Madrona Fiber Arts Festival Wrap-Up

Yep, that's me & Jared Flood at this weekend's Madrona Fiber Arts Festival in Tacoma, WA.  I got lucky enough to run into him at the Churchmouse Yarns & Teas booth & he was very gracious about letting me get a photo with him.  He takes the beautiful photographs that grace Churchmouse's in-house pattern collection & will be appearing at their shop on Bainbridge Island this coming Tuesday 2/21 from 5-7pm.  That will also be one of the last opportunities to see his Brooklyn Tweed trunk show before it gets shipped down to Portland.  Sadly I can't make it there but if anyone reading this can, I want all the details.


Madrona was full of awesome stuff this year.  Having been to Rhinebeck just a few months ago, it's hard not to compare, but I'm going to do my best.



I went down on Saturday with some friends & fellow knitters & almost immediately stumbled upon Sandra McIver & the Knit, Swirl trunk show!  She gave us a detailed description of the construction of each style of her beautiful knitted jackets then let us try them on!  I have to admit I was skeptical that there was such a thing as a pattern that would flatter every body type but after seeing the same jacket on a couple different women, I'm convinced.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to get photos of that comparison but I did get the three different jacket styles below on my friends Bea & Cass & each one looked terrific on them.


 

I also got to check out some examples of Jazzknitting, which I'd heard of but had absolutely no idea what it was.  For whatever reason I'd come to associate it with fun fur, but I am happy to report that the two have nothing to do with one another.  

This interview with Jazzknitting creator Ilisha Helfman explains the technique & shows some examples.  The video doesn't do justice to the knitted pieces but there are some nice photos on the website.  I saw the ginkgo leaves Ilisha is wearing in the video in person & they were really beautiful.


This morning I took a mini-class with Margaret Radcliffe called Get the Best from your Variegated Yarn: Patterns & "Un-Patterns".  I was excited about what I might learn in this class but when she started out by saying that she usually teaches this class in 3 hours rather than the 1.5 hours we had today, I had a feeling it would be more of an overview.  And indeed our hour & a half passed in a blur of knitting, listening, scribbling notes & trying to match the samples she passed around with the stitches she discussed until they all started to blur together.  I did learn one really cool technique called Knitting Into the Stitch Below or, as she called it, Rose Fabric.  This technique breaks up the typical patterning of a short-color-repeat variegated yarn & creates more of a blended look, while giving the fabric some texture.  The process of knitting into the stitch below the next stitch on your needle creates an inverted V-shapes when the next stitch drops off the needle, unravels & hangs from the stitch below it.  With such a whirlwind class, I didn't get much time to practice but she left us with handouts describing this technique & others so I'll post a photo of my swatch once I've had a chance to experiment some more.