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.

The Flock: the launch party

This weekend I went to London to catch up with my siblings, an event that doesn't happen very often as we are rather spread out across the country. I'd had the date in the calendar for a couple of months, but hadn't made any fixed plans, so when an email came through from Love Knitting inviting me to the launch of their blogger ambassador programme, The Flock, I jumped at the chance - I would be in London anyway, so it would be rude not to!

The event started at 17.30, at Love Knitting's very shiny new office. It's in Holborn, not an area I know well, so I allowed plenty of time to find the building, and ended up arriving a few minutes early and being the first one there. I wasn't totally sure what to expect, the invite had said there would be nibbles, networking and a couple of presentations, and I was a little nervous when I arrived. I needn't have worried though, there was plenty to do, and everyone there was happy to talk about yarn, knitting and crochet all day!

Tiny cupcakes

There was a pom pom making station, and I duly added a neon pink and yellow pom pom to a cardboard sheep (whilst chatting to Justyna Lokowska, a huge knitting name, about her pattern, Maya's scarf, which I am currently knitting); I chatted to Karie Westermann, who knew who I was, which totally made my day; there was a table of delicious and very cute snack food; I met lots of people, including a few familiar faces and lots I hadn't come across before (and a few really big names that I was too shy to talk to), who were all as enthusiastic as me about all things knitting; and we got to squish a lot of yarn: every table in the room had baskets of yarn on them, which we were allowed to play with, stroke, cast on, take home; obviously all there for promotional purposes, but it was paradise.

This was even brighter in real life!

There were indeed some talks about Love Knitting and the rest of the Love Crafts family, as promised, and a little quiz, which had prizes: I came away with a Paintbox yarns advent calendar, containing lots of little balls of yarn that will become some form of (as yet undecided) bunting over the course of December.

I am so excited about this advent calendar

The whole event was only two and a half hours long, and the time whizzed by. When we left, we were each given a goody bag containing some more yarn (I also had some pom pom makers in mine; I think everyone got something different), which my sister and I pawed at on the train back to hers. Huge thanks to Love Crafts for hosting the event; and if you ever get a chance to go and visit their office, go, it really is a little yarny paradise!

I did come home with a *little bit* of yarn

*This post is about a promotional event hosted by Love Knitting and Love Crafts; all yarns shown were donated for PR purposes; the post contains affiliate links, see the Disclaimers and policies page for more information.*