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

I'm bön tae Shetland

Which translates as I've been to Shetland ... and I loved it. We, the we being Lorna a fellow local knitter, and I stayed in Lerwick for 9 days. Lerwick is a small town of about 8 thousand people and has at least 7 yarn shops. Our kind of town, the perfect town to hold a knitting conference in. The trip there was trouble free, the trip back home was extended by fog at Sydney, a detour to Melbourne for refueling, back to Sydney for an unforeseen 12 hour stop over and arriving home a day latter than planned. All that leaves me happy to be home and tired, today the post is a summary of the trip .. next post I've cover the conference and update you on my knitting. Its been 2 weeks since the last post so there is a lot to write about and report on.


On our first day there, we decided a little grocery shopping was in order .. so we headed off to town to search for food, we needed to as we were staying in a self catered flat. The town is old, the building very old, our flat was only 2 minutes walk from the main post office, this was the walk that faced us every morning. The first morning we found our bearings and about 9am headed off to town to search for provisions .... it was sunny, and warm and there was hardly any wind.

While we headed off at 9am it was in fact around 3pm before we found a grocery shop ... we were distracted by at least 5 yarn shops, the visitors center and coffee. With a knitting conference in town we were on the look out for 'others like us', knitters, and at the visitors centre we spotted some and made our introductions, Annemor and Kirja. We meet them again at at a coffee shop latter in the day .. and they discussed their plans to rent a car and drive out to the Jamisons factory the next day, which was a few hours from Lerwick. During coffee we all decided to split the cost of the rental car and head off the following day. We checked that Kirja's and my phone could talk to each other, worth checking when traveling internationally, and Annemor gave me her card.


Then we headed of again to look for groceries, the next yarn shop we found just before we found the grocery shop ..... outside there was a workman shifting fleece from bales into a wicker basket.


Beside him the name of the shop ... a factory shop, Jamisons and Smith.


Inside it was like a magic cave ... lace and 2ply yarns in so many colours, and shetland fleece to spin.I didn't buy anything that day .. now we knew where the shop was I wanted to spend some time thinking and selecting carefully rather than rush in. I knew we had 8 more days to visit and shop, and I knew my suitcase had to weigh less than 23kg when I left so I had to be careful adding to it. (on a latter visit we discovered the amazing lace display in the basement .. if you are ever there, remember to ask to see it).


Later that night, back at the flat with stocks of food, we unpacked and went over the plans for the next day. I dug out Annemor's card and realized who she was .... Annemor Sundbø, author of one of my favorite knitting history books, Treasures from the Ragpile. Oh my .. it took me a wee while to calm down, and probably was much better that I didn't know that earlier or I would have been tongue tied in awe.


So the next day we met up with Annemor, Kirja, and Anne (a lecturer from the Rhode Island School of Design), and headed off to the Jamison factory. Here in New Zealand factory visits mean signing health and safety forms, going thru a checklist of dos and don'ts, and being restricted to areas that are safe. At Jamisons they asked if we wanted to wander around the factory first, or visit the shop first ... being slightly sensible adults we elected to wander the factory first, knowing the shop would distract us.


The factory was like no other I've been in, a mix of fleece, raw and dyed, at least two cars undergoing restoration, each with a sofa near by to sit and admire the work from, a large flat screen tv above one car, working looms and working mill equipment. We were allowed to wander, free access every where, and we did. We were adults, we didn't fall into the machinery or damage ourselves or it ...
I knew that much of the Sheltand knitwear was produced by machines, sophisticated colour work machines .. but seeing the huge piles of colour work knit fabric ready to be made into garments was still a surprise. This is Lorna my travel companion, as hand knitters the scale of the pile of knit fabric just awed us both.



Near the dye room there was the obligatory sample storage, where yarns of different colours are stored and kept to use in matching each batch to the right colour. Little skeins of tagged yarn sit in each cubby ... guiding the dyer.It is one of those places that looks old and exciting, the original wooden shelves, and the little trial skeins of yarn .... one of those images that one expects to see in a book about yarn, or as a designers inspiration on their workspace.



Then in the factory shop, those same colours reappear in lace, and spindrift and aran weights ...... waiting for hand knitters to turn them into garments and accessories. I can not lie, some of these came home with me ... but there were so much to choose from and my suitcase was only so big ... the selection was hard.

After leaving the factory we made our way back to Lerwick, via a beer in Scalloway(we were looking for a cafe for coffee but found a local museum and pub first), and visited some local historic buildings ...

and found ourselves close enough to eyeball a shetland sheep. There was of course knitting, and knitting talk, then the day after the trip to Jameson's the conference started ... all of that I will catch up with and cover in the next few posts.

take care
I'm off to do family things, cook meals and tidy up ... I'm already back to being a parent after 2 weeks away, but its all good.