Free Form Knitting

Sandy D'Onofrio and I have been working on some free form knitting in our spare time (she has much more of it than I do!). Her piece, pictured at left, is "Miami." The colors were so Miami-ish and she added textures, beads, pockets for seashells, etc. It's quite a magnificent wall hanging.

My piece actually has "growths" on both sides, but they aren't visable here. I ended up draping this on a curtain rod and around the radiator pipes in the classroom area. It's much better in person!

The nice thing about free form knitting is there's no pattern, no right or wrong result and no known outcome! We mostly knit in short rows, creating wedges that gave the pieces dimension. Then we added pieces as we went, just knitting them in. Sometimes I would have 6 needles in my piece at once, working in different directions. I did no sewing.

Some of the pieces were knit first, then joined as I knitted.

Teaching in Ohio

I drove to the Youngstown, OH area on Friday with my daughter Rose. I taught at the Western Reserve Knitting Guild on Saturday to about 32 knitters and at the Witty Knitters of Warren Sunday to 16 knitters, four who were repeats from the previous day. Morning class was Continental Knitting; afternoon was backwards knitting and entrelac.

I was so impressed by the intensity of everyone both days. The knitters did not have to pay for this class or their meal--it was part of their annual program that was paid from earnings from Knitters Fantasy, an all day knitting conference and market that the guilds host. Yet they came, they sat, and they knitted like their lives depended on it.

Both guilds were excellent hosts and while all the knitters were experienced, they presented enough of a teaching opportunity to keep me more than fully engaged the entire time.

It was fun to visit Kay Thompson's Knit Wit Yarn Shop in Salem. I've known Kay for a few years as a fellow vendor at Knitter's Day Out and as a customer at TNNA. Her husband, Barry, has taken one of my business classes, so it was good to see him too. She stocked up on Y2Knit patterns and sold Rose a ball of yarn and some needles as she had forgotten the instructions for the project she brought. We all enjoyed a good dinner at the Green Rose Bistro behind the shop.

I'll post pictures as soon as I have some, since they are on the cameras of others.