Monday, August 15, 2005

Picots and Seamless Arans!

It's going to take a while to tell my whole Stitches story (and a lot of images) so I think I'll break it up. Thursday was my first day at Stitches, and I took a warm up class, Smile and Say Picot with Candance Eisner Strick. I've taken a class with her before, and she didn't disappoint! Although I've done picot bind off once before (in the Shoalwater Water ), it was rather painful. And, I FINALLY have a friend who is pregnant with a baby girl, who will be receiving Miss Dashwood! So figured I should take a little course in picots. The class was a blast.

Friday, I took Seamless Arans with Beth Brown-Reinsel. I've also taken a class with her in the past, and she is a hoot. While some of the class was a review, she have very good tips on how to design your own sweater, and showed us a bunch of examples of things she has designed. (which lead to me buying some Black Water Abbey yarn and her Marilyn pattern)

I'd say the two best things about the class were learning about saddles for the Aran sweater, and also 2 different ways to place a sleeve in an armhole without sewing. Plus, the sample sweater was freaking cute. The picture to the left shows both sides (with my hand to show how little it is - one person in my class said it was 'fetus-sized'). I joked with Beth because one of the arm joins she taught us requires you to place a seam at the armhole - so I was teasing her that she lied to us... that the Aran wasn't truly seamless. She took it in stride, and said that I could have someone else seam it for me, and then it would be seamless for me (haha).


And finally, a picture of me WITH Beth (I like to call it my 'famous knitter' picture:



More to come tomorrow!

3 comments:

said...

It looks like you had a great time at Stitches West, I can't wait to read and see more of what you did there.

said...

I could kick myself for forgetting my camera every day. I finally remembered it Sunday and then didn't catch you while we had time.
chrisknits

said...

that teeny tiny sweater is adorable.

I've actually done a virtually seamless Aran before, of course I just took a pattern, knit it in the round instead of flat, then picked up the stitches for the arms and knit them backwards. It worked rather well, actually, but I bet a class would be more helpful.