Connie Delamater, instructor

November 6th, 9-4

We are pleased to have Connie Delamater as the instructor. Connie and her husband live on the eastern shore of Maryland raising angora rabbits and their flock of sheep (Romney, Border Leicester and Teeswater). Connie works full time running their business, Delly’s Delights Farm, she has been involved in the fiber world over 20 years, providing supplies to felters, handspinners and knitters. In addition, she creates one of a kind felt creations and teaches feltmaking on the east coast. Connie has studied with felt masters from all over the world and continues to be amazed by the unlimited possibilities of wool/felt.

Connie will be holding two classes on that Saturday, Bloomin’ Flower Felting and Needlefelt Your Own Little Shepherd or St. Nick. For more information and to register click this link: Felting Classes

Where to find the pattern:

Look on Ravelry under projects for K’acha. Also, Cat Bordhi has the pattern free on her website at this link. Sorry I didn’t think to put them on the other day. Thanks!

Reversible Cabled Scarf

The road trip did yield ample time to try out the new Cosmo yarn that we received last week. It became very interesting trying to knit on the PA turnpike. Boy! Is that ever a rough road. I decided to make a reversible cables scarf, and crossing the cables while crossing the potholes was a feat. But I worked a large enough sample to judge what the yarn is like. Besides making a scrumptious, soft, and all around lovely scarf, the yarn is great to work with, not splitty and moves over the needles very well. Definitely one to knit with.

This is a simple pattern with a 4 stitch reversible cable. We are teaching cabling and reversible cables at our KnitXperience Retreat in November.

Don’t forget that the Cosmo yarn is currently our Featured Product. Find out more here on the Blog under Featured Product post.

Lace Knitting

We will have a two part lace knitting class beginning in September. The first class will concentrate on teckniques and terminology used in lace knitting. The second class will be reading charts and putting it all to use in knitting the Spring Time on Delmarva scarf that Jackie Jones, the instructor, has written.

The pattern is lovely and in case working with lace weight yarn has always given you the willies, she has chosen a DK weight yarn for this class. To see a full description of the two classes, click on this link…Lace Knitting. Check out our class schedule here…Class Schedule.

Problem Solver

With a great gnashing of teeth, you have cast on 99% of your 200+ stitches for a shawl, and guess what? You don’t have enough yarn in the long tail to cast on the rest of the stitches. Well isn’t that pleasant? Yank it out and start over and if you do that, you’re sure to overcompensate and have yards and yards of yarn too much.

Well, how about trying this method the next time. Using two balls of your yarn, or perhaps pull from the inside and outside of a single ball of yarn, make a slip knit as you normally would only using the two yarns held together. Cast on using the yarn coming from one ball ( or center pull on single ball) as the long tail, and the other ball as your active yarn ball.

Cast on one extra stitch, because when you knit the first row, you will pull the slip knot out. Cast on your stitches without danger of running out of yarn. At the end of your cast on, snip yarn from one ball and there you have a neat cast on with a lot less headache.

Do you have a pile of swatches from previous knitting projects?

What do you do with them? You could put them in a journal type book with a notation of project, needles, amount, etc. I always mean to do this, but that part of my organizational skills escapes me.

What I usually do, is rip the swatch out and use in the project. If it hasn’t been too long since I knitted the swatch, I can just use it without any troubles. But what if you are nearing the end of your project and it has been weeks, months since the swatch was done and you just gotta use it. In fact, that swatch is worth gold to you, because you have absolutely run out. So you rip it out and stare aghast at the kinks and ripples in your yarn. What to do, what to do??? Wind your yarn loosely into a skein (not the ball that you immediately put it into!). You could wind it around your thumb and down to elbow and back again . Tie it in several places to keep the yarn from tangling. You’ve probably purchased hand dyed skeins that have ties in several places. Well, that’s what you need to do. Thoroughly wet the yarn, no rough stuff please, squeeze out excess water and hang in the shower to dry. Don’t weight it as this can change the character of the yarn from the original and it will look different when you join it to your knitting.

So, if  joining your swatches to make an afghan, or pasting into a project journal are not for you. Rip it out and use it in your project.