Unwound

Hello, it's been a while since my last post, and things have moved along. Unwind 2014 came and went, and was most enjoyable. This year we had a new venue, which was fantastic, there was a flight of stairs but two lifts for the heavy stuff, and there were chandeliers and stained glass windows and super helpful staff on hand. There was swap shop, a little teaching (zip it), a little learning (the reinvention of Mrs Batty), and a little shopping, and of course spinning, knitting and catching up with previous unwinders and new unwinders.

As before little cub was part of swap shop, this year she was in charge. Friday was trade in day, and the pile of yarn on the table got taller and taller.

Saturday at 8:45 am was opening time for the shop sales, and immediately before that the trader hall was strangely unbalanced, there were a few stray knitters, and a crowd forming around the swap table. With almost no one, traders, buyers or others at any of the other shops.

Little cub used her phone to set an alarm for shop opening, there was some very transparent attempts at bribery. Little cub recognized that a chupa chup was not worth risking her stall holder reputation over. When the alarm went off there was fast activity,

My class started at 9:am, so I hung back, keeping an eye on things. While this was not a Black Friday or Boxing Day sale, I didn't want her to be swept away or buried under a pile of unwind dollars or toppled yarn pushed aside as someone reached for the malabrigo, Vintage Purls, baby yak, Kauai, handspun, or other yummy things.

My class went well, like the other classes, there were 14 knitters and we explored how to plan for inserting a zip into hand knitting. The students had pre-class homework, they had to knit four small swatches as long as the shortest zip they could find. Like a good teacher I had my own samples, blocked and dry ready for demonstrating a range of edge finishes suitable for zips.

I used sock weight yarn for my samples but had two finished garments made from heavier weight yarn. Before the break we explored zips, sources, options and possible edge finishes. Some worked as part of the swatch, most added after the piece was knit. After the break we looked at stitching the zip into the hand knit.

Saturday afternoon I did shop, a teeny little bit at a swap shop after the rush cleared, and much more at several of the vendors. I tried to divide my yarn money around the traders, as there was a great range of fiber, yarn, patterns, knit tools and accessories. I did buy an icord machine, not sure if that is for little cub or myself, but I've always wanted to play with one and didn't want to break anyone else's as I learned how to work one.

 

In amongst the stashing little cub found this pretty skein on Do Arnots stall, a lovely soft fingering weight yarn with sparkles. Little cub asked if would make an 'infinity' scarf, and if I would make it for her. She explained she was in the middle of knitting a bunny and crocheting a hat. A little quizzing and it turns out a friend at school had a loop scarf that she wore doubled around her neck and little cub wanted one too. I've dug out my copy of Cat Bordhi and started her Purl Ridge Möbius Scarf. Little cub tells me it could be 6" wide, and I'm already at 4".

There was more, but I will save that for another post.

Take care na Stella

 

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