Amy Singer's Lace Workshop

Maybe you remember my recent blog about knitting guilds. Well I was able to benefit from a guild this weekend ...even though I have not yet become a member (something about the 90 minute drive.)

The K-W Knitter's Guild held a lace workshop in Kitchener this weekend with Amy Singer of Knitty as the star attraction. Her sense of humour and wit kept us smiling as we spent two days 'playing' with charts and inspiring stitch patterns.

The classes were called "Design a Lace Shawl, Plug-and-Play Style" and started off with some simple charts that we 'plugged' into our bottom-up triangular shape. Here's the start of mine from a simple chart called, "Bailey."

On day two, we had a slide show of lace designs and discussed ten shapes /directions for knitting a lace stole, scarf or shawl. We picked up several tips for stressfree knitting thanks to Amy's wise preference for relaxing knitting.

So the weekend is over, but not my lace knitting. I've been playing with stitch pattern books, graph paper, pencil, and eraser, scissors and tape and am rushing to the finish line on a shawl already in progress. My graphed out design is almost ready and I'll get to cast on another new project very soon. This is my idea of excitement! (Is that sad, or is that just my children's opinion? Oh well.)

Someday, we might figure out how to chart this on a PC?

Here is my '4-rows-to-go' Milkweed Shawl by Laura Chau , knitted in Koigu.

So which do you think is more fun: planning, casting on a new project, working through the middle of the project or finishing one up and maybe posting it on Ravelry? Looking forward to your comments.

Joan www.littleredmitten.ca