Knit Nation part 2

Ok so I quickly lived to regret my weirdly negative post about the Thursday night marketplace preview at Knit Nation. I think a lot of my misery was to do with just not feeling well, and therefore not being up to talking to people.

Anyway, I went back to Knit Nation on day two, for an all-day sock design class with the very legendary Cookie A. I thought this class was really, really fantastic. The morning session was mostly theoretical, looking at the maths of sock design and how to adapt stitch patterns such as cables or lace to make them suitable for use in a sock design. We also looked at a load of Japanese stitch pattern books to choose a stitch pattern to use for our own design, and had one-to-one sessions with Cookie for her to check what we were doing.

Anyway I merrily went ahead with my sock but to get ahead of myself a bit, I realised when I got home that the stitch pattern looked a bit familiar… so I looked through the patterns I own on Ravelry and realised it was the same stitch pattern as the Golden Dahlia socks by Kirsten Kapur. I’d been meaning to knit them for ages. I thought about what to do for about 4 days and in the end I ripped mine out and drew myself a new design. I could have carried on, but I just wasn’t happy with doing something I knew someone else had already written a pattern for! But my new design is going really well, pics will be up here soon.

I did go back to the marketplace during my lunchbreak, and came away with some lovely purchases:

Dazzle sock yarn from Natural Dye Company. This is their stall:

I also got:

Some natural coloured aran 100% wool (plus two skeins marled with a dyed purple ply) from John Arbor, and

More aran wool dyed by Babylonglegs in Whispering Grasses.

I also kinneared a photo of Ysolda (way too shy to go and ask for a photo, yes I know, I’m useless):

One of the highlights of my day though was going to the Ravelry Talk, with Jess and Casey the founders and owners of Ravelry. They talked about the history of Ravelry right from when they first had the idea, through all the challenges they faced in setting it up, right through to the newest and future developments. I wish I could explain the atmosphere in the room but it was just incredibly happy, positive, grateful and full of appreciation of these people who have helped so many knitters and crocheters across the world, as well as designers and independent companies. I don’t think there’s any way knitting would be as big or popular as it is today if it wasn’t for what these two people created.

They do look a bit like a ghostly hand is coming to get them in this photo. Sorry Jess and Casey.
I summed up the courage to ask a question at the talk (about whether they had plans for an iPod app; Casey said there’s one in development – hurrah!)

It was a fantastic day and I went home with a big smile on my face.

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Knit Nation

So this is where I was this evening…

I’ve had a bit of a hard week this week. I had some surgery to remove a cyst in April and after ignoring increasing pain for over a week, I went to the doctors on Tuesday to find out that the surgery wasn’t successful and my cyst was growing back. Faster than before. I’m on strong antibiotics which are definitely helping but I’ll have to have the surgery done all over again, which makes me unspeakably depressed.

Enough of that.

It’s times like these that knitting really helps me out. It can be incredibly soothing, thought-prokoving, distracting, creatively fulfilling and sense-of-achievement-giving, all at the same time. It’s a repetitive motion that I can do with my eyes shut but I can concentrate on it as much or as little as I feel I need to, in order to take my mind off other things. (although obviously I’m not implying that I frequently knit cobweb-weight lace shawls with my eyes shut whilst thinking of something else. Sadly.)

So I went to Knit Nation today feeling really excited and ready to be completely cheered up, ready to meet people and talk to people and take photos and gather material for this blog, and I epicly failed! I didn’t have any classes today (those are tomorrow and Saturday) so I just went for the marketplace preview. I didn’t buy very much (although what I bought I love; I’ll post about it over the weekend). My main problem though was a giant version of the crushing shyness that I appear to get whenever I walk into to any kind of knitting group! It is incredibly weird because I work as a reference librarian which means my job is meeting and talking to people, and I love it. Anyway. I talked to a couple of people, nervously fired some questions at Ysolda about her new book in the manner of a person with zero social skills, managed to give someone else the impression I was stalking her, and left feeling very awkward.

I also totally to failed to take more than 3 measly photos, all of the Wollmeise stall, at which I didn’t buy anything. The colours were arranged amazingly though. I’ll try and force myself to take more pics tomorrow.

On an unrelated note, here’s what the postman brought me yesterday…

Madelinetosh Sport in Mansfield Garden Party. I’m still thinking it wants to be Audrey in Unst… another version.

Wish me luck in my sock design class tomorrow! Good night.

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