Knit Camp: Girasole with Jared Flood

My second and last class at the KnitCamp in Stirling was with Jared Flood of BrooklynTweed fame. If you remember I knitted a tweed baby blanket and this was designed by Jared Flood. To say I was geeking out about going to that class would be putting it mildly. I was also very nervous. I suppose it might be hard for non knitters to understand but it was a but like being taught by an idol. Still I was excited too. Jared was very nice and immediately went into teaching mode. You can see what he was teaching us to knit in the photo above. We learned that it the name is actually pronounced with a soft g and is actually Italian for Sunflower.

I actually learned a lot in this class. I learned the best way of casting on when knitting circular shawls. I learned better ways of doing some of the stitches, little tricks that give your knitting a neater look. I also learned some hints and tips about chart reading. I actually taught myself to move beyond knit and purl through using charts. This was back in the day when I only knitted scarves. There were some in the class who found using charts difficult. People like my mum who have been knitting for years and so learned to knit with the pattern written out. It can be difficult to move to charts after that (much like myself finding it difficult to follow crochet patterns as I am used to knitting instructions). So Jared gave some hints as to why specific symbols were used and I learned quite a bit from it.

It was a fun class and the other women were lovely and once again from all over the world. One lady sitting next to me had been in the fair isle class I took on Tuesday and we both exclaimed over the Portuguese knitters. She also told me about some of the other classes she had taken which sounded like a lot of fun. Then Nancy Bush was pointed out to me and once again I geeked out. Nancy Bush designs lots of things but she is famous amongst sock knitters. I have a few of her books and have knitted a number of patterns by her. She is one of few knitwear designers whose books I would specifically go out of my way to get (normally I go by my interests at the time rather than who wrote it).

This is what I managed to get done in the time I was there. Unfortunately, time seemed to fly past. I very much enjoyed knitting lace on such thick yarn. We weren't given enough of the yarn to finish the project (Jared himself thought we would be given enough yarn) so I will probably not finish this. I have yarn there that I do have enough of to start again and complete it. Once I have a few projects out of the way this is going straight back on the pins.

I also couldn't not take some photo's of the Stirling university grounds. How lovely does it look? I think I studied in the wrong university!