This last weekend I had the great opportunity to attend the Knot Hysteria Color Retreat in Port Ludlow, WA. The three-day intensive workshop included spinning, colorwork, and dyeing, along with delicious food and the excellent company of 45 other knitters.
Upon arrival, we were given swag bags full of lots of lovely yarn and fiber samples from various companies, as well as stitch counters (apparently I’ll never need to buy fancy stitch markers–I have a ton now that were given to me).
Judith McKenzie McCuin taught the spinning class, and showed us a variety of methods of combining colors for impact and blending, as well as the effects of plying on colors. She’s a wealth of knowledge about spinning, and I loved listening to her talk and demonstrate.
I’m a self-taught spinner, and had never seen anyone else spin before outside of the Internet. While I seemed to be able to get results with my methods, it came at a cost–I tended to hurt myself after going for a while. I’d been considering selling my wheel after this retreat, but after sitting down with Judith for 5 minutes, she taught me how to adjust my wheel and how I handled the fiber, and now my spinning looks much better and has become practically effortless.
I’m so keeping the wheel now.
After the class, none of us wanted to leave, and there was a room full of fiber that had been dedicated to our class that day, so we began looting the goods. Between pillaging and the class itself, I ended up with some dreamy merino/silk, gradients of merino top, a few silk hankies, some merino/yak/silk, and polwarth.
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee taught the colorwork knitting class. She showed us Fair Isle, stranded colorwork, Intarsia, slipped stitches, and tucking. Stephanie is incredibly entertaining, and while I probably could have learned how to do these things on my own (with more luck than I did spinning!), I really enjoyed learning from her. We also enjoyed driving her crazy (perhaps a little too much!). She talked about the history of knitting, which, well, being an art history geek, was pretty cool, and not what I expected, and we went over even more color theory than we had the day before with Judith.
My swatches aren’t much to look at, but I got to take with me some lovely BFL sport weight yarn left over after the class.
Tina from Blue Moon Fiber Arts taught the dyeing class. I’d never done any dyeing before, and it was a pretty relaxed and fun class, playing with colors and various fibers. Tina decided to “spare us” the lecture on color theory since we’d had it the previous two days, but still taught us a lot about color and mood. In that class we did 4 skeins of superwash merino sock yarn, 1 skein of merino/tencel, a handful of silk hankies, and some polwarth/silk roving.
All of the meals were tasty, and there were plenty of vegetarian choices (I understand that Tina and Stephanie are vegetarians, so this doesn’t surprise me too much). I learned a mind-boggling amount (including cables, as an aside), and no one seemed to care much that I was a newbie knitter compared to many of them. We were encouraged to yarn bomb the resort, and people took advantage of it.
I had gone in not expecting to buy much yarn, no matter how much the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth tempted me, but with my new-found love for spinning, I fell weak to fiber.
Very weak.
I’m not sure what next year’s theme is, but when they announce it, I’ll be signing up.
