It was a fabulous month! I find such tremendous reward from teaching, and October was full of it!
I finally launched the curriculum for the Knitting School at my website, focusing on the techniques required for the Tess slippers. This engendered lots of fun with my dear twin-sister, Marie, who assisted in producing the videos. They took an inordinate amount of time to film as we spent so much time laughing, just like the actors on the out-takes television companies sometimes share with viewers. Please visit the Knitting School and see what it has to offer you. The tutorials are all free, and are planned to build into a comprehensive overview of the categories in which I have placed them.
October also saw me travelling as far afield as Glasgow and London to undertake some very exciting teaching engagements. Firstly I was honoured to be invited to teach at ‘The Glasgow School of Yarn’. This was a special celebratory event for the marvellous Glasgow yarn shop, The Yarn Cake. The event was hosted in the beautiful ‘Queen’s Cross Church’, a building that was designed, built and furnished by ‘Art Nouveau’ architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I taught classes in ‘St(eek!)ing’ and ‘Bavarian Cables’, and much fun was had by all!
A wonderful aspect of The Glasgow School of Yarn was the opportunity to meet up once again with fellow designer and friend, Carol Feller. I’m sure many of you are familiar with Carol’s work; I recently reviewed her book ‘Contemporary Irish Knits’ at my blog. I also briefly met Amy Singer again (I first met her in June at TNNA), and had the immense pleasure of spending a considerable amount of time with fellow designer Stephen West. He, Carol and I spent some hours talking design, and in particular discussing how a designer’s voice becomes so recognisable in their own particular style of work. So, although The Glasgow School of Yarn was principally a teaching and shopping event, it was also for me very much about design.
Finally I visited London, to teach at an event organised by another world-famous shop, ‘I Knit’! I stayed and taught in the nearby Union Jack Club, a lovely club, hotel and conference centre which caters specifically to members of the armed forces. Here I got to spend much more time with the illustrious Amy Singer, who generously gave me some very welcome advice about how to proceed with my next book. Yes, I am already working on another! I hope to be able to give you more details and pre-order options very soon.
In other October news, the digital edition of Jane Austen Knits was published. This is an Interweave publication featuring 35 designs inspired by the works of Jane Austen, including the Marianne Dashwood Stockings by yours truly! The print edition will be available from all the best yarn shops and bookstores on November 8th.
Marianne Dashwood Stockings
