Last Day Knitting

Wow the weekend flew right on by didn't it? With all the evening activities I've kind of found myself missing my knitting alone time. Weird but true...the knitting weekend really did not have huge blocks of knitting time. More sample style or should I say swatch style? I tried to knit after getting back to T's place each night...the last night I did just that until 1:oo AM. It felt nice to sit & knit in the quiet apartment after the day's classes.

Sunday's event was a Tips & Tricks class with Annie Modesitt. She gave her long tail cast on tip that she shared in the Color class on Friday...pretty cool method of never running out yarn no matter how many stitches are called for. All you do is pull yarn from both the center and outside of the ball, take the 2 ends & make a slip knot, place knot on one of your needles, start long tail cast on, once the required number of stitches are cast on decide which of the 2 ends will become the working yarn...think center...and then cut off the tail. What a good idea.

She went over blocking...the how's & why's...then the most fun ever, dreadlocks! I loved the technique. Thinking about all the applications for this little "fringing" technique just excites the devil out of me. For one I hate to add fringe to wraps, scarves, hats, bags...you name it and I will think of a way not to put it on. Now the dreadlocks...so cool...fun to do and I know they would add a certain something to an edge which would look so much nicer than it does with fringe. Cannot wait until I'm doing S's scarf 'cause these are going to be on there somewhere.

The other technique that I have never done was a 5 stitch bobble. I have avoided those like the plague in the past, but now I'm going to give then a try. It may be a good use on my next bag as a closure or even decorative edging prior to the icord bindoff. The possibilities are endless with these 2 little decorative tricks. Annie also did a few things that I'm very familiar with like the icord bindoff...nothing new there, but her way of doing a left leaning decrease was new. I either do a k2tog tbl or ssk... I prefer the ssk. She came up with another that starts with knitting into the stitch and wrapping around backwards from your ususal way which marks the stitch by twisting it. When you turn the work and purl back you notice because the stitch isn't sitting correctly, this is where it gets "fun"...maybe not so much. When you get to the twisted stitch you then p2tog tbl. I dislike the manipulation of p2tog tbl....been there done it and it hurts my poor bad thumb...whiny I know. I tried it in class, but didn't feel that my left leaning decreases improved much if any. Can you see which looks nicer? My ssk's are on the right and the p2tog tbl is on the left...what do ya think?