Just in case the TagBoard cycles through and you miss the Q&A, let me offer you a little background. Apparently, Stasia of Stasia’s Place of Grace was referred to yours truly by Kary of Kary’s Musings to check out the Rambling Rows afghan of Rachel’s that I posted last week.
Stasia mentioned several things, and Rob basically covered much of my weekend at Black Dog, so I thought I’d answer her multiple TagBoard posts in my own post today.
| Stasia: | Am enjoying my visit, recommended by Kary… what great pics! What a great idea to lay the RR afghan out in Photoshop first (I’m working on a BIG one now). |
| Matt: |
Sounds awesome, Stasia. I was working on the lap-size, myself, but with everything else I’ve got going on, I haven’t had much of a chance to work on it. It did, however, inspire my friend Rachel to make one as a gift. That’s the one I blogged last week.
As for Photoshop, I use it regularly for planning colorwork. I started out in advertising and web development, so it’s second-nature to me, and I’m much faster in Photoshop than I am as a knitter. If anyone needs colorway help, I’m quick to pluck colors from our ThreadBear yarn scans or a quick color card scan and see how different colors in a particular yarn will look together. (If anyone wants a copy of the Photoshop .psd file for Rambling Rows colorways, I’m glad to share it.)
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| Stasia: | I’ll be back! And I love the Technicolor ram! |
| Matt: | Oh, do definitely come back, and as for the ram, thanks. He’s been a fun addition to my day. |
| Stasia: | But MOSTLY I want to say that your handpainted sock yarn is FANTASTIC!!! |
| Matt: | I know I make fun of Rob sometimes for being an enabler, but I’m about to have to stop. Um… How evil would it be to suggest that ThreadBear might start selling our own line of hand-painted sock yarns? We don’t have the facilities to be a major contender in the market, but it really is a huge amount of fun, and we really are knocking the idea around. Just a little FYI. 😉 |
| Stasia: | Still reading… will you donate the Fair Isle sweater bears to a local charity, perhaps? Police, maybe? (They sometimes hand them out…) |
| Matt: | Well, that will be up to the folks who knit them, actually. I know that one woman who is making one teaches an elementary school class. The class keeps up with her knitting progress on other projects, so she discussed knitting a her Fair Isle for the classroom bear. The kids all crowded around her monitor to look at colorway options, and if I recall correctly, they got to vote on the colorway that she was going to knit. Something tells me that one will never leave her classroom.
As for others, well, the whole purpose behind this project for me is to help people learn the technique of knitting Fair Isle sweaters. To that end, I’d recommend that anyone for whom this will be there first Fair Isle hang onto the sweater to refer back to when they get stuck on larger projects down the road. Certainly, if anyone would like to donate their sweater, I’m sure I could find a good home for it via Ebenezer Project. |
Oops… look at the time. I need to run, folks, but I’m always glad to answer questions!
Be well, and happy knitting!
Matt.