Stitches Midwest 2014 Saturday and Sunday

We got up for our next class Slip Sliding Away with Barry Klein. This was essentially a course on slip stitch knitting. It was fun! Barry has lost a lot of weight since we first had him for a  finishing class. I overheard him tell someone that he used a stomach sleeve. He looks really good.

 

Barry's classes are fun because you get to use really cool and interesting yarns from his business Trendsetters Yarn.

Barry had us work on a variety of stitch patterns so we could learn the qualities of the fabric and what would be useful for particular kinds of situations. This is supposed to be rows of color, but I don't think I succeeded too well.

 

This is hte reverse of the same swatch.

 

This one turned out better.

 

This one is supposed to look like butterflies.  As you can see, I used primarily pink and gray yarns for my swatches

 

After class we went to (where else?) the market. Here's Lesley Solomon in one of the booths. We had a class with her a few years back.

 

This top seemed to have been knit out of some kind of plastic material.

Anna Zilboorg was at the signing table for a while.

 

 

OUr afternoon class was on how to cast on for various needs wit Gwen Bortner. My sister and I have taken many classes with Gwen. She is a good solid teacher, very sensible and organized. I was surprised, but even though I have taken cast on courses before. I learned a thing or two!

 

In the evening once again we went to the market.  There are always fun things to see and buy. Here is the owner of The Verdant Gryphon. Every day of the market she wears a different and fantastic costume.

After the market we went to visit our new friend's house for Indian food. On the way to our room to change and get ready we passed the queue for the Student banquet and fashion show. Every year our friend Roberta makes something amazing and this year she did not disappoint. She crocheted a gorgeous medallion dress and a beige sheath for underneath (but she decided not to wear the sheath.)

 

This shot is a bit out of focus, but Roberta has such a wonderful smile in the shot and you can see the dress nicely!

 

Here is the line - somewhere in there I'm sure you can see the prize winners, I don't know if Roberta scored this year, but she almost always does.

Meanwhile we got to have the most delicious meal at our new friends' house. We got to sit out in the back yard and enjoy the nice weather ...

and then dive into a scrumptious meal with hand made Gujarati rotlis and a variety of Gujarati delicacies. 

 

We also got to say Hi to our concierge friend Paula when we got back, before heading up to the room to do some work. Both my sister and I were behind on some things and a little stressed about all the things that needed to be accomplished. We didn't make it to the pajama party this year, but stayed in our room and got things accomplished.

The next morning I took a swim and my sister took a finishing class. In the afternoon we had a course with Lily Chin on alternative closures, and then my sister rushed off to the airport before class ended, because the airline had changed the time of her flight. I didn't take terribly many pictures and when the photographer is tired they don't turn out as well as they should.

This is a picture of the foyer with its beautiful orchids. It was the last picture I took, before I got into my car and headed for home. It had been a lovely trip.

Thursday Evening Stitches Midwest 2012

After class we had the opportunity to have hors d'oeuvres in the Club Room on the 15th floor. There is nice ambience there and we had some tasty wine and lovely little appetizers.

  

This is the buffet table complete with among other things, humus, cream cheese and ham wraps and little cups of cheese morsels. I only wanted a few pieces of cheese but you had to take the whole cup, so not wanting to waste food I wrapped the left-overs in a napkin and put them in my back-pack (and of course I forgot about them, so was pulling little dusty cheese cubes out of my sack all the rest of the weekend!)

As with the rest of the hotel, the decor is carefully planned and pleasing.

Because Stitches houses most of the teachers on the 15th and 16th floor of the hotel, we also got a chance to peek at them in their off time. That is Anna Zilboorg and Nicky Epstein at the middle table for example.

Nicky was the guest speaker of the evening and I was particularly thrilled to get to listen to her as I have tons of her books and especially love the ones on edgings. She showed us many of her designs and I had no idea she had such a long and illustrious career as a knitwear designer.

She was a surprisingly down-to-earth Southern girl who has pretty much done it all in terms of knit designs. She started off doing complicated color work. Like the following two pieces.

 

This one is a hopelessly intricate wedding sampler:



She then moved on to other types of designs from her textured tree of life...



..... to detailed clothing pieces.

 

She also told humorous stories about her career, like how she won first prize in her first design contest for McCalls (I think she said) and tried to convince them to give her third place instead because she wanted the set of knitting needles and not the huge (for those days) sum of money that came with the first place win.

These patterns are more like what I was familiar with

and I was happy to hear her detail the elements of design for us, so we could think about ways to follow in her footsteps.

After the presentation I asked her to sign one of my books and then it was past time for bed.  My sister and I were both exhausted, so we stumbled up to bed