Kiwi Crafty Chemist: A Weekend of Education, Inspiration and Yarn

Last week I was lucky enough to be able to attend two fabulous knitting workshops. Although I have been knitting for pretty much as long as I can remember I have never actually taken any knitting classes or attended any workshops, so when I found out several weeks ago that Morag of Vintage Purls was coming to my wonderful LYS to teach for a weekend I decided to jump at the chance. There were two 3-hour workshops on offer. On the Saturday was "It's a Wrap" a class on designing different styles and shapes of wraps and shawls, and on the Sunday was "Make it Fit" a class on how to actually knit clothing items to fit! After much indecision I finally booked in for the Saturday workshop, predominantly due to a couple of very special projects I have in the planning. You will not believe how excited I was when I was offered a paid place at the Sunday workshop as a RAOK. Wow! A huge thank you to all those involved in that, it was AWESOME!

The saturday workshop saw us all gathered at HRYC talking about all things shawls and how to make them. I really enjoyed so many aspects of this workshop and came away with my head swimming with ideas. I am now going to be trawling second hand shops and trademe for old knitting stitch dictionaries and pulling out the graph paper for some design work in the near future :-) Stay tuned on that one.
Sunday I went along armed with my tape measure and a couple of patterns that were on my 'to-knit' list for me :-) I have had a few different patterns in mind for some time and have just been waiting to get a couple of other projects off the needles and done first. Well I must say that I left this workshop looking at things entirely differently and with all the above patterns pushed a lot further down said list. After a lot of discussion on fit and taking of measurements it soon became apparent that I am not actually the size I thought I was and had I forged ahead I probably would have ended up disappointed and with several ill-fitting final garments. Since Sunday I have spent a lot of time trawling through patterns on Ravelry, thinking and dreaming about some of the new patterns I have found (or older ones I have rediscovered) and itching to cast on. Once I have knitted a couple of the garments I have in mind I think I may even get confident enough to regauge and resize some of my initial favourites to actually fit me :-)
So there we go, a weekend of inspiration and education, both in rather large helpings! But what about the YARN. I may or may not have finished the weekend with a couple of lots of yarn to turn into things for me. Morag brought a fabulous selection of her Vintage Purls yarn with her to tempt us in both Sock (4ply) and Max (8ply) and, well, I didn't take all that much convincing.