One of the (many) high points of my Glamping with Plucky experience was my class with Janine Bajus, who goes by the Ravelry name feral knitter. Her website is here. Janine is an amazing advocate for an evolved but still traditional type of fairisle knitting and she is a superb teacher as well as practitioner. I first met her as I was walking out of the market. She was nice enough to autograph my copy of her brand new book.
Even though I wasn't sure what to expect from the class, I wanted to take it to help with my Sjølingstadkofta, which is coming along slowly but nicely.
The class was great. It touched on the history and nature of fairisle as well as color theory and selection. And Janine's patterns are beautiful. I knew this when I met a knitter wearing one of her hats before class.
The sample knitting she brought to share with us was amazing and inspiring (and maybe a little bit intimidating, but she made it feel very much like something you could accomplish).
She designed a hat pattern, just for us, and showed off swatches in a number of different color variations.
I can't seem to stop working on mine. (Ignore the nasty blue stuff on the bottom, that's provisional cast on cotton, so I can go back and do the ribbing later).
No mention of how much I'm enjoying knitting this hat (despite having to rip back three rows for failure to change color while flying home yesterday, and then an additional row because, when you knit on a plane after a full day of flying, you're just going to make a careless mistake in reading the pattern) would be complete without mentioning the lovely little project bag my Ravelry friend Eleanor made for me. It's incredibly sweet with it's little Liberty fabric lining and the perfect size for a fairisle hat, with interior pockets to handle the different little balls of wool.
I don't have enough superlatives for this class and this fairisle hat project, so I'll simply say I loved it all and am looking forward to working on the hat later this week!
I so enjoyed meeeting you! The entire Glamping experience was great, wasn’t it? I hope our paths cross again Joyce.
I loved meeting you as well! My hat is almost done — I just have to find a size 1 needle and pick out the provisional cast on so I can do the ribbing. Looking forward to taking more of your classes.
Joyce
Glad the bag is getting some good use! I need to get started on my first colourwork project too….