Sunday, August 31, 2008

From Celtic to Japanese

I have to first confess that I have a Chick Crush. I'm smitten for Melissa Leapman. Go ahead and laugh. sigh. She is just adorable, funny and super witty... come on now. She wrote Cables Untangled. On top of that she also has a new book coming out... Continuous Cables and I got to peek inside. I'm telling you right now... go. pre-order this sucker and have that cable needle ready and waiting.

Her class was Celtic Cables was Saturday afternoon and the only bad part was the cold classroom, but a quick run to the cafe saved my fingers. ML was totally prepared with handouts, charts and a sarcastic New York attitude that left me a little gitty. I was pleased to see that her class was based off of her new book and how she pops a celtic knot right in the middle of no where.

My homework consisted of swatches which we then worked these fabulous charts and learned some serious increases and decreases to make the cables work.



You could hear from all over the classroom... this is too cool... awesome... and a couple of swear words thrown in because of a difficult decrease. Overall I loved the class and would highly recommend her as a teacher.

Saturday then turned into Sunday and there was Japanese Short-Rows with Susanna Hansson. I took her Beaded Wrist Warmers class last year and knew she would teach me something great again. I don't think I'll ever wrap my stitches again, in fact I've turned Japanese... ha, I'm bad, I know... couldn't resist.



Here is the results from creating two swatches, making short-rows then binding them together. More or less an example of shoulder shaping... but I'm thinking heals on socks. Her class was very detailed and planned out, with plenty of time to do the work.

What a great combination of classes for my third year at Stitches Midwest. This just gets me super pumped for next year. I also loved the new location. Free parking, less walking, better cafeteria food. The only thing about next year is that it's later in the year.. September 10 - 13. Which could be looked at as good or bad since my birthday is the 14th;) I think I should start saving now!

2 comments:

Knitterary said...

We had a good time, didn't we? I think Stitches gets better every year.

A :-) said...

Ok - so thanks for putting THAT song in my head. It's never-ending :-D Glad you had big fun at Stitches - it was weird not to go this year. I'm glad to hear that the new venue is good :-)