Margaret Radcliffe and Abbott Brothers
Well, what a Saturday I had. I took the day off from working at Foster Center. I did have a dance rehearsal in the morning, and then I went to a knitting workshop sponsored by our local knitting guild.
What a great time that was! The class was taught by Margaret Radcliffe of Maggie’s Rags. It was on novelty/luxury/designer yarns. I’ve been using all these novelty yarns for my ColorJoy Stoles, and enjoying them. I was interested to see her take on the same thing.
Well, as usual I was surprised (I don’t know why) that the class focused a lot on using all these yarns for sweaters. I know that nearly everyone else who knits seems to knit sweaters if not most of the time, a good portion of the time. I have knit 80 pair of sox and 2 adult sweaters. I have done many other smaller items: four pair legwarmers, perhaps a dozen hats, a handful of handwarmers/wristwarmers/fingerless gloves, some cellphone holders/eyeglass holders, and a good handful of ColorJoy Stoles.
But even though most of the students in class were focused on sweaters, I learned a great deal. I learned why one of my ColorJoy stoles is not as satisfying to touch than the others. I learned that one of my eyelash yarns (microfiber) was horrible to knit alone, but just lovely when knit as a second strand with some Dale Baby Ull in a lighter color. I learned more about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of several different types of fibers… alpaca, silk, mohair, wool, cotton, even quiviut.
I learned some of the tricks sweater knitters can use to accommodate the weaknesses of these fibers. I learned a little about the structure of yarn and how that influences the behavior of the knitted fabric. I learned that often times, going down several needle sizes creates a much more stable fabric in these yarns. I learned a little about other things they had learned in the morning class about knitting shapes, when Maggie related the lesson to the morning session as well as just by talking to those who took the class, during our breaks.
I would really recommend any workshop you can get, taught by Maggie. It was more than worth my entry fee.
After the workshop, a good handful of knitters (some met by their spouses) convened at Altu’s restaurant for dinner. Many folks had never been there before, many had not tried Ethiopian food before. I was very pleased they came out. We had 14 folks in our group. Some of the folks stayed around for the Abbott Brothers’ performance. That meant a lot to me.
I took two photographs but the second one just did not work out well at all. Sorry to Sarah Peasley and Margaret Radcliffe, who were just beautiful that day but the photograph as a whole did not work. This other photo is a lot of folks, some of whom were from out of town (two from Ann Arbor, one from the Grand Rapids area) and some spouses whose names I don’t know… so I am not going to name everyone. Suffice it to say we had a great group!
Thank you to Tracy A/Sweatergirl for being the coordinator of the workshop weekend (they had classes Friday/Saturday/Sunday, though I took just a half-day workshop myself). Tracy has enough to do already (she is expecting her first child in early May) and yet she was cheerful and efficient in her scheduling work for this workshop. Go, Sweatergirl!!!