In the loop 2 was ...

really really good, yes it was. I can't report it in the level of detail that will really represent the full conference experience, but I will do my best. There were 3 key notes and 17 other presenters. For me one of the most significant highlights was the key note by Annemor Sundbo, speaking of the development of knit decoration in the garments in her collection - and she brought lots of her collection garments to show, and has slides as well. The other keynote speakers told similarly wonderful stories, Susan Crawford introduced her own work and discussed how nostalgia has a 'bad rap' which is probably undeserved. Apparently nostalgia was until very recently considered a diseased state, and one to be saved from - but for a knitwear designers nostalgia can provide a rich source of material and connection to their audience. On our design degree our second years spend quite some some with literature around nostalgia in design and art .. so it was good to have a knitting designers view to add to my understanding. Deidre Nelson spoke of her practice which has such a wonderful intelligent and quirky approach to craft ... with her community 'fish of the day' project, and amazing images of her own work and stories of the thinking behind them.

I really can't go into detail about all the other 17 presenters, but will provide a little more on some of my favorites ... all though all were fantastic.

Several presenters made connection to my 'home' - New Zealand, myself, and Jess Payne, and Elizabeth Johnston who presented 'fishermans dags'. Now in New Zealand dags are the unmentionable bits that collect around the back end of a woolly sheep .. and they are still called that after they are trimmed away. The fleece with that 'stuff' stuck to it is clipped away before shearing proper, usually its dry and easy to process so it is crushed and sold as a garden improver, or fertilizer additive. Daggy is a word we use to describe clothes that are a bit to old, unfashionable and worn to be seen in, or some one a bit unkempt and rural in a sort of way, as in 'he is a bit daggy'. Elizabeth discussed how in Shetland dags were mitts made to be worn for mucky jobs, often a worker had several pairs and these were changed as they got dirty and wet. There were some unique design features of Shetland Dags that made them very serviceable for work, I'll not give away her trade secrets as she was developing patterns ... but I loved the idea of mucky-work-mitts or 'dags'.

Lisa Costa told the amazing story of how a question in a Ravelry forum about how to knit the boarder in a shawl shown in a photograph uploaded to the Shetland Museum Archives - lead to a collaborative effort by a spontaneous online knit community to reverse engineer, chart, test and recreate the shawl but an entire Ravelry group. The forum was the Heirloom knitting one(Rav link) and the effort was in part coordinated by Fleegle and as fitting - she was held up as the true knitting enabler she is.

and there was more, Trevor Pitt spoke of his recent project to make some urban areas more welcoming thru his Soft Bench Cover project. Rachel Mathews spoke of a project to 'adopt' ufo's (unfinished or failed objects) and make something of them. Rachel discussed the various approaches people used to finishing some one else's ufo, and showed some of the results, at times odd but always entertaining. Susan Strawn (author of Knitting America) presented on wartime knitters in America.

Then there was the 'controversy', when Kathy Coull a Fair Isle knitter suggested that the word steek had been mis-appropriated. To her, knitting her own tradition, a steek is a spacing pattern used in lace, a row or line of holes ... not a section worked with intention to cut. That alone made me think .. there was much audience questioning and probing, and a growing awareness that what we have become used to as a word to describe a knitting activity ... may not be the 'right word'.

There were practical presenters too Frankie Owens showed us how to knit in the Peruvian manner, with yarn tensioned around the neck. She also brought along Andrea Wong who demonstrated how to knit in the Portuguese manner, with yarn tensioned by a special pin. During the conference both Lorna and I made time to sit in the knitting lounges and learn not only the traditional Shetland method of knitting with long steel wires and a knitting belt, but also to by Portuguese pins from Andrea and spend some time with her practicing how to knit with my thumbs. Sandy Black, designer, author and scholar, presented on knitwear in popular culture .. and two currators from the Bath Fashion Museum, Elaine Uttley and co presented on the process of acquisitioning a knitwear designers achieve into a collection - the designer was Sara Dallas - and she was there as well.

The last paper was by Amy Twigger-Holroyd, who discussed her process of Stitch-Hacking and Pattern-Blagging, her manifesto and provided examples of hand knits and commercial knits she had re-configured to have a quirky and more meaningful place in our lives. As soon as I find her hand out I'll link to her site. Amy talked about how she was inspired by Otto von Bush's Hactivism and his manifesto where clothes should be part of our memories of events, and how we can alter them to make that happen. Have a bit of virtual-wander around his site - there are lots to fuel conceptually there.

The full program is here, and if you are like me you will want to start saving right now for the next one in 2012 - Winchester.

I know - this post is all text, no photos, none at all of my knitting, .. but lots of ideas, lots to fuel my knitting thinking ... I'll be almost back to regular blogging with knitting next post - promise. Next week I'm on leave, its the school holidays so the cubs and I will be off to watch Despicable Me which should be a lot of laughs ... so I'll leave you with the trailer .....


na Stella