Outside the Lines

The very charming and clever Mason-Dixon Knitting ladies, Ann and Kay, were in town yesterday. Charleen and I joined the many, many women and the few men to partake of some knitting and entertainment hosted by The Yarnery. The afternoon was opened up by the Yarnery Singers, who sang clever knitting related songs with great enthusiasm.

There were also a table of samples from the book for a little knitting show and feel.

I was at an exciting point in knitting Paul's sweater so I didn't do so well with the photo taking. What I should have taken a photo of was the Kiki Mariko rug that I LOVE. Luckily, Flickr can help me out. Here is someone else's photo of the rug, I am guessing this was the photo in the book, click here. Kay is working on one and has posted on their blog (Oct. 9th post) about hers. As I've mentioned before, I am itching to try a steek and I think felted colorwork would be a good intro to fair isle project. I just added this rug to my queue in hopes of knitting it sometime soon.

On the other end of spectrum from trying new techniques is a topic that Ann and Kay discussed during their talk. They spoke of "knitting below your skill level." As much as I am a fan of learning new things and trying challenging projects, I wholeheartedly agree with that concept. Sometimes the best kind of knitting is something you have already made a bunch of times and requires no more from you than the motions of knitting it. I do dig me some knitting below my skill level. For this same reason, I sometimes like miles and miles of stockinette or garter stitch too. It's all about the balance.

I had a great time and am glad that I moved from one knitting city to another. Yay, Minneapolis! One of the handouts I got at the event was advertising an upcoming knitting event called Button Up for Fall. It sounds interesting so I will likely be checking that out.