Holli Yeoh Knits

I just saw that my last post shows an albeit unseasonable snow storm from my balcony. It has been a while, hasn’t it? The retreat on Quadra Island was amazing. Paulette, a friend from my Guild and I traveled and roomed together.

Early Friday morning we flew to Campbell River in a tiny plane - we could see right into the cockpit and out the front window. Another Guild friend, Lynn acted as our tour guide, picking us up from the airport and taking us on a wonderful tour of the Campbell River / Courtney area. She took us to two yarn shops (Uptown Yarns and Needle & Arts Centre) and a scrumptious lunch at a local spot in Courtney. After tea in Campbell River, Lynn dropped us off at the ferry to Quadra Island. Not only did Lynn plan our itinerary with the appropriate fibre and craft stops, she even arrange to have us picked up when the ferry docked on Quadra!

The Tsa-Kwa-Luten resort was very nice with wonderful views, a great meeting spot in their main lounge and we were well fed.

There was a bald eagle that sat in the tree overlooking our room most of the weekend.

On the Saturday night after dinner I gave my Meet the Designer presentation and had a lot of fun with it. We started off with a fashion show of my designs. Shelley rounded up some local kids to model and they each came out three times wearing different sweaters. We had a couple of mishaps beforehand though. As her big brother kept saying, the baby “puked” on one sweater. Then the 2 year old fell on his nose and bled all over another sweater. As I said to their mum, don’t worry, they’re real sweaters for real kids. It will wash out. Superwash sock yarn is great, isn’t it? That’s one of the reasons why I use it for the kids sweaters.

After the fashion show, the rest of the presentation went well. I showed lots of pictures including pages from my sketchbook, screen shots of my spreadsheets and fun shots of my little models wearing the sweaters. I also brought a whole shop in my suitcases for people to browse.

A quick post as I’m madly getting ready to go the the Spring Knitting Retreat on Quadra Island. Look at the cherry trees across the street on that crazy snowy day the other day.

I did manage to start a Chloë sweater on that uncharacteristic day. Chloë has its challenges because it depends on a striping yarn with even sized bands of solid colour and jacquard sections. The jacquard sections are knit in stocking stitch and the solid-coloured sections are knit in reverse stocking stitch for a slight Michelin man effect. I’m using Opal Prisma and it’s going to look great. It’s sort of like magic when knitting up.

This is the right side of the sweater front.

This is the wrong side.

This is what it looks like when slightly stretched. The sweater definitely requires a wet block and good pinning to get it to behave.

This week I’ve also been working on a Kieran sample in a new colourway I received recently from the distributor. Pretty browns and golds with a hint of mauve.

Time to go put together some kits to take up to Quadra with me. Oh, and finish a sample or two!