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A knitting holiday with star designers Sasha Kagan and Tracy Chapman, sponsored by The Yarn
Barn Ltd heralded a relaxing week of workshops, yarns, creativity,
trips, fun and much more.
Le Vieux Monastere (LVM) in the Charente Maritime
region of South West France was the idyllic setting for our week of
pure indulgence. Hosted by Christine & Graham Dove who
organized a week of seamless pleasure.
In our first workshop lead by Sasha Kagan we learned how to
design from nature, map our motif and square up our knitting graph
ready for knitting. Sasha them taught us her own intarsia
technique, which made our work exceptionally neat on the back as
well as the front. As the week drew on people were rejoicing in
their own successes with this new technique.
Our second workshop was lead by Tracy Chapman, author of Toys To Knit and Rowan Consultant.
Tracy showed us the delights of freeform crochet enabling us to
transform our own images into fibre representations or to create
the traditional paisley motif without a pattern! Book up for a
workshop if you are feeling you want to create a more organic motif
to adorn bags scarves or make a complete blanket from interlocking
paisley motifs. Check out the Free Form Crochet workshop
on Saturday 5th December 2009.
Sasha gave us an inspired look into colour theory and the
choices we make when we select different coloured yarns for our
projects. With over 30 years in the textiles business Sasha has an
eye for colour combination but also the willingness to pass on her
expertise to all of us who participated.
We also learned how to crochet flowers using Sasha’s Crochet
Inspirations book. We used the flowers to decorate a Mid Summer
Pole to celebrate the Swedish tradition with one of our Swedish
participants. Elisabeth Oberg invited us to join in dancing and
merriment associated with this ceremony. We had a procession of the
mid summer pole and then traditional Swedish songs were played as
the fit and the brave danced around consolidating the united
nations feel to the week.
The weeks learning was concluded by Tracy’s finishing techniques
workshop which enabled participants to join their samples together
to make either a bag or cushion cover embellished with flowers and
paisley motifs using many different finishing techniques: cable
cast on, striped knitting colour changing, weaving in ends as you
go, selve edge, ‘neat’ button holes, creating a fold, Kitchener
stitch to join held stitches and mattress stitch to join our selve
edged seams. Finishing Techniques Workshop
Saturday 21st November 2009.
The final results were impressive! We were all very pleased with
ourselves and we all felt that they had learned a new technique or
two that could be used in our daily knitting lives.
Please visit us at The Yarn Barn shop
at:
173 Eastney Road, Southsea, Portsmouth,
Hampshire, PO4 8EA
or phone us on
Tel. 023 9275 2555
How to find us - click here
for street map.
Our opening hours are:-
Monday to Wednesday & Friday 9.30 am -
5.00 pm
Thursday 9.30 am to 6.00 pm
closing for lunch between 1.30 and
2.30pm
Saturdays we are open between 9.30 am and 4
pm
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