KDO wrap-up

Well, my friend and I attended Knitters' Day Out yesterday and it was great! First off, I went to pick up my door prize and I won a $50 gift card to one of the vendors at the Knitters' Market! I walked into the Market area and it was the first vendor there and they carried Crystal Palace Yarns! Hooray! So, I immediately spent the gift card and then some at The Colonial Yarn Shop booth and stocked up on more Panda Soy yarn and also picked up some beautiful Merino 5:

So, I was very happy to start the day. Many thanks to The Colonial Yarn shop for their generous door prize! We grabbed a quick breakfast and then my friend headed off to her Beginner's Knitting class and I headed over to my Fair Isle hat class.

The Fair Isle class was great and the instructor was super nice and helpful. She made everything seem so easy and her instructions were clear and before I knew it, I was knitting Continental style and working across my two-colored fair isle rows with both hands! It was great! We had a nice group of people in the class and everyone's hats were turning out really nice. It was interesting to see all the different yarn and color combinations even though we were following the same basic pattern. I made a lot of progress during class and then finished the fair isle section of the hat last night because I was so excited to see how it was going to turn out:
I'm really happy with it! Now I just need to knit the decrease rounds to finish the top of the hat. I can't wait to start another fair isle project. This was so much fun! The yarn is Knit Picks Shine Worsted. It's very soft and nice to work with, although it was fuzzing a lot all over my hands and jeans during class. But, I think that just seems to be from working the yarn through my hands. The hat itself seems to be fine once knit. Here's a close-up of the fair isle:
Yay! First class was a great success. I walked back over to meet up with my friend for lunch and found that she had learned to cast on, knit and change colors! Woo-hoo! We were both making good progress. We went through the buffet line and the lunch was very good; it was a beautiful day so we ate outside. Unfortunately there weren't enough tables, so we sat on a bench but it was fine. Nice to be outside. Then we walked around the market some more, but I didn't end up buying anything else. I sure saw some beautiful yarns though. Some 100% silk that was expensive but amazing!

Soon, it was time for me to head to my afternoon class which was Knitting with Beads. My instructor for this class was great too and very friendly. Unfortunately the KDO class list that was provided to us left off some essential items, like knitting needles and the tiny crochet hooks to put the beads on the yarn! Luckily some of us had brought extras so we shared, but it made it a little tricky to make a lot of progress in this class. Although I learned a lot and got the hang of the two methods of introducing beads to my knitting, I was getting tired at this point because it had been a long day of concentrating on knitting! Once we had the technique down, one by one we started leaving the class early and the teacher was fine with that. I think she understood, because 6 hours is a lot of knitting for one day! (Each class session was 3 hours). So, I packed up and headed back to the main building after about 2 hours in the 2nd class. I was too tired to knit anymore! Here's what I accomplished in bead knitting:
And a close-up:
The beads sitting in the fabric vertically in the clusters of 4 (like a diamond shape) were strung on ahead of time and then slid down one by one and placed over a slipped stitch. The beads sitting in the fabric horizontally and stacked in vertical columns were placed onto a stitch prior to knitting that stitch with a tiny crochet hook. Obviously, it helped being in a class to have an instructor show you these techniques! I had printed out some beaded knitted patterns in the past but have never tried knitting with beads until now. It's a cool technique that I look forward to experimenting with. I'm thinking of beaded sock possibilities... :-)

My friend stuck it out for the full 3 hours of her afternoon class session of beginning knitting and learned how to purl, do some ribbing and cast off! I'm so proud!! I'm hoping that next year we can take a class at KDO together! All in all it was a fun, but tiring day. I definitely look forward to attending next year! It was a very well-organized event.

And to top of my day of knitting and winning prizes, I arrived home to find that my OlympicSox prize had arrived in the mail:
More Panda Soy! Hooray! I officially have quite the sock yarn stash now, but I look forward to knitting all of it. It's funny because this exact color of Panda Soy is the first color I picked up when browsing at the yarn shop booth but then I switched to the darker shade of red yarn. How funny that the first color I was drawn to ended up being my sock yarn prize!