The Craft Sessions 2016 - So much joy!

September 6, 2016 thecraftsessions

The weekend was the best yet! By far. Joy, beauty, so very many smiling faces, quite a few tears, and people doing what it is that they love to do. I am totally basking in the glow of the weekend that was.

It was also an absolute pleasure for us to run. And as crazy as it sounds - when bringing over 100 people together from all over Australia and NZ - there was not a single hitch.

Well... ok that wasn't entirely true. Four women, who will remain nameless (as you know who you are!), forgot their toothbrushes :). Luckily, the ever-lovely Claire did a shop run on Saturday morning to deal with "the issue" and after returning with a suite of replacement brushes, joy was reinstated in the bush.

I wanted to have all the photos edited and up on the blog this morning, but that is what is called an "unrealistic expectation". And we aren't fond of those around these parts. I also wanted to have some winners chosen for the prizes by today but there were 203 beautiful comments that I really want to take my time perusing. Again with the unrealistic, thinking I'd get it done today..... so I'll be back Friday with both those things.

Can I just tell you though, I started downloading the photos tonight, as you will see from the random couple I have added here, and jeepers they are pretty. The few hours it takes to edit those puppies is going to be a total joy. I get to relive the whole retreat over again.

So big thanks for following along. And big thanks for coming. You lot - obviously excepting the toothbrush forgetters - are totally ace.

Felicia x

Pojagi samples from a class with Anna Farago.

Outfit ala The Craft Sessions 2016 retreat. The Virginia Leggings by Megan Nielsen - and the Tote Bag - which is the Genoa Tote by Blogless Anna - were both made by Amy in a class taught by Anna Ng.

Elizabeth holding her yarn haul from Circus Tonic Handmade at our mini-market.

Kirsten and the lovely Jo sharing a moment of joy over lunch.

The Craft Sessions At Home - A Giveaway!

September 2, 2016 thecraftsessions

Well today is the day. Kickoff of The Craft Session's 2016 retreat. Another year and we can't wait.

It's hard to explain what this weekend means to us. It is the culmination of a year of work, and thought, and intention, but it is also the result of the community we have around us, and the connections we have made. If it's possible, it actually becomes more meaningful as the years tick by.

And in big part that is because of you. It is because of how you follow along with the retreat, even if you live on the other side of the word, sending us well wishes and love. It is because of those of you who have been in the past, or plan to come in the future. It is because of the connections we have made around our joint passion; the practice of making as part of our daily life, and the beauty we share because of it.

And so in celebration of all that connection, we have a few things to offer you who are following along at home.

A Giveaway!
We have a couple of this year's retreat gift bags ready to send out to you, as well as five skeins of gorgeous Shibui Pebble generously donated by Sunspun. We are also lucky enough to have two of my favourite patterns to giveaway from Tessuti. So five prize packs in total with a variety of absolutely beautiful goodies from our sponsors. I have been posting about some of the beautiful things they have sent us on instagram if you fancy having a look.

To enter - all you need to do is leave a comment on this blog telling us about how "making encourages your connection with your community". We will close off comments on Sunday at 9pm Melbourne time and this offer is open internationally.

Another Giveaway!
In addition to that I want to point you over to another sensational giveaway one of our teachers, and sponsors, and all round good women, Kirsten Johnstone of Assemblage has on offer The Craft Sessions at Home Giveaway on her blog. There is a sweater's worth of over $300 of Shibui goodness, and one of her spectacular patterns on offer. Head over to her blog to enter.

Thanks again for the love you are sending our way this weekend and for the community we are lucky enough to be part of. Craft, connection and community is where it's at.

I thought I would leave you with a few photos of last year just to get you in the right mood.

Fel x

PS. I also wanted to add a big thank you for the wonderful response to the Anna Maltz Top-Down Colourwork workshop and her Marlisle workshop. In particular our Country Victoria workshop only has a couple of places left.

I've had quite a few emails asking how good of a knitter you need to be to take one of these workshops .....and the answer is you can be either a rather confident beginner, an intermediate OR an advanced knitter. As long as you can knit in the round and have some experience of colourwork then these classes are for you. You will come away a more confident knitter, about colourwork techniques, top-down knitting and about colour in general. We rarely have access to someone with Anna's unique skills in knitting, teaching and art so take advantage of her while you can. In a good way, obviously!

Me looking blurry but feeling the joy - I can't wait to meet you all.

Tackling The Fringe KAL - Part 1

August 30, 2016 thecraftsessions

Karen is running the Fringe and Friends KAL again this year and for the first time it is something I can jump in on. I love her Knit Alongs - we as a community of knitters all learn so much from watching one another's process, don't we. And who doesn't love learning new things?!?

For me, I'm using a bit of a different process for this one, as it is all about experimentation. I'm trying not to plan too much and really just trust that the sweater will reveal itself to me as we go.

This could be a to-tal-ly nuts idea. We will see, however as we know from my past posts about Ripping with Joy then part of the reason we knit is that we love knitting. So if it doesn't work I'm just going to rip that sucker. And then I will knit some more.

What I'm loving is that Karen's KAL has created a space that encourages me to experiment. And sometimes in this busy busy world full of chores, we need spaces that encourage us to play. So fun.

I've made many a top-down improvised yoke using raglan shaping in my time, so I wanted to up the ante a little.

Inspired by patterns like Cline and this little beauty here on Pinterest I thought I would try something that had a more pointed sleeve, that was maybe drop shouldered and also included maybe a bit more of a boat neck or a funnel neck AND had visible lines along the shoulder shaping.

Or there was this and this and this and this.

I also have this idea - based on a sweater I improvised for my middle kid years ago - that used this funny shoulder shaping that meant there wasn't enough sweater fabric at the shoulder point. This happened because I only increased on the body and not on the shoulder. I like the effect it creates as it slightly stretches the fabric at the shoulder point. I'm gunna try to do that again. I want to distort the fabric.

You can vaguely see the slight distortion as it heads towards the shoulder. As she got older and the sweater got smaller this effect increased.

I started by knitting this swatch in some yarn I had purchased originally to knit Cline. I thought I would try a bit of the rib and then also try different types of increases to see which one was cleanest in this particular yarn.

I tried
1. a m1 ala Elizabeth Zimmerman
2. a kfb
3. a m1L and m1R
4. a invisible increase that involves knitting into the stitch on the row below from a Jared Flood pattern.

....and really I wasn't that fond of any of them.

As I was knitting my yarn at a different gauge than it was intended for - it's recommended gauge was 22/4" on a 4mm and I was knitting it at 19s/4" on a 4.5mm - then nearly every increase distorted the line of the rib shoulder I was planning by pulling a stitch tight on every increase row. This makes sense as methods 2-4 above all involve taking a stitch that already exists, and using the yarn in that stitch to make the new stitch. Therefore you are making two stitches from one which pulls the yarn tight and distorts the nice neat line of stitches I had in my rib shoulder.

The only option for something clean that worked was the first one - the M1. The way I was doing Jared's increase didn't distort the actual line of stitching but did distort the stitch next to it....which still mucked up my nice clean line.

Why did I care so much? What's a little distortion here and there. Well I wanted the lines to be super clean. And as I didn't plan on increasing on every single RS row then the irregular nature of the increases would make it look wacky. So M1 it is.

To avoid the small holes I was getting from my M1 I might try to twist them even further by knitting through the back of the stitch. Time will tell.

OK. So the swatch is done, increases picked, gauge measured.

And I've cast on.

Next up.... some more about my pattern shape and my measurements.

Yay Karen!

Are you joining in? There is still time!!

Felicia x

My Latest Freestyle Sweater - Riddari!

August 16, 2016 thecraftsessions

Freestyle knitting is my favourite kind. The kind where you have an idea, you work out some numbers and get knitting.....not even sure about the end, just sure you want to start it.

My favourite sequence of doing this means that there is time to make the decisions. It gives you space to begin the knitting without fear or worrying. You go in with an "it'll all work out in the end" sense of freedom.

The process.

Let me tell you a little about the process. It's very simple but the order is key.
Step 1: First I always start at the bottom and knit up, knitting the body first.
Step 2: Then I provisionally cast on for the sleeves so that I can knit the yoke next.
Step 3: Finally I knit the sleeves.

Nice a-line belly slouch part which doesn't stick to the middle.

The reason for this plan is that

Even if I haven't finalised the design of the sweater when I start I know how I like my sweaters to fit around my belly. I like them loose and I like them aline. I have sweaters I've made and sweaters I've purchased that I can get measurements from. So that's a great place to start.
It gives me time to think about how I want the yoke to look and also to get an idea of how the yarn looks knit up over a bigger piece of fabric than my swatch.
Knitting freestyle means that you are often unsure of how deep the yoke will end up being. This can massively affect the sleeve length - the longer the yoke the longer the sleeve - and this can be annoying as there really is a perfect sweater sleeve length for each individual sweater. They can only tell you this when you try them on with the yoke knitted up.

As an aside, I normally knit the sleeves flat. For me this is always faster. Knitting tiny tubes is an acquired taste and one I don't have. As Ms. Templer said to me on instagram the other day after seeing my half-done flat-sleeved photo #flatsleevesforever. Word.

In the case of my Riddari, my plan was not to make Riddari at all. I had some new yarn burning a hole in my cupboard and I really wanted to make a colourwork sweater. I wasn't sure what exactly but I knew that I wanted my favourite a-line sweater shape with a split hem.

So late one night, at about 11pm, I accidentally cast on. I knew my gauge as I'd already swatched, and so away I went.

But then after I did the bands - it might have been about 1am by this stage (on a school night but I was in the flow) - I decided that my bands weren't actually wide enough to make the sweater a-line enough. Nae bother. I just added a little panel of 8 stitches in either side - the kind of decision that you don't actually make. You are in the flow of the project and things just happen. Little panel it was.

I went to bed. Eventually.

I knitted the body over the next few days, getting up to the underarms and had big plans to knit a yoke I'd sketched out while I was knitting. It did not work which I talked about in the post the other day. So I ripped it without pain or remorse and looked to Riddari. I had already purchased the Riddari as I was thinking about making it (because it is an almost perfect yoke) so I just subbed in the pattern.

The added advantage of getting the first yoke so wrong, was that I got to try the sweater on as I had the whole thing off the needles just before I ripped out the yoke. This lead me to realise that I needed some short rows to raise the back of the neck up. This was a simple process - I think I did 6 short rows in total, and the whole thing sat much better.

After the short rows I knitted a single round to alter my stitch count by about 4, so that the total number of stitches I had, was a multiple of 8 stitches (what the Riddari chart is). And then play on.

The beautiful Riddari yoke, breaks a couple of Elizabeth Zimmerman's rules about colourwork. In the one instance you were using three yarn colours in a single row AND there is a also a row where you have floats longer than 5 stitches. Another no no according to the lovely Elizabeth but for a yoke this pretty who cares. A bit of awkwardness (for the three yarns) is a small price to pay.

I knitted the sleeves top down and played yarn chicken with the caramel. The pattern on the arms were added as I ran out. A happy accident that for me made the sweater that bit prettier.

Now there are some issues with the whole freestyle thing in this case. I made a bit of mistake. I didn't make it wide enough under the arms and therefore it has a bit of side-boob-pull. I'm probably the only person who will notice - other than you lot as I've pointed it out. Also the fact that the main yarn is caramel and I did all of the decreases in one round and for some reason decided to do one in the front middle of the arm. Nice work Felicia? And then there is the weird little panel on the sides. A decision made in the middle of the night that maybe wasn't my best. I'm not sure I'm a big fan of what is known as the "weird little panel". It's too little to look right. But it's there and the sweater is done so hey.

How I do headless? A palette cleanser shot to make you remember how pretty the sweater is - sideboobissues aside.

Overall though the freestyle is what made this sweater. I couldn't have dreamed it up as it was the knitting itself that told me what the sweater should look like. A classic case of freestyle knitting luck.

A beautiful pattern and a super fun knit.

Felicia x

PS. I heard from a woman on instagram that she had just begun freestyling after seeing my last freestyle post. If you felt like trying a freestyle top-down sweater then the Fringe and Friends KAL this year is the perfect place to start. The KAL starts today. I'm hoping to join in.

PPS. And we have some top down freestyle classes in Country Vic and in the Southern Highlands if you fancy learning some skills with the very talented Anna Maltz (and me) next month. :)

One Day Workshops with Anna Maltz

August 13, 2016 thecraftsessions

Hosted by Felicia Semple of The Craft Sessions

Spend the day with Anna learning new skills and improving your knitting - but in the true spirit of The Craft Sessions, this will be a day of great food, great community and inspirational craft.

Anna is joining us from the UK for this year's retreat as one of our amazing knitting teachers, and so we thought it would be a total waste if we didn't offer her skills up to a wider audience while we have her here. So Anna and I have planned a little roadtrip together....

I know you will love spending time with her, as I do, and reveling in her unique take on knitting!

We have four workshop dates finalised.
- Lauriston (Near Kyneton) on Saturday September 10th
- Melbourne (East Brunswick) on Sunday September 11th
- Southern Highlands (Near Moss Vale) on Saturday September 24th
- Sydney (Near Frenchs Forest) on Sunday September 25th.

Time: 9.30am - 4.30pm
These workshops run a little longer than a normal one day workshop to give you the time to really sink in to the joy and conversation of the day.

How the day will be structured.
Arriving at 9.30 am we will get stuck into our workshop for the day with Anna taking you to previously unknown places of knitting joy with her unique ideas and sunny personality.

Around 12.00pm we will stop for lunch, with Felicia being available for an impromptu "Knit Clinic". Bring any pesky knitting problems you have along and we will do our best to solve them.

We will get started at 1.30pm for a full afternoon with Anna punctuated by a delicious afternoon tea and finish up the day at 4.30pm, before heading home feeling the joy.