I'm Back

The TKGA conference went well. I got to Portland Thursday night and spent the night with my sister. Friday we went to the conference market at the Oregon Convention Center. She had never been to one of these before. I blew my budget 5 minutes after I walked in the door. I found Japanese Knitting Stitch dictionaries. I now own 2000 new stitch patterns. Well some of them aren't new but I don't know which ones.

I don't read Japanese, but everything is charted, and the chart symbols are explained with illustrations.

I taught 4 classes and the students seemed happy. Saturday I taught Working with Color and Knit to Fit. Sunday I taught Simple crochet for Knitters and Fair Isle. My Sister joined me for lunch on Sunday. She took a class in the morning and was going back to the market with a friend in the afternoon. We have a picture.

I had dinner with her before going to the airport for the ride home. I did finish a couple of socks on the trip. The purple Trellis socks are finished. I still need to wash them and gift them. The yarn is Wildefoot Purple Passion. I have the pattern in her size, but need to check numbers for a larger foot.

Did I buy yarn? I did buy a little and then when I got home yarn was waiting for me! The green yarn is Panda Wool, a prize from the Tour de Socks. The others are bought or found in the conference goody bag. The red is Fortissima Socka bought for a gift project. The orange is for me. I realized that I didn't have orange socks . The brown is Red Heart Heart and Sole and the green is Red Heart cotton.

Other than that it's back to work. We did go to see a play This last Saturday at the Cleveland Play House. I had gifted the tickets to DH for his birthday. We saw The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

Grunt work time

News about the wedding in last post. All dresses were delivered on time. The three missing bridesmaids came in Tuesday for final fittings and hem pinnings. The necessary bust adjustments were done and hems sewn. All were picked up today. The wedding is tomorrow.

I finally have patterns for sale on Ravelry. I sold one pattern, but we seem to have a delivery problem. I have written to Casey, the head code geek for help. I offer a free sock pattern which has been downloaded about 30 times in the last week. I have a few more patterns to put up. For some of my patterns, I sold the rights with the pattern.

Scarf finished! I used an old Tried and True pattern for the last of the yarn from the brown sweater, Sally Melville's Shape It! scarf from her Knit Book. Easy knitting until I ran out of yarn. That was the plan, no left overs. The yarn is Lion Brand Incredible in two colors with 2 dye lots of one color. It worked better on the sweater!

Teacher grunt work.
I'm teaching 4 classes next week. I still have a lot of review work to do. The first class is Monday night at guild meeting. The subject is chart reading. Usually, I have the students knit swatches by following the chart, but we don't have time for that, so I knit up large versions of each chart. The second part of the class has students make their own charts from written instructions. I now have swatches for all charts and have charted the written parts. This way I'll be less likely to make mistakes while talking and writing on the chart paper on the easel. One chart was drawn twice in my notes and there still are mistakes. I wasn't talking, but sometimes I can't read or count. What's in my class notebook is good enough to work from. Btw, I have a notebook for each class I teach, where I keep the handout, swatches, and anything else I may need. Notes and other things may appear there for next teaching session.

The real grunt work, printing out 50 handouts for guild. I have to make sure we had enough paper. I went to Office Max and bought a box of paper. Due to an error, the bar code for the box was not in the register. When the cashier typed in the numbers, I got the whole box for the price of a ream of paper. No, I'm not going back to try to pay the difference! I didn't discover it until I got home. We have extra toner for the laser printer, but didn't run out yet. All 50 copies have been stapled. We still have lots of staples. Life is good! Tomorrow I'll look at another class. I still have to work most of the day, but tonight I get to knit for fun.

Other knitting
The trellis socks are progressing. I did a lot at the yarn store knit-in last night.
I'm working on redesigning a jacket for a yarn company. It was originally knit from a copyright pattern, and the yc owner wanted an original pattern. I have reverse engineered the body of the jacket and am changing the edges. Yarn and gauge are different. It's a mum project until I deliver the pattern and jacket to the yarn company. That's mum as in "Mum's the word".
I'm also knitting a camisole from bulky cotton tape, a design in a kit acquired last month at the guild yarn swap. It will also make a decent vest for colder weather.