Sunday I will study with Melissa Leapman, thanks to the joint efforts of Rob, Matt (and Marcia) at Threadbear Fiberarts and Nancy McRay of Woven Art, who brought her to town for a weekend of workshops. I was going to just take the afternoon crochet class but at the last minute felt I was missing out to not take at least one knitting class from her. I signed up for a 9am Sunday morning class (what was I thinking? I usually wake up at 9:30am or later).

The morning is called Fully-Fashioned and Fabulous. It sounds like sweater stuff to me, so I’m not sure how much I’ll learn that is about my normal knitting. It’s sort of funny… we had 5 swatches as homework and they called for smooth worsted-weight (read: Sweater) yarn and appropriate needles. (The swatches look sweatery to me, except one would be a good hat, I think.)

Do you know how much I had to dig to find these things in my stash? I have loads of sockyarn and loads of novelty yarn, and a handful of super-bulky skeins for rug knitting. I have sock needles size 4 down to a 0. I have needles sizes 10.5 to 15 for making glitzy wraps/ColorJoy stoles and rugs, and fulling (for my watercolor bag). That means from size 5 to size 10 I don’t have much. Only things I inherited, and I have not been very careful about storing these things where I could find them, since they don’t fit my normal knitting routine.

I also got grumpy preparing my swatches. One of the swatches is 32 stitches wide, we’re supposed to knit 4 inches of a stitch pattern that is about 3/4 purls. I just don’t purl happily. I can do it, I know how, and I surely do it in my own designs when the look is called for. But I’d rather knit a few then purl a few then knit a few. I don’t mind ribbing much, but stockinette requires knitting in the round, in my book. Purling more than three stitches in a row is not my cup of tea, makes me agitated after a short while.

Purling all 32 stitches in a row, every other row (especially when row 1 is K3P2), makes me wonder why we didn’t knit it and turn the thing inside out when we were done, or knit in the round instead of flat. Makes me nuts, but that’s my problem and not Melissa’s. I’m going to class to learn so I need to adjust my attitude before I walk into that classroom. I hope that being tired and quiet as I often am in the morning, will be a calming thing for me rather than a grumpy one! I don’t want to say grumpy things I’d rather take back.

I did once learn to purl with the yarn held around my neck, and I do like that better than American, Continental or Combination purling, so for that particular mostly-purl swatch I did hold the yarn around my neck. I think my gauge is not very even but it isn’t even no matter how I knit or purl. I did not do 4 inches, though. I stopped just short of 2 inches, I couldn’t handle the stress. And I’m doing this because of my love of knitting, right? It will have to do.

For items that are more evenly distributed between knits and purls I think I’ll try to remember to stick with combination knitting (this is what Annie Modesitt teaches, where you purl by wrapping clockwise rather than counter-clockwise, then you knit through what is sometimes called “the back loop” to untwist the base of the stitch. It’s actually easier to purl evenly this way, when I remember to do it.

Combination knitting is a technique that is best for knitting flat pieces of fabric. Since I usually knit in the round (or knit flat garter stitch), I rarely find a time where this excellent technique is useful for me.

So…. I have 4 of 5 swatches done and it’s 2:15am on Sunday already (I’m manually setting the date of this post back so I can count it as my Saturday column… but I’m not fooling anybody). I need to just sleep and hope I can finish swatch 5 during breaks and slow time. Or not. This is what happens when I’m already too booked and then I sign up for a class with tons of homework on the day before the class!

The afternoon class has no homework. We’ll be crocheting mini-shawls. I am eager to see if finally I can learn to follow crochet patterns. I can use a crochet hook, can do many different stitches, but I have yet to be able to follow a “simple” crochet pattern (defined as simple by the author) further than a few paragraphs. Knitting patterns were so easy for me, from the very beginning!

I swear that there is something crocheters leave out so that they are an in club or something. I have taken two other crochet classes and had no luck learning pattern-reading so far. I’m hoping this class, which is focused on creating a product, will lift me to the next level. I’m not likely to follow a pattern much anyway, but sometimes my knitting students ask me crochet questions and I can not help them. I’d like that to be a problem of the past.

So… off I go to bed. No pictures, although right here on my desk sit Luann and Cyndy’s Fast Florida Footies, begging me to photograph them and put the pictures up for you. Another day, I’m afraid.

I do, however, have a photo I processed on March 9 but didn’t have time to post. These are some of my CityKidz, digging through a box of yarn goodies sent by Susan L., a blog reader who has really taken an interest in the CityKidz. She said they could root through the box (not my style, they can get wild as you can see) so I gave them permission to do so, as long as nobody grabbed from someone else or got pushy. They were good, though the yarn did get pretty tangled. They liked picking their favorite yarns out for the next project! Thanks, Susan.