No love from the RAS this year. I’m cool with that. @ Sydney Showground
Tag: knitting
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I couldn’t drive through Rylstone without some stash acquisition… @ Convent and Chapel Wool Shop
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Blocking. (Did I mention how annoyed I am they killed the Intarsia category at the Show?)
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Rakers are happening. This is the fun bit…
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Happy birthday, Lyn!
Shades of Grey: Celebrating seventy – Just realised that I have finished one other knitting project this year: a garter stitch strip for Lyn’s blanket. I’m not 100% certain, but I’m guessing I’m the only one of the participants that used a pair of 12-sided D&D dice to determine the random placement of my stripes.
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Tsumugi Who and Moneta Dress
Actual finished craft objects! I should probably blog these before I completely forget.
Tsumugi Who
Is this going to be my ONLY knitting finished this year? Only time will tell. At any rate, earlier this year I decided to splurge and buy myself the Tsumugi Who kit from Dairing that I admired at Camp last year. (Note: They have since changed the name to Seta Soie. I don’t know why. Supplier change? My kit did come with grey instead of the beige.) I cast on in the winter – probably at the Abernethy knitters retreat? – and I remember questioning the pattern. (Teresa Dair’s “patterns” are only patterns in the strictest sense of the word.) I decided to go with garter stitch so it wouldn’t curl. And I was off. I went through the entire pattern once and found myself with significant silk left over. So I kept going. Once it got to about 14 feet long, I figured Tom Baker would be happy so I cast off. Then it took me a few more months to finish weaving in the ends. And now it’s done. I even managed to wear it a few times before it got too warm. The colours are gorgeous and strangers have complimented me on it, even guessed the reference. That was nice.
Moneta Dress
I haven’t sewn much this year either. But at one point I ordered the Colette Guide to Sewing Knits along with the Moneta dress pattern. That was step one. The history of making this dress is one of diving in before my brain had a chance to object. Step two involved making an excursion to Tessuti’s during a sale with some of my (then) co-workers where I picked up a couple different knits to experiment with. This was a black merino double-knit. Step three was me cutting it out many, many weeks ago… and then packing it away in my office. Finally, this past weekend, it occurred to me that if I actually finished the damn thing, that would be one more unique dress for Frocktober. So on Sunday I pulled it out and finished it during a Gilmore Girls marathon on Netflix. I think my seam allowance was inadvertently too wide and my waistband elastic was HELLA WONKY, but to my delight I found that the knit fabric completely hides every flaw. It looks great. I’m very, very happy with this project. -
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Selfie with “plarn”. Highlight of my night!
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What Do You Know?
A few weeks ago I got an email from the fine folks at Web Directions inviting me to speak at their next What Do You Know event. They put these on a couple times a year, and it’s basically an evening of short lightning talks around any topic tangentially related to the web. Never one to turn down an opportunity to flaunt/embarrass myself publicly, I accepted. The organisers were aware I’d done a geeky knitting talk in the past and suggested something along those lines. (As the Snook joked: my talk was pretty much intended as comic relief.) With all that in mind, my topic was: Granny Was a Hacker: Knitting as Computer Code.
My slides are available here as a PDF that includes my speaker’s notes as well.
I wrote the talk over two nights and then spent a day or two practicing it. On Thursday I actually got half a dozen co-workers to watch me go through it in a conference room as a final dress rehearsal. My biggest fear was actually having a coughing attack in the middle of it, as I’m still getting over a cold from last week. But I’m happy to report that on the night my talk went SO WELL! Adrenaline kicked in and I didn’t cough or um or even hesitate a little bit. I had been a little worried how the topic would go over, given that the audience was 95% male and probably skewed very technical. But it ended up being a massive hit. (The Snook hypothesised that it was an advantage that pretty much nobody there knew anything about knitting, thus it was equally interesting to everybody.) I had lots of people come up to me afterwards to congratulate me! Here are some of the tweets from the night.
Watching @web_goddess slay the #WDYK audience with binary knitting, ‘creative mittens’ with QR codes, and more. Super fucking epic.
— Lachlan Hardy (@lachlanhardy) April 3, 2014
MT @Xavier_Ho: Thoroughly enjoyed tonight’s WDYK event by @webdirections. Tons of great ideas!
— Kris Howard (@web_goddess) April 4, 2014
Thanks again to Maxine and John from Web Directions for inviting me!
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Platypus on Collins Street
Platypus on Collins Street – Oh nice! Cleckheaton reissued the Knitted Australian Animals book. Great one for tourists.
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The Story of Knitting Guild Camp
I figured it was time to end the steady drip-drip of Instagram photos and actually write some WORDS in the BLOG like I used to do way back when. So as you’ve probably gathered, something pretty special took place last month. It was the biennial Camp for the Knitters Guild of NSW, and as the Camp Convenor for the past two years, it nearly killed me. But it was also awesome.
First I have to give some thanks to a few people. I put my hand up for the role in October 2011 on the proviso that I could have a committee to help me. The two people who put their hands up and kindly volunteered to let me bully them for the next 20 months were Clare Hacker and Helen Giesaitis, and I couldn’t have done it without them! Thank you both so much.
The other folks who really went above and beyond were the Executive Committee: Merrin (first as President and then Treasurer), Sally (first as Treasurer and then President), Mary-Helen, Kate, and Ailsa. I don’t think the rest of the Guild appreciates how much work they do! There are a lot of other people to thank – the amazing teachers, the staff at The Tops, Donna and Zena for pouring champagne Friday night, Pru for arranging for GoGet to comp us a PeopleMover, everyone who gave someone a lift or tidied up the dining room or helped someone out – THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH.
Camp was held at Stanwell Tops Conference Centre, about an hour south of Sydney. While most people drove themselves, we still had over 20 people arriving on the train who needed to be ferried 8km from the station. Thanks to some lovely volunteers and the handy PeopleMover donated by GoGet, we got them all in two trips!
President Sally gave a lovely kickoff speech Friday night (including a welcome to country).
Then it was time for Helen’s brainchild: the Techniques Turntable! Similar to speed dating, knitters were able to visit seven different tables each of which had a handout and a teacher showing a specific technique. Here are Lara and Kate showing off Continental Knitting to a crowd!
Camp continued Saturday with some great workshops, including this one on double knitting taught by Lynn.
Of course, there will always be one naughty student Instagramming rather than knitting…
We had a separate building for social knitting and retail therapy, with four retailers on the Saturday and three on the Sunday. Here’s Judith from the Wollombi Wool Store, where I slipped and fell on some Rowan myself…
Unfortunately for me, I noticed a sore throat the minute I arrived at Camp. I think I’d been running on stress and adrenaline for the last few weeks, and as soon as I started to relax my immune system just collapsed. Here I am hiding for a brief rest on Saturday.
The weather was gorgeous. Some spinners actually set up outside!
Did I mention the wandering masseuse? I got all the credit for this idea, but truth be told it had been suggested at several previous Camps. I ended up booking Ellen through Seated Massage, and I can’t recommend them or her highly enough. She roamed throughout the day giving discreet neck and shoulder massages to weary knitters. Highlight of my Saturday, let me tell you.
More people went outside to catch the setting sun. It was perfect weather, just cool enough to still wear our handknits.
We concluded Saturday night with an amazing Camp-wide Show & Tell. Each person went up to show off an item that was special to them and tell the story behind it. And check out that Twitter wall in the background! (This was a high-tech Camp.)
Yeah. I wasn’t doing well at this point.
More retail therapy on the Sunday with the girls from The House of Wool…
And here’s Renae from SuzyHausfrau, giving an excellent talk on turning your knitting into a business. Our other non-traditional workshop offering was Photographing Your Knitting, taught by a professional photographer.
And then it was a blur of final speeches and teary hugs and packing up and cleaning up and suddenly it was all over. And I was only joking a little bit when I collapsed there at the end.
I ended up on antibiotics for two weeks, and I was basically a zombie all through preparations for our trip overseas a week later. But it was all worth it. Camp is done! And it went well! And somebody else has volunteered to do the next one! Really, couldn’t be better. 🙂
