Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 18:07:02 -0600 From: JamieCW@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Knit: from soggy California [...] Last weekend, Carol and I flew to Salt Lake to see Heidi, Connie, Michelle, and our other knitting friends, AND to take a gansey workshop with Beth Brown-Reinsel. First, the shops. We went to Bridgette's Wool Cabin first: a nice shop, good yarn and pattern selection, and a lovely owner. We went to the Needlepoint Joint in Ogden next, which is THE place to drop serious amounts of cash. Imagine 3 oversize sale baskets (all 50% off) filled with not just odd balls, but enough yarn to make a solid color adult size long sleeved tunic (an example of what I purchased: 21 skeins of pale green Classic Elite Pure & Simple). Imagine every color of Socka yarn in stock -- cottons and worsteds, too. Needless to say, I was VERY glad I stuck a large duffel bag in my carry-on bag just in case I needed it for my return trip. The last place we visited was Nancy Bush's Wooly West. Lots of nice yarns, samples of all the socks from her book, and lots of great sweater patterns (she designs those, too). I highly recommend Beth B-R as a teacher. She is well-organized, thorough, and patient, and comes equipped with the best handouts I've seen. She also happens to be an *extremely* nice person. We made a tiny gansey in the 6 hour workshop (about 7 inches tall out of worsted weight yarn). The techniques we covered were: Channel Island cast-on, overlapped welts, knitting in your initial, three types of cables made without cable needles, gussets, left leaning and right leaning increases (not from the stitch below), saddle shoulders knit from the neck down into the front and back, sleeves knit in the round from the shoulder down, neck gussets, and a different sort of invisible cast-on than I'd used before. How to shape and size your garment (and how to vary the percentage system for kids, non-standard adults) was also covered. [...] Jamie (jamiecw@aol.com)