Knitting In Mind

Madrona 2009: Sally Melville, Catherine Lowe, Sally Melville

February 16, 2009 at 10:53 pm 4 comments

My classes at Madrona 2009:
Sally Melville‘s Making the Most of Your Yarn Collection
Catherine Lowe‘s Foundations of Couture Knitting
Sally Melville‘s Knit to Flatter and Fit

I looove Sally Melville.  She is The Best Knitting Teacher I’ve ever had.
I have taken other stash busting classes that didn’t inspire me, lots of ideas for things I would never knit or be caught dead in. Five minutes into Sally’s class I knew it was going to be different.

She taught us how to look at our stash, how to organize our stash, how to arrange the yarn so we can look for the potential projects, how to find inspiration in things we see to create garments that DON’T look like “I made this out of leftover yarn while I was on meds recovering from surgery”.
I left class excited with ideas and things to do.

Later I met people from adjacent classrooms on both sides of us who said they could hear us laughing and knew we were having a good time. Sally is a great teacher, charming, and makes us laugh.

Catherine Lowe. I didn’t know quite what I was getting into.
Wow.
Catherine’s class was GREAT. She is very generous with her knowledge. I took the class out of curiousity about the ‘Couture’ and to maybe pick up some useful tips.

There were several times during class when I thought she must not sleep, or she must be an alien, or she is actually 150 years old, she operates on a different level.
She teaches techniques and shares information, then leaves it up to us to choose how far to go with it.
I definitely got some ideas that I will use and information about yarn that will inform my choices. I believe I will produce better knitting with what I learned.

Catherine is also super nice and encouraged everyone to come to her booth in the Market with any questions. I went the next day and she spent quite a bit of time analyzing my knitting technique and we figured out why I twist the yarn as I knit and how to stop it without sacrificing speed. I have been trying to figure this out for years!

Catherine Lowe designs are not like anything I have ever seen before. I guess that must be the ‘Couture’ thing. Her patterns are designed to the finest detail, the finishing is extraordinary. I am going to start saving my nickels and dimes…and fives and tens so I can treat myself to one of her sweater kits. For now, I bought a hat kit and I am super excited about it!

Back to Sally Melville for Knit to Flatter and Fit. Fantastic class. I kept thinking, “OOOh, I get it!”.

The Market.
A dangerous place for a body on a budget.
I have gotten better at ‘using my self-control’.
A couple of hanks of Blue Moon STR Mill Ends (di$counted) in colorway 
Space Dust.
Sally Melville’s Style, so I don’t have to rely entirely on my notes. And yeah, I will be buying her new book as soon as it comes out in March.
Catherine Lowe’s The Ravell’d Sleeve  journal and Headgear IV hat kit.

Every time I looked in the Blue Moon booth my eyes would zoom in on the STR in Bella Coola and my pal knit1frog2 would say, “yeah, those are your colors” or “you have to get that”, but I held off, I’m on a budget.
When I wasn’t looking, knit1frog2 went back to the Market and dug through the entire booth to find The Last Hank of lightweight STR in Bella Coola and she gave it to me.  Happy!

Entry filed under: Madrona. Tags: Madrona.