This past weekend I was at a knitting retreat in Medford, Oregon. More details about the trip are here. It was a lot of fun – and not just because my knitting mom and I got to spend an entire weekend together, chatting and knitting and learning new things and hanging out with new friends.
We went to Websters in Ashland,and to Middleford Alley Yarn Shoppe (no web page, unfortunately) in Medford. Middleford was a lovely store divided into rooms, and everywhere you looked there was more yarn to ooh and aah over. They had an entire wall of Encore, and it took me quite a while to pick out the two colors I needed for my next big project. Websters is one huge space, with finished sweaters and scarves and shawls in the front and a huge selection of yarn in the back. I got a little transfixed by their selection of sock yarn because it was the largest I’ve ever seen! I’d already decided that aside from the yarn I needed for this particular project, I was going to be good and not buy anything just because it was pretty, but the caveat was that sock yarn was an exception. Besides, how can one pass up on deep jewel red Wildefoot (found at Middleford) or patterns of self-striping yarn that one never even knew existed (at Websters).
One of the things we learned how to do was shadow/illusion knitting. The woman who taught it walked us through how the charts tend to be laid out, and I’ll admit that the charting part threw me (because I have difficulties with charts as it is – I’m all about the numbers and not the images), but once I figured that out, it was amazingly simple to do. I sat in class quietly while everyone else chattered and tried to figure it out around me, and whipped up my very first dishcloth (and my very first shadow/illusion knitting piece), and was the first to finish.
Here’s when you look at it straight on.
And here is when you look at it from the side (it’s supposed to be a star. I probably needed to use one size smaller needles but I wasn’t too worried about that because this was just for practice).
I have been wanting to attend a knitting retreat. Who hosted the one in Medford last November 2005?
It sounded like a great time. Have you heard if there will be any retreats in the Eugene, Oregon area?
This particular retreat was put together by someone on the Ample Knitters list. I imagine there are other small retreats like this – maybe ask around at your local yarn stores to see if anyone has heard of anything.