Yarny Saturday!

WOW! What an awesome Yarny Day!! Today was our class with Chris Bylsma! We had 14 people attend, and all learned some great techniques and tips. The first class was her Finishing class. It was great to hear how many LONG time knitters learned new techniques in this session. Here's my "finished" project from this workshop. Techniques included Shoulder seams, side seams, armhole seams, picking up, and buttonholes. We really loved one of the buttonholes in particular, one that had a beautiful finished look with no additional sewing or tacking.

The second workshop of the day was the Knit Weaving workshop. We dropped stitches and let them run down all the way to the bottom, the cast off the top edge and wove a variety of yarns into the 'gaps'. This technique offers tons of creative flexibility, as well as offering some techniques for "resizing" finished garments...for sleeves that are super-tight, kids sweaters in danger of being outgrown, expanding the size of a garment without requiring additional yarn...

It was a great group of people, and we all did AWESOME work! In the middle of the afternoon there was some talk of needing a chocolate fix... so when I got home and found THIS:

in my mailbox...well, it was just too funny! (More on the mysterious chocolate arrival in a moment...)

After a few minutes in class, I just knew I would be very upset with myself if I let another opportunity pass....that would be the opportunity to take Chris' Crayon Box Jacket class! It's being offered at one of the LYS's tomorrow, and I had thought about signing up, but for a couple of reasons had not. When I brought it up in class today, one of the other women offered me her spot, since she was having some scheduling conflicts anyhow. So, I'm spending ANOTHER day with Chris tomorrow!!

Ok, back to the Chocolate... I got home today to another lovely package from Ann (aka ChickaChickaKnitChick), my SP8 (who inadvertently outted herself *giggle). Anyhow, there are two main classes of things in the package... 1) Pressies for me to make for Ava Rose ;) There's a cute little bunny pattern and yarn for now, and a great Fiber Trends pattern for slippers in all sizes! Will either have to figure this one out and shrink it down EVEN MORE, or wait a year or two for this one...there's nothing that says I can't make a pair for ME in the meantime however!

You may also notice a Knitting Car Magnet in there... It's since been installed on my car, though I had to be a bit creative about it... You see, being a Saturn, known for it's Vinyl panels, there's not really all that much METAL on my car to stick it to! The gas cap was already claimed by Kelley and her DH (for my yellow smiley mag). So, that leaves hood, roof, and top of trunk... Found top of trunk last, and somewhat by accident, but decided it was the best spot (wasn't really too fond of the center of my hood, and *I* for one would never see it on the top of my roof). So, it now has a place of honor on the center of the top of my trunk!

The remainder of the package was lots of good reads! I got the (entire?) series of Maggie Sefton Knitting Mysteries, and another interesting novel about a woman who finds herself in a position of having to do Family Tree research to answer some very interesting questions about her newly born baby by learning more about her unknown father. What a great fit with my genealogy research!
So, while I'm still reading Color: A Natural History - my LAST gift from Ann, I have four more books now! On top of that, the KnitWits group had their NameTag contest last weekend! Sadly I did not got to attend (Dale's Memorial Service was beautiful and I feel like I learned a lot more about what an amazing person, mother, and grandmother she was!), but I did drop off my nametag in absentia. Here's the tag:

And good news! It won 2nd place! The prize was a YUMMY canister of Ghirardelli Hot Cocoa mix, a Borders coffee mug, and a book! Knitting under the Influence. It's a novel about knitters...also looks great! So, I'm happy to say that I have reading material to keep me busy for quite a while to come!