First up was a class on Short Rows taught by our international guest instructor, Bristol Ivy. I’ve been following Bristol on Instagram for awhile now, and one of the things I love most about her feed is that when she posts photos of herself, she is usually making a funny face, acting goofy, and generally not taking herself too seriously. I am kicking myself for not asking to take a photo with her as I would have loved to get a goofball photo to remind myself not to take my knitting too seriously. The coloured paper clips in the featured image for this blog post are from Bristol. She handed them out for when we did our Japanese short rows and I asked her if I could keep them. I caught her a little off guard, but the colours she gave me were so pretty and it was something for me to have to represent the class. Well, the paper clips and this –
doesn’t it look like I was trying to knit a bra or something?
In this two hour class, we were able to discuss and knit this sample using: no action, wrap & turn, yarnover, Japanese, and German short row techniques.
It was great to be able to try different techniques and discuss the best uses for each. I do have two Craftsy classes on short row techniques, and somehow I managed to miss that short rows are directional. On the wrong side, I haven’t been purling through the back loop. That’s why I’ve been getting holes in my work, but only on one side. Mystery solved!
On Sunday, I had a full day of classes. In the morning, I did Colour Theory for Knitters with Stephanie Pearl McPhee aka the yarnharlot. Now I would have taken any class with Stephanie as she is the queen of the knitterati as far as I’m concerned. Plus her writing is so funny that I was certain she would be just as funny in real life, and she is!
This class was better than I could have even imagined. I fully own that I don’t have the best colour sense. I rarely make colour choices for projects without running them by trusted knitters to get other opinions. I learned so much in this class, and I’m already able to apply a lot of this new knowledge.
I had no idea there was more than one kind of colour wheel – we use the additive system for our knitting. I come from the school days of “red and blue make purple!” and I didn’t really get too far beyond that.
We used this basic colour wheel made from pieces of coloured paper. Neutrals are in the middle and some cards with tints (colours with white added) sit on the outside.
She used these pieces of paper to show us ways to combine two, three, four and five colour selections for our projects. It was so interesting to see that I’ve been making colour choices all along that follow the rules and associations we discussed in class. I just had no conscious awareness of my choices. We had a few funny moments when people would call out certain colour combinations that they either liked or didn’t like and then Stephanie would take those cards and walk up to them and point out that they were in fact, wearing that colour combination.
There may even have been a moment of good natured mocking of knitters in yarn stores holding skeins and wondering “Do I like this?” when they are wearing something or holding something of the exact same colour combination. And this mocking may or may not have involved props taken from me. While this was merely an illustration of her point, I may or may not have spent a lot of time agonizing over the colour choices for this shawl.
We learned that certain colour combinations have come to represent different things in various cultures. Many sports teams take advantage of the powerful nature of direct relationships on the colour wheel to choose their uniform colours.
I am not going to give away the secret sauce from this class, but there are a couple of things I think I can safely share with you. Stephanie recommends the iPhone app Camera Plus Pro (there are many apps with this same name. I got the CP Pro and Camera Plus app together in a bundle for $3.99). She uses the black & white filter in this app to assess colour value. This is a quick way to see if your colour choices will have enough contrast for colourwork. She finds it more accurate than the black & white filter in the native iPhone camera app. I did a comparison between my phone and hers and did find there was a difference.
The other very interesting bit of information is that in North America we are on the verge of adding a new neutral to our colour wheel. Can you guess what it is? Something that we believe “goes with everything.” Yes, it’s blue jeans! If you asked anyone, they would not necessarily think that indigo is a neutral, and yet in our culture we do believe that jeans go with any colour. I have no idea who decides these things – the proverbial “they” no doubt, but I thought that was a great example of how concepts grow and change with the times.
This was an incredible class, chock full of useful information and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve their colour choices. As an aside, I’ll just add in a little plug here for Stephanie and her dedicated hard work for the Friends for Life Bike Rally raising fund to support people living with HIV and AIDS. Every year, her small team of knitters blows everyone away with their fundraising. Yay for the generosity of knitters! If you would like to support the team’s fundraising efforts by donating money, or a Karmic Balancing gift, or sharing in your circles, please see her blog post for more details on how you can help.
Last up for me, was a Pattern Writing class with Kate Atherley. This class was very enjoyable. There were many designers and aspiring designers in the class as well as people learning to be technical editors and other with a general interest. The book in the featured image from this post is the first edition of Kate’s well written book to help designers write clear and concise patterns that knitters will enjoy knitting. This book has been re-released through Interweave press with a slightly different cover and title so if you 
order it now through Amazon or Interweave, this is what you should look for:
One thing I have in common with Kate is that I’m opinionated about how patterns should be written and I get grumpy when things are not clear. We went over some common mistakes people make when writing patterns, and that alone has since helped me decipher what a designer meant to say in a pattern.
This was not a class on designing or grading patterns. Instead, we went over ways to communicate with knitters of various skill levels so that they could knit your pattern with ease and be happy with their results. We covered pattern introductions and their importance, how to give gauge instructions, how seemingly small semantic differences could cause confusion, and the importance of a style sheet among other things. There was enough time in the class for us to ask questions about different charting software and how to further our knitting goals.
If you do want to create your own patterns, I highly recommend this book. And if you learn better in person, do not hesitate to take this class, or for that matter, any other class with Kate. She is an excellent instructor – it probably won’t surprise you to hear that she is incredibly clear!
This post is turning out to be much longer than I’d anticipated, but I did want to quickly mention that our first ever Podcasters Meetup went well and we had a good turnout. I didn’t get a photo with everyone there so my apologies if anyone is left out, but this is one I had with the most people.
In terms of podcasters, in attendance were Eric from the Sticks + Twine podcast, Christina aka thecozyknitter from the Dye Another Day podcast, Tiffany and her co-host Aryn from the Knitting at Tiffanys podcast (thanks Aryn for leaving your Bling Your String booth to come be with us!), Jaci from the Graphic Stitches podcast, Ginny from the Penguin Soup podcast and Kari from the Knitpug podcast. Absent with regrets were Amanda aka theyarnenabler from the Dye Another Day podcast as well as Maggie and Karen from the Knit 1 Geek 2 audio podcast.
It was delightful to meet people I had corresponded with online. Some of us have since been on another yarn-y adventure and I hope to meet up with many of you again very soon.
Until next time, happy knitting to you!
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