Busy weekend

This was a fun weekend - all crafting all the time. I had a really good time at Stitches. I went to the vendor market before my class and it was SOOOOO crowded. I was glad I could shop after the class because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to buy anything (oh boo hoo!). At one point I could only glance at the stuff in the vendor's booths as I was carried along with the crowd.

The class I had Saturday afternoon on I-cord was really great. I had heard about I-cord but didn't know how to do it or how to use it. Now I know and it's really easy to make! I have ideas to use I-cord as trim on my sewing projects too. Sunday afternoon's class was called "An ounce of prevention" and promised to teach us things to prevent mistakes in knitting. It turned out that it was more or less a class on great knitting tips but they were all very useful. I learned that the cast-on I use makes it so that the first row is the wrong side. Don't ask me which cast-on I use, it's what I learned from a book many years ago and I just stuck with it. One really great tip I learned is that when you are about to get to a section that might be difficult, thread a piece of another color of thinner thread through your stitches before you continue, then you'll have a known place to rip back to.

I enjoyed the vendor market. As expected, it was fiber overload! Here's a sampling of my takehome:



The color in the photo is a little off, the hand dyed yarn in the upper right is more rust and gold colored.

And how did this get in my bag?



I guess I couldn't resist the fabric. It's Japanese kimono fabric. It was only about a foot wide and sold by the foot, so that tells you how expensive the stuff is. I still had to have it.

And if the Interweave Knits website starts to include tips on left-handed knitting, it may be thanks in part to me. I stopped at their booth to order the magazine and chatted with the editor. Since this is the first time I've ever taken a knitting class, let alone even knit with other people, I ran into some issues with my lefthandedness. I felt very much in the minority and even felt wrong for being a left handed knitter. But some people, including the Interweave editor, admired my persistence to be a true lefthanded knitter. Yes, it can be difficult to interpret a right-handed knitting instruction, but I've been blessed with a keen spatial ability, hence my occupation as an engineer I guess. Now my only problem is knowing when to change a pattern, when I'm just a newbie to reading these patterns anyway.

I managed to get some sewing done this weekend too! I finished a baby blanket for my niece. She was born last July and I'm only just now finishing it. It's flannel on one side and a fleecy blanket-type fabric on the other. I embroidered her name and birth information on the corner. I was going to bind it with some bias binding but the binding I was going to use was too wide for my bias attachment and I didn't not look forward to trying to wrestle with it. Then I got the idea to just serge the edge with decorative thread, so that's what I did.