Always More Stuff to Learn

One of my favorite things about knitting is that there’s always something new to learn. Someone’s always inventing something new or refining an existing technique or rediscovering an old technique or something. So if you want to, you can always be learning and growing. I don’t want to do that every day – sometimes you just need something simple to do – but I’m glad the opportunities are always there!

Anyway, last Saturday I took 2 classes during the latest Rowan Connect – embroidering on dropped stitches, and smocking on knitting.

Embroidering on dropped stitches was taught by Fiona Ellis, who is a really good teacher, and also very friendly and soothing. So if you want a relaxing class, she is a good bet! For this technique, you add dropped stitches to your work, and then do pulled thread embroidery stitches on them. It is a very nifty, lacy effect!

The top swatch is what we did in class, and the bottom swatch was me playing around with the technique after class. I tried a different pattern and also making the open area move around on the fabric by increasing and decreasing around it.

The second class was “smocking” on knitting with Lisa Richardson. I’m using quotation marks because we weren’t really smocking in the sewing/embroidery sense to create gathers in the fabric. You wrap some stitches as you are knitting the background fabric to create loops on the surface to stitch under in different patterns. The swatch on the left is the class exercise, with a little added fanciness in the column on the left side. The swatch on the right was me fooling around with the technique after class. I tried doing thinner strips of a secondary color that would include the wraps and then different patterns for the surface stitching.

There are a lot of interesting things you could do with both of these techniques and I think they will be fun to play with. You’d have to be thoughtful about where to use them, because they both provide excellent opportunities for snagging.

The Rowan Connect weekend was a fun time that I would definitely attend again! In addition to the classes, they had lots of other sessions that were free with registration, such as visits with flagship shops, interviews with designers, and looks at new yarns and colors coming out.

Do you ever do online knitting events?



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