Hi, Knitters,
This post will be linked on the sidebar of my blog for future reference. I will update it often.
This is not a complete list. I have more venues but they haven't been formally announced yet. I will announce them on this list as soon as I am able.
Here are some of my upcoming workshops for the fall season:
February 20-22, 2015 ~ Madison Knitters Guild Knit In in Madison, Wisconsin
April 11-12th, 2015 ~ Washington DC Stitch 'n Bitch Retreat, Solomons, MD on Cheseapeake Bay
April 17-19th, 2015 ~ Vogue Knitting Live Pasadena
April 25th, 2015 ~ Yarnover in Minneapolis, Minnesota
July 2015 ~ Super Summer Knitogether or SSK in Nashville, Tennessee
There are more teaching dates on my calendar but I think these are the only dates formally announced at this time. I will come back and add more to the list as it grows and changes. I am already getting bookings for 2016 if you can believe that. It seems so far away.
I've been working on a new workshop that will debut at The Loopy Ewe Fall Fling. It is a design your Fair Isle Mitts class. This is the first sample set I have worked up for the class.
I am teaching tons of technique and tips for achieving stunning two-handed two strand knitting within these fingerless mitts but I want my students to delve into a little designing themselves. I am giving the students a bare-bones plain fingerless mitt pattern/recipe in three sizes, and then I am providing loads of options for colorwork charts to plug in, and different cuff ideas to boot. Every mitt will most likely be different than the next, sometimes even in the same pair.
Sounds like good fun to me!
The class will include instruction and tips on Latvian Braids, corrugated rib, reading colorwork charts, floats and how they work best, weaving in ends, blocking, adding in new colors, catching or weaving in floats as you work over long repeats, and more.
The fun thing is that students can design their mitts with as many colors and patterns as their heart desires or they can go the more subtle path and use only two colors and one stitch pattern for the entire mitt. It's the student's choice. Anything goes!
I am on to making a more subdued pair of matching mitts next for a different type of sample. Though in my heart my favorite is always the mismatched colorful route. Knitting with lots of color like this is always fun and entertaining and cute to wear.
The yarn I used in these mitts is Quince & Co. Lark. It is a worsted weight wool knit at 5 stitches per inch on US size 7 double-pointed needles. I have a big bag of left overs from various projects so I just keep pulling out random colors and putting them together. It's like a grab bag of color.
For this particular Fair Isle Mitt Workshop the students can work on double-pointed needles as I do, or they can work on circular needles using the Magic Loop technique or some other variation. However, the main requirement is that students are completely self-sufficient at whatever technique they are using for working in the round on a small number of stitches. These classes are not the place to learn how to knit in the round on dpns or how to do Magic Loop, we start out assuming these skills are already mastered. For all of my toy-knitting workshops I prefer that students are able to work on double-pointed needles as the patterns are written specifically for dpns.
Let me know if you are able to join me at any of these venues. Many of the retreats fill up very quickly and are already closed with waiting lists but it's always worth checking into if you are interested. The bigger venues sometimes have spaces left often right up to when the class starts.
Hope to see you in class.
xo ~ susan
