Planning Ahead

I am SO excited! I have signed up for KnitEast which will take place in St. Andrews, NB from September 30 - October 2, 2011. I have always wanted to take a class from Cat Bordhi or Lucy Neatby and on this weekend, I'm signed up for classes with both of them!!! Marion and her friend, Mary, are also taking classes and we'll share the information.

On the Saturday, I'm taking Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters with Cat Bordhi. It is a 6 hour class based on her book. 

I need to take '5 yards of worsted weight, excellent quality wool' and several sizes of needles, a pencil and eraser, a piece of cardboard large enough to trace my foot on (like a cereal box), scissors for cutting it out. Excellent quality sock yarn in a weight I expect to use often. There is no homework.

The next day the 6 hour Lucy Neatby class is called Mirror, Mirror; Sea Lettuce and Falling Leaves. Using practice yarn, we'll sample these three patterns and receive instruction in the many and various techniques involved in each project: i-cord cast on, elegant increases, modified conventional bind-off, picots, short rows, working from the right needle to the left (aka knitting backwards, provisional crochet cast-on, two colour double-knitting and more. I need to bring two plain, contrasting colours in Sport or Worsted Weight, appropriate needles, scissors, a crochet hook, blunt darning needle and my 'usual knitting paraphernalia. There is no homework.

Marion is signed up for both of Jane Thornley's all-day sessions: Free Range Knitting 101 and Knit a Beach. Both are based on free-form knitting where they will experiment with different yarns and textures and use guides rather than patterns.

I've booked Skip and myself at the Fairmont Algonquin where KnitEast will take place. We plan to fly out to NB a week or so before KnitEast and visit lots of my newly-found cousins, do some sight-seeing, golfing and birding.

I continue to work away on my Sea Lettuce scarf.

Tomorrow, Mo, Elaine and I are going to the Textile Museum of Canada in The Big City to see the Orenburg shawl exhibit and tour the rest of the museum. Orenburg shawls originate from the region at the southern edge of the Ural Mountains in Russia. They are knitted lace using goat hair fibre and are very warm. Very few authentic Orenburg shawls are still in existence and only one is on display at the Textile Museum. 

It was decided that we'll take the GO train so we'd have lots of time to knit.