House of the Purple Worms: Thursday at Stitches Midwest 2010

At 10:00 AM we started off with a bang with a "Spotlight" panel that was addressing the design challenges of entrelac. Before we met the designers,we got our chance to compete for door prizes and guess who got the very first copy of Gwen Bortner's book (and first prize for showing the most (i.e. loudest) enthusiasm! You can take the girl out of Texas but... Then the good stuff got started!

Designers Gwen Bortner, Laura Bryant and Anna Walden each presented a design they had done for the challenge and explained the intricacies and details of their decisions.

Laura, Gwen and Anna with their designs

Personally I've always done more mosaic knitting than entrelac, so I stood to learn quite a bit from the panel. Each designer had interesting ideas about ways to use entrelac in a more interesting way. Laura Bryant (who is famous for Prism's beautifully colored yarns) started us off with some ways to think more daringly about entrelac and color.

Laura Bryant uses wild stuff to add color to entrelac

I want to give readers a chance to see the kinds of things that were talked about without revealing too much of the designers' intellectual property, although the above photo should make everybody eager to go out and buy some of that gorgeous Prism yarn!

Laura based her design for the Spotlight on an idea of outlining some of the entrelac squares with a zigzag border (as seen above.)

Anna Walden also used a daring and dramatic color palette for her Spotlight entry. Here you can see how she combined entrelac in different directions with stripes and brashly pigmented yarns.

A close up slide shows her asymmetrical sweater front and varied choices in yarn.

Next Gwen Bortner (who wrote the featured book of the Conference) showed us some of her wonderful designs from Entree to Entrelac.

Gwen also used bias in a variety of ways (sub-titling her work a "guide from a biased knitter".

By carrying two yarns together and switching gradually, she was able to produce a very nuanced look. This is her submission for the Entrelac Spotlight panel.

After the presentation and question session finished...,

...we were able to go up and look more closely at each of the three designs. Below you can see how Anna Walden combined mired squares with entrelac.

Here are Gwen's and Laura's final designs.

Next we had a luncheon and got to "speed date" some of the teachers who are featured at the conference. Every few minutes the teachers would rotate to a new table (and while I liked the chance to meet some of the teachers, it was a tiny bit rushed.) I think it would have been nicer to have 20 minutes to just get to know a few of them instead of seeing them rush around madly. I think we got to meet about 6 different teachers.

I believe this might be Candace Eisner-Strick. She is showing us socks and planning a book called Strickly Socks.

Maureen Mason-Jamieson showed us some Dorset buttons she had made. She looks like a really fun teacher!

And Myra Wood popped by to show us some of her new stuff.

I already took this class on lace knitting, but the shawl is just so beautiful that I have to show it!

Nearby I caught a glimpse of Lily Chin too in her signature chartreuse!

Look at that beautiful serpentine image. The woman has style from every angle!

Below is a shot of the room and you can see the various tables with their teachers.

Laura Farson popped by to show us twined knitting, as did Christine Bylsma and oour last visitor was Leslye Solomon the owner of Woolstock Yarn Shop. She is very stylish and I always enjoy looking at what she is wearing. She had a gorgeous lined jacket that was to die for.

Lily came by and visited too after the session. It was great to see her again. What a powerhouse!

Of course one fun thing about Stitches is getting to mingle with the Knitterati and pass the famous in the halls. Here are Rick Mondragon, Candace Eisner-Strick and Judy Pascale having a chat in the foyer.

Then it was time for my first class. I was doing Columns of Colors with Elise Duvekot. She had been featured in an earlier Stitches conference and I decided to see what I could learn about Knit One Below and cables.

She turned out to be a warm and enthusiastic Dutch woman with some great advice on ways to use multiple colors without having to carry yarns on the backside.

Here is what we were supposed to do in class and

here is what I ended up with (not exactly identical unfortunately!)

Here is a nice shot of Elise Duvekot as she shows us how to fix our mistakes. Somehow it conveys some of her warm and friendly character.

Here is another example of using Knit one Below for nice color effects.

Before I knew it class was over and it was time to go get my sister at the airport. Th night before I had gotten in and after a meal at the Greek Tavern near my hotel, I went swimming and relaxed for a while in the hot tub. What a wonderful life!

Thursday evening was a little more stressful. I had to pick up my sister at the airport (and not the close airport but Midway (bom, bom, bom, bom, bom , bom!! (2001 a Space Odyssey noises!) It didn't help that there were two accidents on the highway within the first two miles, so after sitting a while I had to get off the highway and just take city streets.It was actually a nice (but very long timewise) drive on Cermak road over to Cicero. I got to see the old neighborhoods and got just to the edge of Berwin where my father grew up. I didn't have time to stop and take pictures, but it felt like home.

Check out A Chicago Soujourn's Blog for more pictures like the one above of the kinds of things I got to see.

It took two hours and several phone calls to get to the airport, but eventually I did and then the way back was much quicker and easier. After that it was off for Indian food at a great Indian restaurant that we eventually found after driving around most of southern Schaumburg. This place had great atmosphere!