Homework

I’m taking a Sock Design workshop with Anne Hanson of knitspot this Sunday at Eleganza Yarns in Frederick, MD.  Here is the course description:

Unleash your inner sock designer under the expert tutelage of Knitspot's Anne Hanson! This comprehensive beginning design class covers fit and sizing, working with textured motifs, appropriate design choices for the sock architecture, tips and tricks for achieving desired results, marriage of elements, charting, and pattern writing. Students will draft a sock pattern using a knit/purl stitch of choice. Students should have experience in sock knitting and be proficient with multiple needles (DPN's, 2 circs, etc.) and be comfortable with increases and decreases. Materials list will be emailed to participants prior to workshop.

I received the list earlier this week, and there is also a bit of homework:

Materials Needed: paper, pen, calculator, graph paper, stitch markers, one skein of sock yarn for project work (100 gr.), sock needles appropriate for yarn of choice. Additionally, students should bring a book of stitch patterns, and have several 4-6 stitch patterns marked as possibilities. Students should choose several stitch patterns for possible use in their design and work swatches in the chosen yarn to determine needle size.

A book of stitch patterns… I only have one true stitch dictionary, a Christmas gift from Steven and Jeff a few years ago (if I didn’t have that, I guess I would have gone to the Charlene Schurch books or put a call out to my local knitsibs for help).  I took one pass through the whole book and flagged a bunch of designs.  Then I took a second pass through the flagged pages and moved only 5 post-its to the side – those are my finalists:

And then I started swatching the Gulls and Garter pattern.  Here is what it looks like in the book: Here’s my swatch (the yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in colorway “Night Watch”).  Gulls and Garter is at the very bottom.  Then I decided I didn’t like the Garter so much, but I thought Gulls could fly in a checkerboard pattern.  Oops, at first the gulls are too far apart.  Move them closer.  Nah, put them back in nice neat columns and throw some other stuff (not garter) in between them.  Hmmmm. Then switch to diagonal rib stripe.  Re-remember how to do a 1x1 right twist cable without a cable needle and without letting a loop hang.  Decide to make them all go left and learn why the left twist diagonal rib stripe is not in the book at all.

Then decide to wait until class to knit any more – I have 6.5” on this, which is practically a full sock leg’s worth.

But this is exciting, no?

I love homework.