Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Fiber Camp and the Knit North Yarn Crawl - That's a wrap!

It's been a few a weeks now since Fiber Camp and the Knit North Yarn Crawl, so its about time I write about all of the fibery fun I had in March!

 

Fiber Camp 2016


As always, Fiber Camp was a blast! Last year was my first time attending, and it was such a pivotal event for me in my knitting career. Up until then, I had been toying with the idea of designing and being more involved with the knitting community in general. The inspiration overload that is Fiber Camp is what ultimately pushed me to take the leap! This year, it was fun to return and teach a class. Ana Campos from the Toil & Trouble and I co-taught a class on designing and publishing knitting patterns. For me, it was a great way to share all of the knowledge I have gained in my first year of designing. Basically, the class was an overview of how to see an idea through from sketch to publication.  I'd love to organize these thoughts into a "real" class/lecture sometime down the road.

I also took a few classes, because the best part of Fiber Camp is learning new things. Last year, I learned about the pom pom maker from Sheeri, and let me tell you, now I always get compliments on my pom poms. I also spun yarn for the first time with help from Willa. This year, I learned some of the magic behind double knitting thanks to two awesome classes taught by Alasdair Post-Quinn of Fallingblox Designs. If you are into double knitting, you should be on the lookout for his upcoming book due out next winter. He has some jaw-dropping designs -- you can see a sneak peek of what's to come on his latest blog post! I also spun yarn for the second time thanks again to Willa and Joanna. I was thinking of making spinning an annual event, but now that I have my very own drop spindle and fiber (thanks to the swag bags), I may have to try it out more often.

Knit North Yarn Crawl


Fiber Camp was followed by yet ANOTHER weekend of full on knitting! I think March is my favorite knitting month. Though it was a crawl, I must admit that I didn't do much crawling. Instead I parked myself at Circle of Stitches and let the crawl come to me. The advantage of this strategy was that it allowed me to put some precious knitting time in while still getting to meet, mingle, and of course knit with tons of new people. Plus, not only did I get to see a bunch of Maritana shawls in the wild (see pics below), I also got help pick out colors for those about to cast on.

Check out the Maritana made by Mary-Kate (mkbourn on ravelry) in Shibui Kavo!






I was a little bummed that I didn't get see all of the stores on the crawl, but perhaps my plan this summer should be do an extended yarn crawl and bike to all of the yarn stores on the north shore. Not all on the same day of course -- the north shore is VERY hilly, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that would kill me. Most importantly, I could convince Michael to come along for the ride :)


No comments:

Post a Comment