KDO 2019 - I got stranded this year

2019 brought a conflict for Gettysburg area knitters - Knitters' Day Out and Shenandoah Fiber Festival were both on the same weekend. I found some KDO classes I wanted to take, so I went that route.

Inspired by all the Fair Isle knitting I saw in Scotland earlier this year, I decided to take classes that would help me learn the technique better. On Saturday morning, I took Advanced Fair Isle with Tanis Gray.

Our homework was to choose one of two specified mitten patterns designed by Tanis and do work the first 9 rows of the cuff. I'm using leftover yarn from this sweater as my main color. I didn't have enough DK yarn in stash for the contrast color, so I arrived early and zoomed through the marketplace to find something appropriate - that's the blue yarn. It could have more contrast, but I was working with limited options.

Above are samples of the two patterns from which we chose - I'm making the Merida mittens on the right (named after the heroine of the delightful movie Brave - go watch it on Hulu before Disney takes it away!).

Tanis was a great teacher. I was hoping to get some tips about how to manage my yarns when working around the needle joins, and she provided them. Even better: her preferred method of working in the round at small circumference is two circulars, which is also mine. And she taught us a technique for trapping floats that is "non-discriminatory," meaning that it doesn't matter if you're trapping the dominant or non-dominant color - it works either way. These are just the type of little tips I need to get past some frustrating aspects of stranded colorwork. Tanis also brought a boatload of inspirational samples - I need to add some of her patterns to my Ravelry favorites and queue.

After lunch - and a turn around the marketplace - I went to my afternoon classes on Invisible Stranding with Joy Jannotti. Invisible stranding is also known as ladderback jacquard, which I think sounds more intimidating! Our class project was this polar bear hat:

One might choose to use this invisible stranding technique in colorwork when you have longer stretches of one color (>1") and when a trapped float might show through to the public side. You trap the float, but in another layer of knitting that floats on the back of the work. It's kind of like double knitting, but only in a single column every inch or so. Here is the inside of the instructor's hat:

The columns that look like a crochet chain or a column of knit stitches are the trapped floats. This technique was a total mind bender - especially after lunch when we all experienced a wave of fatigue - but I think I got it. I'm pretty sure I know when to use this in the future. In fact, I could have used it on Dave's sheep socks had I known it then. Live and learn!

Besides the skein of blue DK yarn I bought for my mittens, I only made one other yarn purchase. Every attendee received a ball of Kelbourne Woolen's Germantown yarn, a worsted weight made in the U.S. My bag contained a yellow skein. I stopped by the booth to thank the vendor, and I also got two more skeins with colorwork in mind:

Here is how my projects looked after class. I'll definitely finish the hat first since it will go faster in worsted yarn. The mittens, while worked on DK yarn, are on 3.0 mm needles... and they will take a while.

I had a very nice day and learned some new things - it was a great way to spend a September Saturday.