Joeli Creates a Retreat 2017: Portuguese Knitting with Julia Billings

In late February I went on my first ever yarn retreat (I am certain it won't be the last). I've already told you about the retreat in general and the first class I attended (Lace Knitting with Katie Westermann), and today I'm going to tell you about the second class I attended: Portuguese Knitting with Julia Billings.

Portuguese knitting was a mystery to me when I signed up for the class several months ago, and was still a mystery to me when I sat down in Julia's class. I was aware that knitting techniques varied around the world, having heard of English vs. Continental Knitting, but it wasn't something I'd put too much thought into. Julia's class stared with an introduction to the technique: Portuguese knitting is practiced in Portugal and South America, and the yarn is tensioned by one of two methods, either by allowing the yarn to flow round the back of the neck, or by running the yarn across a Portuguese knitting pin, which is a little hook that you pin on to your clothing. The knitting itself requires very little movement of the hands (stitches are worked with just a flick of the left thumb), and allows the purl stitch to be worked very efficiently, so people who knit using the Portuguese technique will often purl every row to work garter stitch or knit stocking stitch in the round by purling every round.

Julia showed us how to hold the yarn and how to work the stitches, and after a little confusion and a few dropped stitches everyone in the class was able to work knit stitches. Some people in the class went straight for knitting with the pin for tensioning, but I wasn't wearing clothes that would happily have had pins put through them and went for tensioning the yarn round the back of my neck. The movements used in the knitting really were efficient, and even more so when we all moved on to purling! Julia said that the technique is good for people with limited mobility in their hands, and because the hands don't move much at all I think I might be able to use this technique for using small-circumference circulars, which have previously been my nemesis; once I've got some other things off the needles I'm going to have a go at knitting a pair of socks using Portuguese knitting and mini-circulars (though maybe not on the bus as the yarn round the back of the neck will get some odd looks!).

Once we had all mastered the basic stitches, Julia showed us how to work lace - I really struggled with yarn overs as I was over-thinking how to work them and ending up with double yarn overs instead. I did eventually get it, and with practise might be ok. We were also shown how to knit stranded colourwork using the technique and this is another area where I think the technique will come in handy. At the minute I pick up and put down to work stranded colourwork, which is really inefficient, but with Portuguese knitting you can wrap one colour behind your neck in one direction and the other colour in the other direction, then just work each stitch in the correct colour. I will try this with Portuguese pins though as having them both round my neck I was forgetting to release more yarn for each stitch and the work kept getting closer and closer to my face!

While I didn't know what I was expecting at the start of the class, I really enjoyed learning a new technique.

I hope you've enjoyed the posts about my yarn retreat adventure. I really did have a fabulous time and hope to do it all again some time. Have you ever been on a yarn retreat or taken a particularly enjoyable knitting class? What do you recommend I try next?

Joeli Creates a Retreat 2017: Lace Knitting with Karie Westermann

At the end of February I went on my first yarn retreat. While I was there I took two classes, one with Karie Westermann and another with Julia Billings.

Karie's class was called Lace Knitting, the first thing Karie did was to introduce herself and we went round the group (there were about 10 people) saying what we each expected to get out of the class. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to learn (when I signed up all I knew was that I wanted to take a class with Karie!) as I can already knit basic lace, and read lace charts, I just haven't wanted to knit large amounts of lace before.

Karie started the class off with some basics, encouraging us to try different decreases (k2tog, ssk, etc. next to yarnovers) to see the effect on the hole while she introduced the class and chatted about lace knitting not being about the holes, but being about the decreases. Karie also talked about how in a lace chart each box represents not a stitch but an action, and about how the decreases must be balanced with the corrected number of increases created through the yarnovers.

Having chatted about classes, Karie let us design or own basic lace chart, balancing the increases and the decreases, then we each knitted what we had drawn. I knitted mine and it came out exactly as I expected: rather geometric. Someone else in the class then said that they had tried moving their decreases and the holes had moved. I thought I'd try the same and moved all my decreases to the centre of the pattern, leading to stacked decreases and the pattern totally changed! This was a total revelation to me. My new design uses the same yarnovers, but the final knitted piece is completely different!

I was completely exhausted from mental effort by the end of the (three hour long) class, but I learnt a huge amount about the structure of lace knitting, and am a little in love with the tree-like images in the second half of my swatch. Maybe I will give lace knitting another go.

Joeli Creates a Retreat 2017

Last weekend I went on an exciting adventure to my first ever knitting retreat!

I had heard about Joeli's knitting retreat last year (run by Joeli Creates), just after last year's had finished and thought how lovely a weekend of knitting and meeting fellow knitters would be, and when Joeli released tickets some time last Spring for the 2017 retreat I jumped at the chance.

And so it was that last Thursday I found myself sat on a cold railway station waiting for a train to Manchester. Normally that wouldn't be much of an ordeal - I had knitting and hot chocolate, and was very happy - but Thursday was the day Storm Doris hit the UK, and travel became notably more difficult. While I was at the station waiting for my train it went from being on time, to being delayed, to eventually arriving 50 minutes late (I was one of the lucky ones; all trains to and from London had been cancelled, and many other people on the retreat had much longer journeys than expected). I did note the irony that while I was glad to have my knitting while I was waiting for the train, the only reason I was having to wait was knitting... Once I was safely on the train I travelled uneventfully to Manchester, and made excellent progress on the yoke of a cardigan!

A knit night had been planned for the Thursday evening, but the event became rather low key as so many people's journeys had been disrupted. Those of us who had made it to Manchester in plenty of time did still meet up for the evening and had a lovely time chatting and admiring each other's knitwear (total fail on my part there - I managed to leave every single piece of knitwear I own at home. Every. Single. Piece. Including socks. Well done Vikki. This is the conclusive evidence, should it be needed, that I am a process knitter) while enjoying some more knitting time (turns out a Dotted Rays wasn't the best choice for social knitting. There is quite a lot of counting involved).

One huge advantage of being away without children for the weekend is getting a good night's sleep. I fell asleep instantly on Thursday evening and didn't wake until 8 on Friday morning. I then ambled to a coffee shop for some breakfast (knitting in hand) before heading over to the retreat venue for the first full day. The venue, Ziferblat, is a little unusual: rather than being a conventional coffee shop, hotel or coference venue, you pay for the time you spend there and drinks and snacks are provided freely. The largest room at Ziferblat felt rather like an oversized living room (or a University common room (it was reminiscent of my University common room anyway!)), with lots of dining tables and chairs, as well as comfy sofas. There was also a long table covered with cakes, biscuits, bread and croissants, with toasters, and a kitchen area in the corner. Nicely informal. The venue also had other rooms where the talks and classes were held.

Friday started with an introduction from Joeli, then the handing out of goodie bags. Who doesn't love a goodie bag?! And these were excellent, with stitch markers, a notions pouch, a project bag, a notebook and pen, a few badges, and lots of business cards, pattern sheets and special offers. So much fun, and a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" as people rummaged through them to find out what was inside. Nathan Taylor (Sockmatician) then gave a talk on how he started knitting and designing, and the psychology of knitters. Nathan is a very animated speaker and everything he said was very interesting. Everyone in the audience knitted their way through the talk, which was lovely (I wish I could get away with that at scientific conferences; unfortunately I would feel too self-conscious).

After a quick break for lunch I did the first of the two classes I had signed up for: Lace Knitting with Karie Westermann. The class absolutely deserves its own post, so it will get one; here I shall say that while I didn't know what I was expecting to learn, I learnt alot!

There was a small gap in the schedule between the end of the classes and the start of the evening event, so I went for a walk with a few of the other people on the retreat for some fresh air and to visit a couple of craft shops: Abakhan and Fred Aldous. Abakhan sells a huge variety of fabric and craft materials, with lots of end of lines and offcuts being sold by weight, something I'd not come across before. Fred Aldous was amazing, selling stationery in all colours, papercraft materials, a bit of yarn, buttons, pretty much anything you can think of!

In the evening everyone came together again for the evening event: more chatting and knitting; door prizes and the special skein swap. 'Door prizes' turned out to be a raffle that included everyone's names in a hat (an actual hat) and a large table of prizes, including yarn, needles, kits and accessories; if your name was pulled from that hat you got to go and choose a prize. There was some yarn from Phileas Yarns that I was lusting over, in shades of deep turquoise and blue, absolutely beautiful, and while I wasn't lucky enough to win that, I did win some Hiya Hiya interchangeable sock needles that I am looking forward to trying out. Before the retreat, Joeli emailed everyone telling us each to bring a skein of yarn of at least £15 in value for the special skein swap. I immediately knew that I would be donating a ball of self-striping sock yarn in pastel pink and yellow with a mini skein for the heels and toes, that while being lovely was far too pastel for me. All the skeins were put in a bag and we stood in a circle. Joeli offered the bag to the first person in the circle to take a skein from the bag without looking. The skein was then shown to the whole group before the second person was allowed to either take a skein from the bag or to steal the first skein. If a skein was stolen, the person it was stolen from got to pick again, and so on until all the skeins had gone. The only other rule was that a skein could only be stolen twice. When it came to my turn I decided to steal as there were already two beautiful purple skeins in the circle. I went for a skein of Colinette Yarns Jitterbug, which is a full 150g, so should make a good shawl or scarf, which is in shades of purple, pink and a little bit of dark green; I love it. The rest of the evening was spent chatting and knitting (again), and I had a great time getting to know people, and there are defintely people I plan to stay in touch with (espceially Jennie from Owl About Yarn, who is lovely, and our favoutite colurs have a huge overlap!). By the time 9pm came round I was absolutely shattered and was very glad my hotel was under 10 minutes from Ziferblat; again I fell asleep as soon as I lay down.

By Saturday morning I was flagging; it turns out that socialising, networking and concentrating is exhausting! Fortunately the schedule for Saturday was less intensive than Friday's, with a class in the morning, a break for lunch, then a marketplace in the afternoon. The class was on Portuguese Knitting (not something I'd even considered before the list of classes was released) and was taught by Julia Billings, and again I'll save that for another post. The marketplace in the afternoon was lovely: just a few select vendors, with enough variety that I could find the perfect souvenir yarn, but not so much that I was overwhelmed. I went away with two skeins of yarn: one from Owl About Yarn in shades of purple and black and one from Phileas Yarns - the beautiful turquoise and blue from the door prizes - it's called Fjord and is absolutely amazing.

As the afternoon wore on, people started to drift away, and eventually I decided that I should go home too. I walked to Manchester Picadilly in the rain, stopping by at a branch of Oxfam and picking up two of the Lemony Snicket books, and dozed all the way home. The weekend was wonderful and I would love to do it all over again (unfortunaley Joeli has said that she won't be running the retreat agin next year). It left me with a spring in my step and a smile on my face; if you've ever considered going on a knitting retreat (or even just taking a class) I would absolutely recommend it.