shameka of the Knit Night with Mekamika You Tube podcast and Etsy shop.

Here I am, not only onstage with the one and only Sally Melville but I’m wearing her clothes! She had me put on an olive green button shirt first with the Cross Over vest/top. Then I ran backstage and put the Leftovers sweater (I wasn’t able to find a link) over the shirt. That was really hot as I already had two layers on under the green shirt!

I’m not sure the cut of the sweater is very flattering for me, but it is a great way to use up leftover bits from other projects.

If you can see it, Sally is wearing her Memories Sweater.

 

Here I am modelling Kate Atherley’s Rosetta Tharpe Pi shawl. Don’t know who Rosetta Tharpe is? Look her up or click through for Wikipedia link. She’s pretty cool. I chose this shot because she requested I wear the shawl in what she called “super hero style” meaning I hung the full circle over my shoulders without folding it up. For some reason I felt the need to spread my legs like a super hero would pose when confronted by a villain. It really adds to the styling don’t you think?

 

This is Kim McBrien Evans from Indigodragonfly and me both wearing her Dopamine cardigan. I wanted to show how forgiving knitwear can be with sizing because these were both knit for Kim. I’m taller and less curvy and I think it looks just fine on me. I absolutely love this sweater. It’s been in my queue to knit since the pattern came out and now after the Colour Tetris workshop I have a lot more confidence to choose colours for mine. By the way, don’t be confused by the price of the pattern. This is written as a Custom Fit recipe. For  more info on how Amy Herzog’s Custom Fit softwear works, click through.

 

This is a far away shot of me wearing Charnwood by Fiona Ellis. I cropped it but it’s still hard to see the lovely details of this sweater. The body of the cardigan is mostly in reverse stockinette stitch with lovely leaf details. There is i-cord edging with continues down in the ties with leaves on the end. It is closed with a couple of hook and eye closure. It was interesting to me to see how different it looked on me than on the model on the pattern page.

 

I’ve save this photo for last just because it’s incredible. This is a 10′ x 10′ wall hanging by artist Debbie New. It is made out of small squares of garter stitch of just a few neutral colours. It’s not the best photo but I can tell you the detail is stunning – you can see a wispy curl on her forehead. This is her grandmother and you can see the love that was put into this piece.

It was sad to me that when asked she uses it as a quilt (it has a quilt backing) or if it hangs in her house that she replied it was folded up in a bag in her basement. Check our her other pieces. This woman actually knit a boat for goodness sake. And it’s seaworthy. No, I’m not kidding. I wish I’d taken a photo. The link above goes to a Google Search for Debbie New Images. There you can see the knitted coracle as well as many of her other works.

If you are an Instagram user, check out the hashtags #torontoknittersfrolic and #frolicspringsocial to see many more photos. It was a wonderful weekend. Many thanks to the volunteers and Executive of the Toronto Knitters Guild as well as the Frolic Planning committee for the event.