Day 2 of Stitches started off with amazing Italian leftovers from Rosebud.  Yum!  I think garlic may still be oozing from my pores from this experience.  I drove over to the convention center for my Stashology Class.  I was supposed to have brought stash yarn, but I had forgotten that bag at home.  I grabbed some random skeins that I had brought with me; a bit of the leftover yarn from the mittens I was working on, sock yarn and some new yarn that I had just bought at the market.  (Have I mentioned that the market was amazing?  Because it was.)  Christine Blysma started off the class by saying that we were going to leave all our preconceived notions about knitting and combining yarns at home.  Boy was she right!  We started making a mini skein of yarn by combining about 10 different strands.  We wrapped them around our arms and then cut them off.  Christine had us share yarn and add in surprising colors, including using some novelty yarn that people had.  I’m not going to completely ruin the surprise of the class, but suffice it to say that this was not the easiest exercise.  You really have to let go and let the yarn decide what’s going to happen next.

I admit to being a huge yarn snob, so I didn’t expect to use any novelty yarn.  Now, I don’t think I’ll be going out to buy any fun fur or railroad yarn any time soon, but I did kind of enjoy using the ribbon yarn.  In fact, I could even see a place for the eyelash yarn on occasion.  I tend toward the subdued and plain, so this is a very very big step for me.  In fact, you might just want to double check that you’re reading the right blog.  Because, well, using novelty yarn and combining colors was just plain fun.  I kind of felt like I had cut loose and that there were no rules.

Christine showed us some very classy pieces that she had knit, all using fun novelty yarns in combination with beautiful fibers.  The little pop of color that railroad yarn can add to a fine merino can really make a big impact.  Check out Chris’ patterns on Patternfish.com for some ideas of what I’m talking about.  I bought 2 of her patterns and plan on buying the Omega Wrap pattern as well.

Chris completely blew my mind at one point.  As we were passing around one of her jackets, one of the other students asked if she fastened her buttons onto the garment with pipe cleaners.  Yep!  She has found that by using a pipe cleaner with a shank button, it holds the button on more securely.  Huh.  Who woulda thunk?

So what did I do with all this new found knowledge and lack of knitting inhibition?  Well… you’ll just have to wait until I can put the buttons on it to find out.  All I’ll say for now is that it’s not on my Ravelry Progress Bars and it’s not helping any of those things get finished over on the right hand side.