Seeing the Code: Another Crazed Cookie Fan

So crazed was I about attending sock classes and a book signing with Cookie A., that I paid no heed to ensuring my youngest was a part of my fan pic. Sorry Colby.

The venue, Renaissance Yarns at Kent Station was awesome, loved sitting next to my fellow Ravelers Liz and Brian, and Cookie's teaching was just terrific. The boys and I were there for both the morning and afternoon classes that were offerred: "Socks Toe-Up" and "Traveling Stitches."



The Toe-Up technique was a new one for me. Besides the added benefit of measuring as you go, toe-up socks fit high arches better because of the gusset construction. Of course, being a toe-up newbie and a complete spaz on double points, I was only able to actually complete the toe cast-on, ribbed cuff, and kitchener cast-off during class.


The hand-outs Cookie created for both classes are very detailed and will be a valuable resource that I'll return to often.

Here's my traveling stitches swatch. There was a more complicated lace swatch for us to do as well, but again I was doing well just to have completed the simpler one.



In the second class, Cookie focused on really de-mystifying her design process by explaining how to place different types of increases and decreases within a stitch pattern in order to turn vertical motifs into ones that will move in any direction you desire. Even though I have little aspiration for designing my own patterns, it just helps to have a clearer picture of the building blocks of knit design. A far cry from my humble swatch, here's Cookie A.'s Ornette design:



I used to prefer written instrucions for knit patterns but converted to chart reading after knitting my (single) lace glove. I must admit before my conversion, I resisted charts and thought of them as quite foreign; a bewildering collection of dots and dashes like this one from a Japanese knitting book:


To borrow a phrase from The Matrix, "I'm seeing the code now." Mere ciphers and cryptograhps have been transformed before my very eyes into Neo and Morpheus doing all sorts of crazy martial arts stuff. And since the class with Cookie, I can now look at a pattern chart and see motifs that travel! He-he ;)



I just have to add how terrific the boys were, too. Mike and Morgan are traveling with her volleyball team so the boys had literally no choice but to attend the workshop with me. They sat for six plus hours in the store while I knitted and they didn't make a peep! They busied themselves with Ipods, books, the sports page, and handheld games. Of course I had bribed them earlier by purchasing new games for their Gameboys that they hadn't been allowed to play until the day of my class. The bribery continued with Johnny Rockets for lunch during the break and Fondi pizza for dinner with Coldstone ice cream after the workshop was over. But still, they were champs and I'm grateful to have been able to do both classes.



Hope you had a great weekend too and are enjoying your Summer!