Eighteen women, Lace Shawls, yarn and needles – it was a wonderful weekend!
The Nancy Bush Workshop was great fun and a wonderful learning experience. Nancy was well prepared. She brought many shawls for us to examine; she shared many wonderful stories about Estonia and the women who had knit many of her samples; and she had answers for all the questions that we asked her.
On Saturday we started bright and early with an introduction to the basic construction of an Estonian Stole type of shawl. We learned the cast-on, edge treatment and then got to start our sampler of stitches. Once we were knitting Nancy dealt with individual questions and gave many demonstrations on how to create the Nupps (rhymes with soup) that are the hallmark of Estonian Lace patterns.
As we knit she showed us many shawls and told of the stories behind the creation of each pattern; how the pattern got it’s name and in many cases, who created the pattern as well.
Our homework – yes we had homework – was to start the center square for the square shawl sampler that were going to edge on Sunday.
Sunday morning we finished up the center square and started the knitting the edging. Sunday morning also included the math necessary to figure out how to edge our own shawls in the future. Nancy had done the math for the sampler square, but we needed to know how she got there. There were several students already branching out and trying there own idea’s!
Nancy was so patient as she accommodated those creative people who took their work beyond the workshop! She helped each one learn what they needed to create their ideas. It was a great weekend!
The Workshop was held at the Long Lake Inn. We were up on the third floor and the room was bright with a great view of Long Lake.
Happy Knitting
Lynette
[…] Workshop was held at the Inn on Long Lake in Nanaimo. The workshop room was up on the third floor and […]