Lamb Love!

On my trip over to Vancouver I had the opportunity to stop by Sylvia Macpherson's farm to pick up more yarn and visit the wooly animals that provide it!  Sylvia's lovely farm is located just outside Courtenay.  Sylvia creates beautiful hand spun, hand dyed yarns that we love to carry. She took me into her workshop which is basically a second house on the property (a fibre lover's dream come true!) and it was filled with fleece and yarn.  It was hard to not leave with an entire car full of her yarn.

A section of the workshop.

She also took me visit the sheep and since it is spring there were little lambs too!  Of course they were absolutely adorable and I just wanted to take them all home.  It was really great to see the source for all the yarn that she creates.  It is not very often that you get to see exactly where the wool is coming from, where it is spun and dyed!  Thank you Syliva for letting me stop by!

The one on the right is called Ellie! 

What a Night!

If you follow us on Facebook then you've already had a chance to see the fun we had at Spotted Bear on Wednesday for Sex and the City Stitch Night!  Eleven of us descended on the Spotted Bear Bistro with heels and needles in hand for a fun evening.  The cosmos and honeybear martinis (the honeybear are a Spotted Bear specialty and very delicious!) were plentiful and the food was delicious!

I had a great tuna dish with couscous, kale and creme fraiche, yummy beet salad and a great chocolate pudding with rock salt to top it off.  Made me wish I had worn a less fitted dress!  And since our shoes were made for knitting and eating yummy food, we also made them for dancing/singing too!  We headed over to the Weigh West Pub where there is karaoke on Wednesdays.  Singing is always better in stilettos and the "Knitting Girls" (Kim came up with that great name!) gave a great performance of "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey.

Thank you to everyone who came out and made this such a fun evening of knitting and great friends.

More Classes and Fun!

Just updated our website with upcoming classes for March and April with some new project classes!  I am a big fan of Alana Dakos patterns and really love the Cloudy Day Beret!  This is a really fun project that includes some great techniques that will make this a fun and interesting class.  It is also the perfect spring beret that is a bit lighter for the warmer weather.  And if you have been on Ravelry in the last month you might have come across the Beekeeper's Quilt.  This very popular pattern is a great stash buster and just fun to knit.  So come and join us for a three hour class on how to make these great little honeycombs!

Don't forget our Sex and the City Stitch Night is coming up this Wednesday February 22nd at the Spotted Bear Bistro!  RSVP at the shop as we have made reservations.  It will be a fun night of great food, yummy drinks and knitting.

Sex and the City Stitch Night

We are doing it again!  Our first Sex and the City Stitch Night of 2012 has been scheduled!  So be sure to get your heels ready for an evening at the Spotted Bear Bistro on Wednesday February 22.  We are very excited to be spending an evening of knitting and eating at this lovely bistro well known for it's delicious food.  Everyone is welcome.  Please RSVP at the shop as we are making reservations.  We are really looking forward to it!

And stay tuned to our Twitter account!  We will be announcing any sales on the retreat or in store on there first!  So if you aren't following us yet then you should!  Even if it's just to hear what Juliet is up to.  I can't help it!  I tweet about what little Juliet is up too as well!

New York Part 3 - Learning to Love the Swatch

Learning about sleeve placement.

So I realize it has been a bit of a gap between blog posts with my visit to Toronto but I really wanted to blog about my last day in New York!  It was such an amazing class with Lily Chin that I just have to share!  It was a full day on learning how to adapt any sweater pattern to make it fit and adapt the sleeves and neck.  But basically I left having learned how to design a sweater.

The biggest thing I took away from this class is the importance of swatching.  I will be the first to admit that I dislike swatching immensely and when I have a new project I just want to dive right in!  But I have been converted.  I used to knit just enough so I could see if I got the right gauge.  But there is so much more it can tell you!  I'm sure this isn't news to many of you but I was impressed with how much swatching helped with getting a better idea of how the garment would fall.  Part of my homework was to do a variety of different swatches with cables, colorwork, ribbing etc. and it was very effective in illustrating how every pattern with different yarn is going to hold differently.  So doing a large swatch can help you really get a good idea of the drape, elasticity and in the end also fit.  This helps a great deal if you are substituting a different fibre than what is recommended in the pattern.  If you are substituting alpaca for wool then how the garment is going to drape will be very different!  So I am convinced now.  Bigger swatches with parts of the pattern (i.e. cables etc.) are in my future.  I think it will lead to greater knitting satisfaction in the long run.

Another great suggestion from Lily Chin - take your favourite sweater and take the measurements.  This way you have a base for what you like wearing including how much ease you actually like!  I really like my sweater to hit just below my belt.  So when she suggested doing the measurements a light bulb went on in my head!  So simple and yet I had never thought of doing that to adjust a sweater I was knitting.

A very fun and informative class.  Lily Chin was an incredibly fun and dynamic teacher.  She had us all take off our shirts to get our proper measurements.  I certainly did not expect to spend some time in just my bra while learning about knitting.  What we do to make sure our knitting fits perfectly!

New York Part 2 - Colour!!!

Kaffe Fassett showing off some of his stripe work

The best way to describe day two of the conference is colour!!  It started with an inspiring lecture with Kaffe Fassett showing us some of his amazing work.  We got to see varieties of quilts, knitting and needlwork that were just incredible.  He truely has a gift for colourwork.  He showed us pictures of his workshop as well.  I think it's safe to say everyone in the lecture hall was envious!  What I took away from his lecture was to be BOLD with colour.  To not be afraid to put lots of colour in and to have fun with it. 

Welcome to the market!

  I then had a large break between lectures so I headed to the 2 level market place.  I will post more pictures on Facebook as there is just not enough room here.  It was amazing to see such a variety of fibres, products and colours.  They had yarn sampling stations so you could try differnent yarns which I thought was really fun.  Lots of vendors with yarn directly from their farms and some beautiful fibres like mink, qiviut and yak!

Yarn sample station.

The Vogue Knitting fashion show was also on and it was great to see the Spring/Summer line up including some beautiful crocheted items!  I really liked some of the tops that had a simple front and some great design detail on the back.  The full fashion show photos will be posted on Facebook.

One of my favourites from the show.

Beautiful detail on the back!

I ended the day with a lecture from Erika Knight on trends!  She is a great designer based in England who is immersed in the fashion industry.  As I mentioned on Twitter tangerine is the colour for spring/summer.  But also the very modern black and white prints will be popular, intarsia with bold colour blocks and red for the upcoming winter!  It never ceases to amaze me how far in advance these trends are set.  But once they were pointed out I must say I really noticed it on my stop at Sak's Fifth Avenue. 

Spring display at Saks

Lots of black and white!

Sunday was a fun filled day learning about colours and trends.  I ended the day by going to see a play called Wit starring Cynthia Nixon (Miranda from Sex and the City!).  She was amazing to see live and the play was very powerful.  More on NYC tomorrow!

New York Part 1

Time Square

What a trip!  With so much to write about it I thought it would be best to split it up into parts instead of one HUGE blog entry!  For those following me on Twitter or Facebook you know what a crazy journey it was just to get there!  Partially my fault with forgetting my passport and realizing it just as the bus was heading past Chesterman Beach.  Fortunately my mom was able to hop in the car and meet the bus in Port Alberni with passport, US money and some gravol in hand (it was a really windy trip and my stomach did not enjoy it!)

So a bus ride, ferry, plane and 13 hour car trip through a blizzard we made it to NYC!  First thing we did was eat at the Carnegie Deli where all the famous people go!  I think they have the best pickles!

Me on the right with designer Fiona Ellis.

Saturday morning it was straight into classes at 8:00 am with designer Fiona Ellis.  She taught us how to think out of the box with cables and let us practice creating our own cable designs.  I had fun trying to morph cables in whichever way my hands decided.  But my favourite part was getting to touch her swatches and designs.  They are truely amazing!  I must say that seeing the photos of the designs don't do them justice.  The sweaters and cables were stunning when I got to see them but if I had to choose one by looking at pictures I may not have been so keen to knit them.  But maybe that's just me!  I defintely see a Fiona Ellis cabled sweater in my future!

This is Dusseldorf Aran.  The cable actually becomes the i-cord.  A great design feature.

This is Celtic Icon.  You can't tell from the photo but the pattern continues up on the hood!

This is Bonnie.  I love how she matched the cable on the right with the cable on the sleeve.  So each sleeve is different!

Saturday afternoon was a class with Clara Parkes who is the autor of "The Knitters Book of Wool" and "Book of Yarn" both incredible resources for knitter and crocheters!  If you don't own them you should! It goes into great detail about the various fibres, their origins and the how they knit up.  She is also the owner of the Knitters Review a great knitting website.  The afternoon was what she called a "Scratch and sniff version of her Book of Wool." And it really was!  Lots of touching of different wools, knitting up swatches and learning all about the different types of wool out there.  There will be more blog posts about this as I go through my class materials as it was such a great class! 

The one handy tip I want to pass along today - if you have a ball of yarn and you don't know what the recommended needle size is fold the yarn in half and then see which hole it fits through on a needle gauger.  The hole it fits through best is the needle you should use!

Thats all I can fit in this blog entry!  NYC to be continued!