A delicious box of new wool - like a box of chocolates. I didn't know which to choose first.
Last week, over the Friday and Saturday I went to an online knitting event organised by Rowan. It was a mixture of workshops, seminars, talks and drop-in sessions where you could sit and knit and chat. It was attended by people from all around the world and it was as interesting chatting to people from far and wide as it was taking part in all the events.
I went to two workshops: the first, with Xandy Peters, was about stacked stitches and the famous fox paw pattern. It really is ingenious! The second workshop was about travelling cables and architectural lines with Georgia Farrell, a knitwear designer who is fascinated by architecture as a source for her designs.
(Source) Fox Paws by Xandy Peters. I love the colours in this version. The little paws are made by stacking stitches on top of each other, and then in following rows by stacking decreases on top of each other.
Here's Georgia Farrell presenting some of her samples of deconstructed and travelling cables. We tried a similar sample of the one of the left in the workshop - they are very pleasing to do, you need a springy woolly yarn for the best effect.
Both workshops had a section about choosing colour combinations and how different colours and proportions of colours affect each other, depending how you place them. The seminar I went to, also presented by Georgia Farrell, was about putting different colour combinations together. I was fascinated by what Georgia called nuanced colours: subtle colours where you're not quite sure what colour they are.
A slide from Georgia Farrell's colour seminar where she's showing the effect of different combinations and placement of the same colour palette. She uses Procreate for designing and demonstrated some examples of using Procreate to change colours in a design. I suspect I will have to try this!
I used yarn that I had already for the workshops, but there was a very good deal, two different discounts, if you chose to buy a selection of yarn after the workshop. This included a discount that covered the entry fee to the event, so you could get yarn at 25%-30% discount.
I chose two bundles, which came beautifully wrapped in tissue paper, and a box that really should have had some ribbon around it but I guess that's not practical for the rough and tumble of parcels.
All the events were recorded and are available for a week after the event. I sat down today with the Fox Paws recording and my new box of wool - it was such a pleasure choosing which colour I was going to start with. The wool is exquisite, soft and cool to the touch and beautiful colours.
Let's see if I can remember how to do the stacked stitches ...
