Hooray for Stitches West 2012!! - Part 2

Where was I? Oh, I had just finished my visit with Roxanne of Zen Yarn Gardens. It was now 5:30pm so I had to dash out of the conference center and drive as fast as I legally could to get to my son's daycare before 6pm. I was so happy with my loot, and excited for my Sunday class. I almost forgot! I bumped into a friend from Dartmouth, Katharine Velleman, who is also a knitter, and lives in San Francisco. We are 45mins away from each other and have yet to still meet up. Among the thousands of knitters, crocheters and fiber enthusiasts at Stitches West, we bumped into each other! It was nice to catch up for a few minutes!

So come Sunday afternoon, I was a little tired after my weekend schedule and feeling sick with a sore throat, but I knew I had to go for my class. I made it to the conference center at 1pm, and headed straight for the market because I had seen Kauni at one of the booths and just had to have a ball. I've been looking for Kauni Effektgarn in the EU colorway for a while now, so I was pretty excited to get my hands on one ball, as well as on the EJ colorway.

I also got myself a beautiful ball of yarn from Zauberball.

I was about to head towards the Bobbin's Nest Studio booth when I realized I had less than 5 minutes to get to my class. I didn't even know where the class was located!! LOL! I dashed to the registration desk, where the kind lady gently asked me to look at the back of my badge. There it was! She gave me directions to my class, and I walked as quickly as I could into the class, Sneaky Short Row Shaping by Gwen Bortner. It was a very informative class, and I enjoyed learning a bit more about short row shaping. Below is the handout from the class, and the swatch I made with the four different short row shaping techniques we learnt. I used KnitPicks Swish DK in the Doe and Cornmeal colorways for the swatch.

During a 20min break from the class, I rushed back to the market to pick up this delicious skein of Duet 50/50 mohair and wool from Brooks Farm, a yarn farm based in Texas. The yarn is so soft that I knew I had to have a skein for myself!

I can't wait to knit up all these goodies! So what did I learn from Stitches West? I learnt that I wish we lived in the magical world of Harry Potter so I could use the nifty time turner thingy that Hermione had in Prisoner of Azkaban, so I could go back in time and take ALL the classes I wanted to at Stitches, AND visit all the booths I wanted to in the market. I had such a great time! Hopefully next year I would have made enough money from knitting to pay for the whole package and attend all the days of the conference. Rock on Stitches West, Rock on!!

Hooray for Stitches West 2012! - Part 1

I'm so excited for this week's post. For the past two years since we moved to Santa Clara,  I've never made it to Stitches West. It is held every year in February at the Santa Clara Convention Center, which is 6 miles away from me. The first year I was attending prenatal classes and totally missed it. Last year I don't even remember what happened, but I know that I only realized it had happened after it was over. This year I was determined to make it! However, I am now working and couldn't really take off that many days. My kind supervisor gave me Friday off to go get my knitting on and I was excited!

Friday morning, I scoured through the online listing of classes and saw only two that I could take on Sunday afternoon because as usual, I was booked for something this weekend (I had to sing at church). No matter, I soldiered on, looking at the Weaving class and the Short Row Shaping class scheduled for Sunday. I was leaning strongly towards the weaving class, when the kind lady at the registration desk informed me that the Weaving class was an all day class, which narrowed down my class selection to the Sneaky Short Row Shaping with Gwen Bortner. I registered for this class, got my official looking badge, and headed off for the market, where lots of lovely yarn goodies and awesome people were waiting.

I got to meet Kristin Omdahl (Styled By Kristin) who regularly appears on the Crochet Corner of Knitting Daily TV AND has written a knitting book, and Michelle Miller (of FickleKnitter Designs) who designs the loveliest shawls in person. I was freaking out like a little knitting fan girl! And they took pictures with me!! I was excited to meet them both, and thrilled when Michelle recognized me because I had test knitted her Tree and Arbor Wrap pattern about two years ago (blogged here).

I bought a book from each of them, and they very graciously signed them for me. :) Woohoo!!

Michelle then pointed me towards Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden. Now this lady's yarns are to-die-for! The colors are so vivid, and the yarn is so soft!! I've been wanting to get a few skeins for myself for years now, and the fact that I got to meet her just got me acting the fool. I think I was at her booth for almost an hour, and was almost late picking up my son!! She also let me take a picture with her!! 

Then I got down to drooling over yarn!! This is what I got from her! (I had to make the yarn picture extra large because it's just so yummy!!)

Wow! Can you tell how excited I was to go? This post is getting a little long now, so I'll end here and continue in my next blog post! Thank you for reading this far! :)

The wonderful Kitchener stitch

As a new knitter, I was afraid of anything that asked me to stray from the plain ol' knit and purl. I ventured a bit into yarnovers, knit 2 togethers, and slip slip knit because I was dying to knit lace fabrics, but that was as far as I wanted to go. It took more than 2 years for me to get circular needles and attempt to knit in the round. And after diving in head first into a cardigan project for my friend Kathleen with "interesting" results, I've shied away from knitting actual pieces of clothing that require seaming.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I tried my hand at the Kitchener stitch and realized it wasn't scary AT ALL! I mean, AT ALL. I love it! It's such a great skill for every knitter to have in their back pocket. My latest project is a custom order that required me to basically design an infinity scarf by looking at a photo. I didn't want to sew a seam because I suck at sewing. You can ask anyone I know. However, the beauty of the Kitchener stitch is that it doesn't require you to actually know how to sew a seam. There's a distinct order in which you sew the stitches, and the end result is barely discernible. Here is what my scarf looks like after I used the Kitchener stitch to seam the ends together.

Right Side of scarf

Wrong side of scarf

There's just a little kink in the scarf where I joined the two ends, but this kink will go away with a little blocking. Doesn't it look wonderful?

I'm not going to give a Kitchener stitch tutorial here because there's a perfect one over at KnittingHelp.com. Here is the link to that video tutorial. Their knitting tips page has a lot of video tutorials, and you would have to scroll down a bit to find this Kitchener stitch video, but it's definitely worth your while. Do check out the video and let me know what you think about this stitch.

Before I go, here are some pictures of 2 WIPs I'm currently laboring over. The first is a mustard and grey infinity scarf for one of my co-workers, and the second is the Purl Ridge Scarf by Stephen West, knit in my sunset color gradation combo. Both scarves are being knitted in Knit Picks Palette yarn, which is just fantastic to work with. See you all next week and have a fabulous rest of the week!

When I'm feeling blue...hats!

I've been trying, pretty unsuccessfully I might add, to take photos of the Chunky Dean Street Hat (by Nina Machlin Dayton) that I made for my son a few months ago. The little one would just not sit still long enough for me to get a usable shot. I got him in his high chair, and being held by another friend, and the pictures were still not too pretty. Then this morning I remembered that one of my favorite designers, Alana Dakos of Never Not Knitting, seems to take photos of her knitted items lying flat on a white background when she sends out her newsletter. I thought, "My, I could do that with a hat!" So I set off to take photos of my poopoola's hat.

I used Shalimar Yarns Missy Bulky (Blueberry colorway) which I picked up from Bobbin's Nest Studio a while ago, and knit the hat on US 10.5 (6.5mm) needles. Now this was before I realized that my gauge when knitting in the round was pretty loose. So the hat came out a little too big, even for the poopoola's big head.

I also squeezed in a chunky Cabled Hat in the Sapphire colorway of Loops & Threads Cozy Wool for my friend Melissa from Colliding Stars. She wanted the same hat as the one my sister stole, but in the sapphire colorway. It's such a quick knit that I whipped it up during a break from projects I actually need to be completing.

By some happy coincidence, they are both blue, so I put them together for a group shot!

Who knew blue was such a pretty color!! Enjoy the rest of your week and belated Happy Valentine's Day!