THIRD COAST FESTIVAL -- AMENDMENT!

We've added a Sally Melville class, so you might want to revisit the festival page -- on Friday morning.  It's "Learn to Love Intarsia," which is probably my all-time favorite Melville colorwork class.  And just in time.  Intarsia and Fair-Isle knitting have made a big comback.  Sally works from published images -- you'll be asked to bring a magazine with cool stuff in it.  Anyway -- have another look.  She's really good at it.  In fact, I'm inspired to go back and finish a purple and gold intarsia piece that I started maybe ten years ago -- Wish I had enough stick-to-it-iveness to actually finish projects.  Sigh.  I will never reveal how many projects lurk around the house in knitting bags.  I send hugs to everyone.

I also send THANKS for your apparent eagerness in relation to Third Coast.  It's always hard to know how big events like this one will be received -- I am far less worried now than I was when we put it together.  It got even bigger than I had originally imagined, and while that was wonderful to behold, it was also kinda scary.  The idea was to bring something fabulous to midtown Detroit -- well, we surely did.  And I'm thrilled half to death that so many of you seem to like what you see.  It's always been about the city, the university , the hidden treasure of McGregor Memorial Conference Center -- blessings be upon all of your heads.    svb

THIRD COAST EVENTS -- Not just classes!

Everyone, as you consider which of the fabulous Third Coast workshops to enroll in, don't neglect the other features of  the festival.  For instance:  Notice the FREE noon-time presentation on Saturday by Candace Eisner-Strick -- we need you to sign up so we have a head count.  Box lunches too -- though they're not free -- nice choice of sandwich, though.  And you MUST consider the Melville dinner event on Friday.  Remember that we need a fairly accurate count on these things so that we can tell the caterers what to do.   Hugs to everyone!!!    svb

It's All In the Mind's Eye...!

So now I'm in the middle of a horrendous house move -- thank heaven the Third Coast registration is up and running, and I do mean RUNNING -- people seem to be signing up fairly aggressively!!!!  The movers came today and took half the house away -- the rest goes in another two weeks, and then there will be a modest moving sale (not conducted by me).  In the meantime I still have a book to finish, don't I?  So I will put it all on a flash drive, transfer it (and the materials accompanying it) to my office at university, and spend blissful days there, away from complete chaos.  Even the cats are disoriented:  Last night, Sheba the Cat spent the night curled up inside a small marble vanity sink in the guest room!

But I'm thinking again about knitting -- how to SEE what's in our world, how to knit what we see.  I'm always drawn to amazing textures and colors when I'm travelling.  So take some pictures!  When you look at them later, you can almost always find something that's knittable.  For example:

  
Look at the amazing colors and shapes in this cornice over a door in Stillwater, Minnesota.  Double it in your mind's eye so that it's a complete circle with a square around it.  You can knit this.  There are checkerboard corners in the square, a blue stripe running through the center, gorgeous terra cotta (some kind of raised stitch), and a design to undertake in knits, purls, and elongated stitches -- or maybe embroidery when done.  It could be the front and back of a tee!!! 

Or how about this?

This, too, can be knitted -- what a wonderful exercise in blocking -- charcoal to black, taupe-y gray, some kind of broken copper line running across the piece connecting the blocks, a seed stitch divider where you see post tops.  TEXTURE!!!! 

or this:

Jane Thornley has a little book called "Knit a Beach," which forms the basis for a workshop that she teaches around the world.  When I saw this amazing family of ducks in a Minnesota pond right next to the motel, I saw Thornley's techniques -- you do too, I'll bet.  You start at the bottom, or wherever you want, and just knit -- olivey tones, some astrakhan stitch, some half-linen, on and on -- just lay in the rows and don't worry about whether it's properly square.  Make something beautiful with stitches that approximate the textures you see, again in the mind's eye.  Don't be literal.  This is about responding to something you see and making what you feel about it.

Do this kind of thing sometime.  You will feel MUCH less like jumping off a cliff when it's unbearably hot, or when you're too tired for words, or when you can't find anything at all to knit.  You can always find something to knit -- or crochet.  It's in the mind's eye.

svb

THIRD COAST REGISTRATION IS OPEN!!!

Ta DA!  What an ordeal poor Larry has been through.  But now he could hire out as a computer tech, couldn't he?   Registration for classes is open.   Go to our website (http://www.artisanknitworks.com/) and click on the Third Coast Fiber Arts Festival image.   If you have any trouble, call Larry Hart at  586-871-2884.  Blare of trumpets!  Roll of drums!   We have not yet added the fact that there will be charity tables so that people can learn the knit stitch and the single crochet.  But first things first.     svb 

THIRD COAST WORKSHOP REGISTRATION

Some of you have wondered (on Ravelry) when the workshop registration will be available on-line.  Poor Larry is laboring away -- he's never done this before.  But it SHOULD be up and running at some point this week, perhaps right after the 4th.  Thanks for patience -- it will be worth it.

svb

THIRD COAST FIBER ARTS FESTIVAL, ADDENDUM

........We are about to add one more workshop to the Friday afternoon listings -- a class having to do with Siamese Socks (as I think of them) -- You can learn how to make toe-up socks two at a time on circular needles!  It will be taught by Lynne Wardrop, whose sock patterns (under the label Avalon) use and are sold by Lorna's Laces Yarns (Chicago).  Lynne is a Michigander with lots of workshop experience.  She has worked for both City Knits Detroit and Artisan Knitworks.  I do hope that on-line registration for all of these wonderful events will be up and running before end of the week.  Stay tuned, and more later.   svb

Third Coast Fiber Arts Festival -- Yarn Bombing!

As mentioned in an earlier entry, we're going to be staging a yarn bombing about two weeks before the actual event, coinciding roughly with the start of the semester at the university.  At Artisan Knitworks, we plan on holding maybe three long evenings in which people can bring in their leftover yarns, big needles and hooks, and have pizza or some such thing (we'll buy) while cooking up LOOOOONG, nutsy strips of wooliness.  They can change width, have big holes or fringe, be wild.  You can do the same thing in your respective knitting or crochet groups, of course.  I ask only that (a) you tell me you are doing it so I have some idea of what's afoot -- drop a note at artisanknitworks@comcast.net, and (b) you make most of them more or less in shapes than can be used in winter for scarves.  I am going to invite people who don't have any money to take them down after the festival and use them to keep warm.   We'll attach a card to each one when we do the bombing.  Might decide to take 'em down myself, wash 'em, and give to a shelter.  I do think it's important to really cut loose -- make things that are completely nuts!  Thick.  Colorful.

So -- knit and crochet away.  We have lots of yarn in our so-called Stash that would be suitable.  If you are buying it for the boming, we will have a discount for the Stash yarns (maybe 2 for the price of 1)-- we will trust you on the whole point of what it's used for.   It might get rained on, so make sure it isn't really high-quality stuff.  All wool is washable, of course -- think about all of those sheep standing out there on bucolic Scottish hillsides.  It rains in Scotland.  But it doesn't make sense to subject the best-quality stuff to the elements.  I will say more when our studio sessions approach.   In the meantime:  Be sure to look at the website (http://www.artisanknitworks.com/) for the list of festival workshops.  The vendor applications are still coming in, but soon I'll have to cut them off -- we will be out of room.   Cheers!    I hope to be able to go to Grayslake, Illinois, this coming weekend for the Midwest Fiber and Folk Arts Festival.

svb