Well, my friend Guido has proved again that he’s a bad influence on me, but I know he has my best interests at heart. First he makes me ditch my antiblog and start an actual blog, now he’s gone and forced me to join Facebook. I’ll be posting updates up there as well as here.
Also, I have another Intro to Double-Knitting (Level 1) workshop running at Mind’s Eye Yarns this spring, on May 7th. Sign up if you want to learn double-knitting and live in the Cambridge area! I’m going to try to set up some other workshops but I’ve been either ridiculously busy or sick all this winter, so it may well be too late. We’ll see.
Oh, and thanks to everyone that came out to see me at the Red Line Yarn Crawl — it was lots of fun.
More experiments with community-building in the Boston knitting world and beyond! Last weekend, the Common Cod Fiber Guild hosted the second annual FiberCamp Boston, which we held at MIT in some unused classrooms. It was a little crazy — nobody told us that there were going to be high-schoolers running all over the halls — but we managed to pull off a great event anyway. I ran the registration booth, which was enhanced this year by the fact that we actually had an internet connection, and I still had the opportunity to run one workshop and take a couple of others.
My workshop was meant to be more of a hands-on affair, using the document camera I usually bring when I’m going to present to a large group, but due to some technical difficulties, I was unable to use this machine and was stranded in front of 30-some expectant knitters with nothing but a giant bag of double-knitted samples. So I did a glorified trunk show — showed off the progress of my work in double-knitting techniques, then did Q&A for a little while before showing the very basics of double-knitting — my cast-on, and the general technique of double-knitting. Little did I know that Sara Streeter was filming with the intent to publish … or I would have practiced my spiel, and paid more attention to how many “ums” and “ahs” I interspersed with my talk. Nevertheless, I think it came out OK.
Aside from that, I took half of a photography workshop, then raced off to learn how to knit and purl backwards — not as hard as it sounds — and now I need to figure out how to do that in double-knitting. Then I need to make a double-knit entrelac pattern! I got to hang out with a bunch of awesome people, and I got to show my Whorl’d Tree bag to Kathy Elkins of Webs, who provided the yarn for it.
Next stop: Mind’s Eye Yarns for the Red Line Yarn Crawl on March 26th, where I’ll be at 2pm until they get tired of me. I’ll probably hit Windsor Button beforehand, just because I don’t think I’ll have time to visit Dorchester.
Hey, just a quick update! I’ve been out of touch while I’ve been in the home stretch on the book. My deadline was a few days ago — but it was also Amanda’s birthday, and my publisher is a little behind on her previous project, and graciously gave me a little extra time. I’ll have the manuscript in her hands this weekend. Then the fun begins!
Also, Lela Nargi is publishing a book which mentions my work! I did an email interview with her some months ago, and sent some photos. I hope everything comes out well! It’s both humbling and inspiring to be mentioned alongside all these other great and groundbreaking knitters.
Go check out Astounding Knits at Lela Nargi’s website now, and put it on your list of books to pre-order (along with mine!) when it’s available.
Next weekend (March 12th and 13th) I will be at FiberCamp Boston, teaching basic double-knitting and two circular needle techniques. Last year’s event was great fun and I hope for an even better turnout this year. Come learn, teach or just hang out with other fiber enthusiasts — registration is still up!
On March 26th, I will be making an appearance at Mind’s Eye Yarns in Cambridge for the Red Line Yarn Crawl. I’ll be showing off my new creations, talking up my book, selling a few patterns and taking names for contact when “Extreme Double Knitting” is available for pre-order. Also, Amanda will be there doing knitter-centric chair massages and hand massages!
