Fiberfiend is currently blogging on her attempt to knit an almost authentic Bohus sweater.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Keep Me in Stitches

Next week I'll be attending Stitches South for the first time. Well, not the first time I've been to a Stitches event, but the first time there's been a Stitches South. (Say Hallelujah.) I attended Stitches East for six years in Atlantic City and Baltimore when I lived in Maryland. By happy happenstance I managed to attend a Stitches West in Santa Clara one year as well. Each one was Knitter's Heaven, and when DH and I moved to Florida I couldn't justify a plane trip and a hotel (not to mention the stash expansion) just to learn more ways to knit and purl, as it were.

But Atlanta, well, that's close enough to drive. So off we go.

My experiences at Stitches are probably different than many, maybe most, attendees; for one, I've always gone alone. (No knitting buddies to distract me from my mission.) I have yet to attend the fashion show or the award dinner (more an issue of time than interest, however.) And I have taken classes all day, every day that I attended. (Yes, I come home brain dead every time. And I love it.)

I pretty much taught myself to knit back in the 70's. As proud as I have always been of my skills, I have to admit that I made rookie mistakes for many many years; stupid things like not getting gauge (and then being surprised that the article didn't fit!) or substituting an inappropriate yarn totally unsuitable for the project. Stitches helped change all that. Slowly, certainly, but my skills have been so very much improved by Stitches classes and the marvelous instructors that I can't begin to know what came from me and what came from them.

A random, and partial, list of things I learned at Stitches:

I can knit backwards. Sounds like a little thing, but it has made a real difference on small projects.

All my fair isle knitting is done with a color in each hand with floats one stitch wide. The resulting fabric is as beautiful inside as out. And this was learned at The Philosopher's Wool booth in the Stitches Market, demonstrated by no less than Ann Bourgeois herself. (You can see her teach the technique on their website here.)

My oldest grandson has a pair of authentic twin-knitted booties I made in a Stitches class. I will never make another pair (the technique stretched my capabilities to their limits) but the experience and knowlege gained was wonderful.

I know at least 15 cast-ons and matching cast-offs (and regularly use at least four of them.)

Did you know that there are "rules" about how cables move? There is a logic to which part goes under and which part goes over, and how they interconnect. And I learned that at Stitches.

How many ways can you shape a waistline? Many more than you would think, and each has a different function if you want to design a sweater or top.

I can knit a lace top and have the shaping for the armholes turn out as mirror images of one another. Just when and how to omit a yarn over or use a left- or right-leaning decrease is now in my repertoire.

I'm sure there are a dozen more things I learned at Stitches that are buried at the back of my brain. But like college was more about learning how to think than what to think, Stitches is more about learning how knitting works than about what to knit.

What more could you ask?

A Rose by Any Other Name

This is the current state of my Hemlock Blanket, design by Jared Flood. The yarn is Caron's Simply Soft Paints in the Sticks and Stone colorway; very masculine. I decided to knit it in an acrylic yarn for my grandson-to-be; for some reason, my kids don't want to hand wash baby things. Go figure. The colorway is quite nice; in fact, it's as nice as many an indie-dyed skein I've knitted. The problem is that it's acrylic. Not that I have anything against acrylic yarns, except that they shed, pill and look generally crappy in pretty short order, and I can see a little of that already happening in the center of the blanket I haven't knit with acrylics for many a year, but I remember this being the problem with acrylics back in their heyday. I had hoped man made fibers had advanced more, apparently, than they have. But it may be yarn specific; I knit the Baby Surprise Jacket below for the same grandson in a Vanna's Choice print that is surprisingly cushy, lofty and smooth.

I remember making a top-down pullover six or seven years ago out of Lion Brand Homespun. The sweater wasn't finished before it started to look like monkey fur. So answer me this: if yarn can be spun from bamboo, corn, milk byproducts, soy and petroleum (you do know that's where many "man made" fibers come from, right?) why can't we come up with manufactured yarns that don't fuzz?
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