A Good Yarn: Yarnover

Saturday I attended the MKG Yarnover. It was really a fun day - I had a chance to see so many of my knitting friends, learned some new things in classes and bought a few goodies. Speaking of goodies, I got a few things in the gift bag.

From the left - we got an electronic row counter, which is pretty cool. It's on a ribbon too, so it'll be nice to use when out and about. We also got a larger sized zippered bag - the logo at top is what's printed on it. It's a nice size to hold a lot of notions or a small project. The last thing is a door prize that I won - a pattern booklet from Prism yarns.

I took two classes - in the morning was Borders from Melissa Leapman. We learned a number of different borders to knit as part of the main body of a knitted object. Here are my swatches from class:

We learned a bunch of different ways to make a hem. This one has the hem knitted on a smaller needle, then one row on a bigger needle to create the fold line and then knit with the regular size needle, knitting 2 together to join the hem edge to the main garment.

The top one is a large ruffle. The bottom one is a feather and fan type of border, with a bobble at the point of each lower edge.

The top one is a fringe that is created from the knitted fabric rather than applied later. The bottom one is a faux tassle.

These were all new techniques for me, so I really enjoyed trying them out. Melissa was a good teacher and very interesting. She brought a lot of samples of sweaters from her books which use these borders. I already have "Hot Knits", but I think I'm going to buy "Cool Crochet" as well.

The afternoon class was Tips and Techniques from Joan Schrouder. Joan is a knitting genius. She writes into some of the knitting lists that I'm in, answering technical questions on just about anything you might want to know. I won't show my swatch from class because it's really ugly. We learned a couple of different cast on techniques - including a form of long tail that you can set up in knit and purl, which would look really nice in ribbing. We learned 3 different buttonholes that are really nice - I'll definitely be using those again. We learned how to knit and purl backwards, so you don't have to turn your work around. I knew how to knit backwards, but I'd never purled backwards before. We did short rows for darts or sleeve caps, which I had already done. Finally we learned a bind off for ribbing using kitchner stitch. As I said, I already knew a few of the techniques, but I learned a lot. I was a bit drowsy post-lunch so my attention lagged a bit a few times. Joan brought in some of her sweaters as well and they were just amazing. Maybe some day I'll be that meticulous too.

I didn't do too badly in the market. I bought a couple of tools - a set of lighted knitting needles, just because I think they're so cool.