Willow Yarns and Craftsy and Lucy Neatby, oh my!

Well, my Spring classes have been going wonderfully so far, and I’ve gotten to some great new shops which I hope I’ll be visiting again in the future! Thanks to the good folks from Montpelier, VT, York, ME, and Mt Holly, NJ for your hospitality and enthusiasm! I’ve gotten in a bunch of good knitting time while in transit, and I thought you might like to see the fruits of my labors.

But first, I wanted to mention a change in schedule — I’m going down to Glen Burnie, MD (right outside of Baltimore, but you probably already know that if you can make it there for a class) in a couple of weeks, and teaching at the Knitting Boutique. We decided to run my full complement of workshops there — an intro, a two-color advanced workshop and a three-color advanced workshop. The three-color advanced workshop is one of my favorites to teach, and it’s happening on Sunday, April 21. The intro and 2-color advanced workshops still have space and are running on April 20th. You should come if you’re in the area and free!

Recently off the needles is this shadow-box hat, which is a two-color modification of my Falling Blocks hat. Get another view of the inside here. But where can I get the pattern for that, you ask? This will only be available in the Willow Yarns Colorwork Club, where it’s Pattern #3! The first pattern is already up — an elegant stranded hat with cable motifs — and the second, a pair of stranded mittens with corrugated rib cuffs and Eastern thumb gussets, is going live on April 15th. After that, there’ll be a basic double-knit hat, then a scarf in intarsia and duplicate-stitch, a cowl in stranded inc/dec colorwork, and finally a full-size double-knit shawl. This Club works in an unusual but smart way — because each pattern takes a different amount of yarn, it’d be difficult to market it with patterns plus yarn for a single price. Instead, they sell access to the club which gets you access to the patterns for $19.99, and discount your choice of yarn when you start each pattern. Stay tuned and I’ll post some of the other patterns as soon as I’ve got good photos.

Last but not least, the Craftsy class is going really well — I’ve been averaging about 1000 students per month, although it’s slowing down now. I wanted to mention that the Craftsy Spring Sale is on now until Monday. There’s a different selection of discounted classes each day, so keep coming back and trying again if you don’t see the one you want. I think mine is on today (Friday) but if you miss it, you can always use my permanent 50% off discount code. Also, if you’re into double-knitting or haven’t been living under a rock in the last decade, you’ve probably heard of Lucy Neatby. She’s got a class on Craftsy in double-knitting as well! Hers is mostly on the tubular style, with a little colorwork thrown in at the end. She takes a different approach and I think her class would be an ideal one to start with and then move into my more advanced topics. Or, if you’ve already taken my class, take hers as well to gain a deeper understanding of the foundations.

Thanks for keeping up and keep me in your RSS feed so you don’t have to keep checking back for my very infrequent posts!