Where Everybody Knows Your Game, Part II

During Madrona, there were some great speakers. I missed hearing Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, but I did see Cat Bordhi, who was hugely entertaining and sooo creative. The fabulously elegant Elsebeth Lavold was there to speak about her Viking Knits Project, in conjunction with an exhibit she currently has at the Nordic Heritage Museum.

One of my favorite events was the Teacher's Gallery. Basically, each of the teachers got a table to show off her beautiful knitting, and you could wander around and ooh and aah to your heart's content. I kept vacillating between feeling joyously inspired by the beautiful knitting and feeling a bit despondent about my own mediocrity :-)

Oh, and I managed to get a few shots of the knitting glitterati! This is Vivian Hoxbro. I love her glasses and wish I could pull off that look! Check out her bag design in the current IK.


Cat Bordhi wore a trademark moebius and showed off her really cool sock designs.

And Sally Melville wore a sweater from her new book coming out later this month. This book is a collaboration with her daughter and has some very promising designs.



Now, by the time I found out about this conference, many classes had already been filled. But no matter! I still got some great ones. I took 2 classes from Joan Schrouder. She has more knitting knowledge in her pinkie than I do in my body! The first class was a finishing class. Joan showed us many examples of her knitting to illustrate her points, and she also had an original sweater from EZ herself. I knew some of the techniques taught, such as the Kitchener, but she showed us how to do them better. There were also several methods of joining that were new to me.

These 2 are alternatives to the 3-needle bind-off, and they produce a nice decorative ridge on the public side.


In this next photo, the swatch section on the right shows a decorative ridge that looks like a crochet chain, and the one on the left has the crochet chain look on on either side.


My second class from Joan was an entrelac class. I had never done this technique before, and it was quite addictive. Here's my little swatch from class. I have seen several Noro entrelac scarves using 1 ball of yarn at a time, and they look great. But I really wanted the added contrast from using 2 balls of Noro at a time, and so after she taught us the basics, I played around with it until I could do it without having to keep cutting the ends. So there will hardly be anything to weave in. Hurray!


My final class was a double-knitting class with Lucy Neatby. She is a really excellent instructor! I had not been familiar with her DVD series before, but after having met her, I'm very tempted to buy the whole lot! Check out this neat little trick:

You might wonder what's so interesting about this?


It's a vertical pocket created using double knitting (the stripe is just something we did in class to help us visualize the process better). Ingenious! I'm going to have to look for a good excuse to use this, because it is just too cool!



A final little bonus for me was that I was a doorprize winner. So fun! There were 2 large bins of prizes, and you got to dig through and pick whatever you wanted. There were lots of tempting things, but ultimately, I settled on getting a 1-yr extension of my Interweave Knits subscription. Yay!

Where Everybody Knows Your Game, Part I

I got back from the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival earlier this week. It was so much fun, and I highly recommend it! I had never even taken a knitting class before, let alone attended a convention, so I had no idea what to expect. Well, was I pleasantly surprised! I wish I had brought along something other than an old, worn out camera, though (our regular camera is just not that portable). Where to start?

Well, there were knitters everywhere.


And spinners and weavers, too.


This was undoubtedly the only time I'd ever seen a spinning wheel set up in a hotel bar! It was really neat to just be immersed in all that fiber goodness. I met many great people and like-minded souls. I even met a woman who went to my same high school--small world!

It was also interesting to see what the non-knitters thought of us. There were lots of bewildered looks, to be sure, but many people showed a lot of interest. One European tourist took pictures of us because she was surprised to see so many American women knitting. The best story, though, was of a back-up singer for Gladys Knight who was there to perform in a concert. She saw a felted handbag that she liked so much that she gave the person 2 concert tickets for the bag! And then she sat down for an impromptu knitting lesson from some fellow knitters!

There was a marketplace, of course, with all kinds of goodies. I managed to walk away, though, without actually buying anything. I am pretty well stocked-up for everything on my queue currently, so I was a good girl.

I thought the Hotel Murano, where we stayed, was wonderful. It's gorgeous and showcased some beautiful glass art.


And check out these rooms.



The bed and chaise are just perfect for knitting, IMO.

The hotel is well-situated. From the restaurant, you can get a great view of Mount Ranier.


There are lots of fun shops (including a cupcake store!) and museums within walking distance. These last images are from the nearby Chihuly Bridge of Glass.



Next up: actual knitting content from the convention!