Happy Valentines Day!!

Dear What the Knit Blog,  You have been a little neglected lately and I apologize.  Some technical issues with site storage,  and some fun unexpected real life issues are the cause.   I am a couple months behind in posting and I will catch up with our December and January meetings.  The best thing to do right now to keep from falling behind is to post about today’s meeting and then work on the two previous months ASAP.

What can I say,  today was great,  and we had two new people join today at the end of the meeting.  Welcome  to  Barbara and Pam.  I think you are going to enjoy the guild very much,  and we all enjoy having you.

We had a table full of Valentine’s Day treats today.  The girl scout Samoa cookies were calling my name,  the Lacy cookies were to die for and the chocolate covered strawberries were fun.  I indulged in enough sugar to last a week at least.

Today Jackie went over the thumb cast on for everyone,  most were familiar with it,  but it was new for some.  She covered having everyone knit the first row and stockinette and also purling the first row in stockinette in order to see the difference that happens on the edge.  It seemed that most people preferred purling the first row rather than knitting.

Jackie also went over binding off, and how important it is to bing off loosely,  otherwise sometimes your socks,  or shrugs,  or whatever will not behave in the desired way.

The biggest take away today for me was how to deal with the last stitch of your bind off.  I have always threaded the tail through the last loop and never ever thought about.  But today is was brought up there was a different way to finish off that was much cleaner looking without giving you a wonky corner.  Instead of threading the tail through the loop it was brought up that you can just pull that loop up with the tail and all.  Who Knew??

Now for Show and Tell

Today was a very fun day with all my knitting friends.  Those that are traveling, and those that could not join us today for other reasons.  You were missed.

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your Valentine’s Day,  and get your heart’s desire.Valentines_Chocolates.

November is a favorite month of mine…..

..the main reason being my son Ian was born in November and both of my sister’s daughters were also born in November,  and then of course there is always Thanksgiving!

I love this time of year even more since being in Bakersfield. By November the temperatures have finally dropped without threat of it getting back into the 90’s again without warning.  It is time to dig out those sweaters and also time to knit without fear of odd looks from strangers because it’s too warm to knit.

This month Kate did a great job of walking us through Knit Companion and letting us know about the collaboration between Knit Companion and Patternfish.

Knit Companion is a great tool, but unless you have a lot of time or the desire to learn it out of necessity,  it seemed to me to be a little confusing,  so I am very grateful to Kate for taking the time to learn the program and sharing with all of us.  With software being developed almost daily it is hard to keep up with the most efficient ways  to use it.

And now for show and tell

That is about it until the next Guild meeting on December 13th.  Which will be our holiday/Christmas party.  Remember to bring a gift for the gift exchange……

… the day finally arrived!….

and no one was disappointed.

Some of you know I have an affinity for a certain southern gentleman,  I can listen to “ya’ll” and “becoss”  intonation of southern voices  forever and a day and be happy.  I was looking forward to meeting Charles Gandy if only for the fact my ears would be very happy for the 6 hours.

I did not expect to be grinning ear to ear within minutes of grabbing my chair.

( a bit of housekeeping here:  to get things to display the way I would like,  if you click on the first image of the thumbnails the image should open in a browser format with the captions below and arrows on either side of the image to go forward and backward through the slide show)

Some things I took away from the class are, It’s only yarn,  experiment and have fun.  I may not be putting bobbles on the next thing I knit or making 3 needle attachments very soon, but it is so nice to know if I wanted to do something like that I now have the background and knowledge to go for it.

Charles,  thank you so much for a wonderful class,  you gave us a lot of information and incentive to play,  and I am happy you have youtube videos up to help us along if we get stuck or can’t remember exactly how to finish up that twist.  Something I will more than likely be referring to soon as I contemplate my Christmas Wreath Socks.

I am very grateful to have had another opportunity to spend a full day with a great group of knitters

Lots of knitting going on!

Oh my goodness!  It has been just about a month since I last updated the site  and there has been so much knitting going on in the group it feels like quite a bit more time has passed than just a month. So much so that it took me a minute to remember what the education portion of last month’s meeting was,  but then it came to me.. Beading.  Yes it was beading.I have started one or two projects that had beading incorporated into the pattern,  but for one reason or another they eventually became UFO’s, but I am going to give it another try.  I think the trick is to find something that has a few beads to start off with for the first project and then work up to something a little more intricate after success with the first.  At least that is what I am telling myself.

Show and tell was inspiring last month.  Here is what we all did

And then there were some drawings,  and the lucky winners are:

20141011_101220

Bev got a project bag

20141011_101119Linda got some yarn.20141011_101146

and Amy got some yarn.

 

And then there was a gift presentation to our fearless leader, Suzanne,

20141011_100708

The moment she figured out what it was……^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

20141011_100725

I think she likes them.    Great idea Jacki!

Our first retreat a recap…

It is hard to believe it’s been over a week since we were headed up to Three Rivers and St. Anthony’s Retreat.   Time flies when you are having fun.  I am inclined to start posting a minute by minute timeline of what we did and when we did it,   but really the best way to sum it up is to say.  I plan to be there next year.    I had a great time.   So many nice little chunks of relaxation  and concentrated knitting time,  a very nice pairing

I have included a few photos of our gift exchange and a few photos graciously shared by Jackie.  ETA:  Suzanne and Linda added some photos also.

Finding a good place for my piggy bank. Time to fill em up.

 

It’s September !!!

Well it is the middle of September  and in my mind at least I can foresee the trees starting to change color and the temperature starting to cool off.  Last year I don’t remember having a fall season at all,  if we did it was all of five minutes.  I am hoping we get to enjoy the transition to cooler weather and put some  of those sweaters some of us finished earlier this year to good use.

Our September meeting was lots of fun, and there were plenty of new faces who became new members of the guild by the end of the meeting.   Welcome to you all!!

Kate led us all through getting to know our way around Ravelry  a little bit better.  I know the one thing I picked up on is where the reply to thread button is, so I will be less likely to hit the reply to button and forgot to add reply to thread.  I also enjoyed seeing where to go to see what other members and friends have been up to.  I knew that function was available and I have run across it in the past, but  I think we all get into a rhythm of how we use Ravelry and forget there are many options out there.

There are a couple of events coming up soon.  The first one being the retreat in Three Rivers.  I am counting the days and willing the minutes to fly by as fast as possible.

Charles Gandy will be teaching an all day workshop for us  October 25th.  I am looking forward to  meeting him and spending the day with someone who quite clearly thinks outside the box knitting wise.  I am beginning to agree with Cookie when she said with everything the guild has coming up,  this knitting thing is becoming a full time job.  Yes it is and yeah!! for that.

Now for show and tell time

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Next Stop……..  Three Rivers retreat!

A note from our President

Hello Guild Members,

We have the opportunity to have Charles D. Gandy visit with us for a day and teach an all day class (3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon) on Embellishing Your Knitting.

You can find Charles original patterns on Raverly – http://www.ravelry.com/designers/charles-d-gandy.

His first publication was in “Think Outside the Sox” by XRX after entering several of his patterns in their sock contest at Stitches. He has also published his own book “The Embellished Sock” and has had patterns published in Interweave Knits as well as many other magazines.

Charles regularly teaches classes all over the United States, but has never been to Bakersfield. Hopefully we will be able to get enough interest to have him make it here too.

The date that we are thinking about is Oct 25th which is a Saturday. The class would be from 9:00 to 12:00 – lunch – then 1:30 to 4:30.

The maximum number of students in the class is 25. This would be open to Guild Members first for a cost of $50 per member. Once all of the Guild Members have had a chance to enroll, and if there are still seats available, we will open the class to non-guild members. Their cost would be $75 per student.

Please let me know if you are interested.

Date: Oct 25, 2014
Time: 9:00am – 4:30
Place to be determined, but somewhere in Bakersfield.

Thank you,

Suzanne Bryan

The one where we all learned Brioche

This month’s guild meeting was especially fun for me.  Brioche knitting is something that has always intrigued me so it was fun to learn the steps and terminology along with all of you.

I found it interesting that even though the two methods we were shown are essentially two ways of doing the exact same thing, my results were very different from each other.  I am curious to know if you all experienced the same thing.  Judging from my results I think I prefer the brioche techniques over the Fishermen’s rib, aka  Knit one below

Which swatch did you prefer of the 2 methods we learned

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

 

Oh, btw I just want to mention while I am thinking of it.  I REALLY appreciated the coffee and donut holes…   Thank you Annie, Cookie and Linda.

Ok,  now for show and tell,  but first let me say  I took pictures of every one who brought work to share but some of the photos were so blurry and bad I will spare you from having to scroll through them  including the selfie I took by accident.  My apologies to those who are not included.  I will work on becoming more intimate with my camera phone before our next get together.

Next month,  I believe Katherine will  be doing a presentation on Ravelry.  If you have anything you would like her to cover specifically,  message her on Ravelry@ Kate55

Also the retreat is coming up towards the end of September…  ( personally I am fantasizing about stockpiling homemade sangria to share with everyone over the weekend )  We’ll see, it may turn out I will be madly throwing things in a suitcase  a half an hour before I am supposed to leave.  Hoping for a happy medium.

 

 

Visiting Machine Knitting ~ Thank you Marlene

The July 12th meeting of our guild was fun and informative.  Marlene covered quite a bit of information on knitting machines.  What can be done on a totally manual machine, the difference between a punchcard driven machine and a computer driven machine and the advantages and disadvantages of all of them.  She also confessed she may be adding to her rapidly growing collection again soon.  I also enjoyed watching the link posted after the meeting  that featured Mariette Harley in a 1990’s “infomercial”  for a knitting machine.

We had some door prize drawings.  I have to confess I wasn’t right on the ball with the photos,  but I am working up to it.  Kathi donated a skein of some green/blue  handspun BFL.  Kaleen donated a a nice gradient colored scarf kit.  Congrats to the winners.

And of course we had our Show and Tell:

There were a few folks missing this month mostly due to traveling for family vacations.  You were missed.  I know you are having a great time.  Hope to see you next month.   We will be learning about Brioche knitting.  Next meeting date is August 9th.

 

So here we are

Almost the end of June and am praying the weather will stay like this for 12 more weeks.  I don’t think we will be that lucky, so get out and enjoy it while you can.

So in updating our site,  I ran across a folder of photos labeled April.  Checking the info on the files, they are indeed from April, April 12th, 2014 to be exact.  The meeting was one week after our 1st Knitting Expo ..   We had lots of new faces join us at the April meeting…

and that was great.

 

I will be making a post on the Expo soon.. Stay tuned.