Schedule of Winter and Spring classes

Don't be disappointed - sign up now!
Contact the store at 613-384-3951 or email us at wooltymekingston@gmail.com

Registration details:

-Classes must be paid for at the time of registration to hold your spot. (Materials can be paid for on the day of the class).

-Payment can be made in person using cash, cheque, credit card or debit card. Registration can be taken over the phone using a credit card.

-Participants who must cancel will only receive a refund if they call the store at least 48 hours before the class and if we are able to fill the spot. A credit for a future class will be considered in the event that a refund cannot be made.

Saturday, Jan. 17th:

Learn to make a SOCK-IN-A-DAY

with Anne Woodall
Go through all of the steps in knitting a sock in just one day. Also great for sock knitters who want to learn to adapt to any yarn/ foot size.

When: Saturday, Jan. 17th, 10am-???

Cost: Workshop $45. Includes all materials & handouts.

Saturday, Jan. 31st:

Embellishing your Knitting

with Deb White

Anyone can take knitted or crafted project and turn it into a work of art. Embroidery, needle felting, borders, finishing touches are all covered in this wonderful class that lets you explore the artist within.

When: Saturday, Jan. 31st, 1-4pm

Cost: $45. Materials provided.

Saturday, Feb. 14th:

Introduction to TRADITIONAL RUG HOOKING Part I

with Rhonda Kellett
Learn the basics of this traditional craft using wool strips, yarn and burlap as taught by one of the area's finest registered teachers of rug hooking. Kit provided to create a beautiful wall hanging/ trivet .

When: Saturday, Feb. 14th, 1-4pm.

Cost: Workshop $45. - Kit $45.

Also required: 14” hoop or scroll frame available at The Quilter's Choice and WOOL-TYME Kingston.


Saturday, Feb. 21st:

DROP SPINDLE for beginners

with Kim Parkinson.
The simplest way to discover the wonder of spinning fibres is with a drop spindle.Try your hand at it this age old craft .

When: Saturday, Feb. 21st, 1-4pm

Cost: workshop $45. Includes a spindle to take home and a selection of fibres to work with.

Saturday, Feb. 28th

Advanced SOCK TECHNIQUES

with Anne Woodall

Using the amazing sock "architectures" of Cat Bordhi as a starting point, learn how to

a)create ANY of the beautiful, perfectly fitting socks pictured in the book.

b) master toe up and top down techniques.

c) use the book without loosing your mind (and your place).

When: Saturday, Feb 28th, 1-4pm

Cost: $55. - Includes Cat Bordhi's Book 1: New Pathways for Sock Knitters. ($35 for participants who already own the book).

Saturday, March 21st

FAIR ISLE TECHNIQUES for all

with Anne Woodall.

Learn the basics of stranding different colours of yarn to create beautiful traditional patterns, with some new and novel-old twists. 2-Handed fair isle knitting, using hand painted colours, steeks and (AHHH!) cutting your knitting, fair isle knitting on the purl side will all be covered in this class.

When: Saturday, March 21st, 1-4pm

Cost: $45. A small material list and preparation assignment will be provided 2 weeks before the class.

Saturday, April 18th

ENTRELAC KNITTING TECHNIQUES

with Deb White.

Entrelac is a beautiful knitting technique that has an amazing WOW-factor while being relatively easy to learn and adapt to many different projects. Join Deb, a long time knitting designer and teacher, as she shows you how to make the most of this beautiful technique.

When: Saturday, April 18th, 1-4pm

Cost: $45. A small material list will be provided 2 weeks before the class.

Saturday, April 25th

Learn to make a SOCK-IN-A-DAY
with Anne Woodall

The spring date for this incredibly popular class has been set. Go through all of the steps in knitting a sock in just one day. Also great for sock knitters who want to learn to adapt to any yarn/ foot size.

When: Saturday, April 25th, 10am-???
Cost: Workshop $45. Includes all materials & handouts.

Out of Synch

This is a flower on one of my clematis bushes. It lives next to an overexuberant clematis of another breed that is way too showy and cannot be tamed. This darker coloured clematis is the weaker of the pair and despite being the same age, is about 10% of the size of its neighbour, and produces about 5% of the flowers. It did however decide to put out one single flower during our warm spell earlier in the fall. Then it snowed . Isn't it pretty despite its lonely vigil over my abandoned front garden?

It's interesting to think of what we find beautiful. One of the sales reps for a major supplier was in the store yesterday so that I could check out the spring lineup and do some ordering. He was saying that it took awhile but that the design department had finallly figure out that knitters will drool over handpainted colours in any fine yarn, but that when it comes to the thicker yarns, they prefer the solid or heathered colours. I had to agree. And I always like to analyse responses, but darned if I can figure out our drool reflex in front a glorious skein of multi hued lace weight yarn and our gut response to a gorgeous skein of the purest colour of solid rich grey in Cascade 220; and conversely, how the opposite just doesn't say very much to us. (The obvious exceptions to this rule are all the Noro yarns and the Manos del Uruguay handpaints, which of course are just simply exquisite, no matter how thick they are.)

I'm working on the newsletter and had to take a break (I do believe that it's called "procrastination"). The other day I finished a great felted tea cozy on which I needle felted the cutest details. This is for my oldest daughter for Christmas. When I get the battery charged in my camera, I'll have to show you a picture if you promise not to tell her.

Last night I finished these thrum mitts. The colour in the picture is a bit bright but they are in fact burgandy and gold, which I beleived to be her school colours. I did have a nagging suspicion however that this was not completely accurate as I had just heard of the school colours through her, followed by the disclaimer: "I think". So this morning, as I was getting ready to put them with the other gifts that I've finished, I looked it up on the internet, and sure enough, the colours for her University are in fact burgundy, gold AND BLACK.
Now I certainly could have looked this bit of information up the same way, and in the same 10 seconds worth of time investment, a couple of weeks ago when I began them and I could have included black with the yellow thrums instead of burgandy and yellow ones. But that is my nature; for some reason I feel that it's more important to get on with the job at hand and tidy the details, if necessary, later on.

In this case, I'll probably do a bit of duplicate stitch to add some black around the cuff. It's not the end of the world, but it certainly is a good thing that I'm not a perfectionist or a slave to the sequential order of things.

P.S. As if to further illustrate my need to get on with the job and worry about details later, when I published this post originally, I looked at the page as it showed up on my screen and couldn't figure out why it looked so different from my other blog posts, until I realized that I had written it in our Free Pattern website: www.wtkpatterns.blogspot.com This goes to show that I've become really good at fixing problems as it's only taken me another 5 minutes to move it over here. I've also learned a lot about serenity in my life, and how to keep from hitting my head against a wall when I make a mistake.

A busy week at the shop

This is what running a yarn store should be all about. It's been a week of beginnings, firsts, great sales, great people and interesting knitting puzzles that I get to play with in my head.

We began last weekend with our first class on intarsia techniques, which is the technique involved in producing a picture or any blocks of colour into your knitted fabric. We used Dora here as an example of how easy it is to find pictures on the internet then trace them on to the graph paper that we can supply at the store that is designed to reproduce just about any knitting gauge that you can come up with. This custom sized graph paper is just one of the freebies that we are glad to offer our customers who have taken on the task of pleasing a young fan who needs to have their favourite character or logo on their sweater. (Don't forget that any licensed designs can generally be reproduced for your grandchild's sweater but not to sell at a craft show for your customer's grandchild.)

Then on Tuesday we welcomed Alana as our newest staff member. Alana is new to Kingston, extremely knowledgeable, and a calm and patient helper to all knitters with questions. Please feel free to pop in and welcome her to our knitting community.

On Wednesday we received our first shipment of patterns for traditional rug hooking. These are beautiful pieces in all sizes, from small samplers for the novice who just wants to try this new craft out, to this beautiful "Wee Patch of Sunflowers" which measures 15"x25" and would make a gorgeous rug or wall hanging. It's nice to be able to offer a wider variety of crafts, using our great selection of yarns to customers who are looking for new fibre areas in which to branch out.

And speaking of new fibre areas, on Thursday I picked up a new batch of hand dyed fleece in so many vibrant colours. These bags have become so popular for needle felting, embellishing and to add vibrant colours to thrum projects that where as I used to replenish our stock about once a season, now I'm visiting the supplier about once a month. It's a joy. By the way, we hope to be offering an intro class to all types of felting in the winter. Stay tuned for our new list of winter classes which should be out early in December.

A couple of weeks ago I got to go on a yarn buying trip to 2 of our major suppliers' in Toronto and came back with a mountain of deals for every taste. We have soft and fluffy, lacy, shiny. I was amazed at all the great deals to be had and am so happy to see it being gobbled up by savvy knitters. Come and check it out; there's still a great selection for all of your Christmas gift knitting.

Finally yesterday, Saturday, was a great day: busy, fun, with many interesting aspects to it. First I had a lady and 3 lovely girls who arrived to tell me that they had suffered a major crisis in their house. One of the girls who was 8 years old, had just finished her first hat and the dog, Pippen, had liked it so much that he decided to show his appreciation by chewing on the hat, causing a looney sized hole at the back. Now this was no ordinary hat: the ribbing was perfectly executed, the body part of it was in a lovely lime green merino wool with a beautiful band of fairisle zigzag knitting around the middle, with perfectly placed decreases that led to a great shape at the top. Did I mention that the knitter was 8 years old! and she really knew what she was doing as she explained each procedure to me.

Thank heavens, I was able to repair it and Pippen was let out of the dog house, and each of the little girls went off with a project in one of our biodegradeable bags. All is well with the world. Wouldn't it be nice if all major crises could be taken care of with $1.55 worth of tapestry yarn and a few well placed stitches.

Later in the day I met with Tanya White and her mother/knitter. Tanya is a 4th year fashion design student at Ryerson who is producing her final project: a men's spring collection which is to include several hand knitted pieces that she has designed. They were needing some ideas and advice on yarn selection and execution techniques. What fun! Like a family doctor who spends his/her day looking at infected ears and inflamed throats, it must be fun to get an interesting rash now and then. In the same way, daily we answer questions about the meaning of SSK, or how to get stocking stitch to stop curling (you can't,) that it was a pure delight to figure out how to make Tanya's concepts become reality. We're hoping to show pictures after her presentation in the New Year.

Hoping that the rest of your November (the dreariest month of the year in my opinion) is full of fun knitting ideas in preparation for the Holidays. (I just finished a tea cozy which I'm going to felt today for one of my daughters, and a University colour appropriate sweater and leggings for a naked teddy bear who was brought to school by my youngest daughter when she left home in September. But don't tell them about these things. It's a surprise.)

Sometimes the temptations are just too great.

Today I began my first pair of toe up socks using Cat Bordhi's book that I spoke of in the last post: New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I love it, but my most important recommendation to all is to have a giant pack of post it notes beside you when you begin; there are lots and lots of references to charts, directions and patterns that send you scurrying all over the book, referencing what you need to know to get on with you new sock technique. It's not for everyone but I'm having a ball.

Then just to get my nose out of the sock that I'd been working on for a few hours by now (funny the chiropractor seems to think that it should be forbidden to work on knitting for more than 30 minutes at a time.) I went on Ravelry, just to see what the knitting world was up to. From there I ended up redirected to a YouTube video on the basics of needlefelting, which I also love to bits. From that video, I found this site at http://www.feltalive.com/onlineclass.htm where Kay Petal offers an online class to create these most adorable characters. One of the great things that I found there was that she names our very own Andrea Graham, of Odessa, as one of her inspiritions. Check out Kay's site and Andrea's too http://www.andrea-graham.com/ to see what another branch of the fibre world is playing around with.

P.S. Of course, WOOL-TYME Kingston carries all your needle felting needs.

I MISS MY BLOG!

It's been way too long since I've had a chance to get to the blog and do some writing. But now I have the chance to fill you in on some of the things that I have been doing over the past few weeks.

One of the parts of my knitting store life that I really enjoy is getting to try out new techniques and having the opportunity to finish things and make them look good.

I get a chance to do a fair bit of this, which breeds experience, which means that I can get better at it, which means that I get to do more of it.

This jacket to the right is from the "Dozen Favorite Kids and Toddler's" book from Knitter's Magazine. A customer had ordered it for her granddaughter and when my knitter returned it to me, beautifully finished but without the glove "pockets" I was thrilled to be able to play with it. I took a picture when the pocket on the left was sewn on and the right one was part done so that you can see the inside of the half-glove which becomes the pocket. It's the cutest design and not very difficult. When sewing the pockets on I used a strong nylon sewing thread in navy and worked from the outside, doing a small backstitch between the knitted stitches. That way the thread sinks into the groove between the stitches and hides.
Some of you may know that in my former life I was a teacher. And one of the things that I do miss about teaching was learning new "stuff" on (good) PD days. (Not all of the "stuff" that we learned was of value, but much of it was very good.) So I booked myself out of the store for a day and took a "Professional Development" day and sat down with Cat Bordhi's book: New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and a set of needles and some yarn and proceeded to make Charlie's Seeded heart socks using her Sky sock "architecture". This is one of the most amazing books I've ever come across, where Cat takes the basic premise that in creating a sock you need extra room to accomodate the instep area and she adds those extra stitches at many different places in the design. I fell in love with the concept and within minutes I was designing an advanced sock course incorporating some of her ideas. (Watch for details of this class in the spring.)

This past weekend we had our 5th "Sock-in-a-day" workshop and once again I'm amazed at the fun that can be had by people who are willing to take a bit of a risk and learn a new skill. There were several people who had actually made several pairs of socks in their knitting careers but were always questioning the results and wanting to feel more confident. One of the ladies was actually keeping track of the number of new tips that she picked up during the day. It was good to have my belief that this class is great for anyone who knits confirmed.

Have we not been blessed with a ridiculously beautiful October? Yesterday we took the opportunity to drive through Prince Edward County and check out some of the wineries. (It does feel a bit odd to be drinking a glorious Chardonnay at 11am on a Sunday morning). We stopped in Wellington for lunch and walked around a bit to get the blood pumping again after the full English Breakfast, complete with deep-"fried bread". We came across this tree (these trees?). My husband teaches construction and is a bit of a tree fanatic so we stopped to take a picture of it for him to use with his class, and as I sat in the car waiting for him it occured to me that this tree really reminded me of a cable design. (isn't it true??) Anyway, I do believe that I'm back in the saddle again and will hope to be a bit more faithful to these blog posts as I really do enjoy the writing. Happy rest of October!

Knitting socks for charity??

We are often the recipients of yarn stashes that have been displaced: many people just realize that sometimes there is a better home for some of their yarns than under the bed or at the back of their closet, so they bring them to us and we promise that they will be of service to someone.

Often there are included the ends of balls of 4 ply sock yarn and we've collected these over the past few months and now have a good assortment waiting to be made up into some pretty funky socks or gloves for those who need some warmth.

Do you love knitting socks and have a eye for the challenge of combining bits and pieces into some fun gifts for Christmas at the shelter? Let us know and we'll be glad to pass the bag on to you. You can even return the socks to us and we'll find good homes for them.

Kaffe Fassett in Perth, Ontario!!!

What an opportunity that Janie H. knits has given to all knitters in Eastern Ontario in organizing an evening with Kaffe Fassett at the Perth District Collegiate Institute on Thurs. Oct 16th at 7pm.

There are few people who have influenced me as much as Kaffe Fassett in giving me permission to just enjoy the colours that are out there to be put together. He encourages us to use our eyes and our taste to identify if we actually like the way that different colours, hues and textures work together.



The last time that I wrote about Kaffe Fassett in this blog, I searched high and low for a picture of a sweater I had made when I had first been seduced by his "go for it" attitude towards colour. It was a giant pullover knit during the winter Olympics of 1992, at a time when winter had gone on way too long and I was needing some colour in my life. Kaffe, in his PBS show that I had religiously video taped from our old television with terrible American reception, was so exhuberant about colours and trusting your instincts that I dragged out my stash and "went for it". I still haven't found the picture of me wearing the resulting sweater that measured about 58" across the chest and was as cozy as an afghan, but weighed as much as an elephant. It was not something that I wore much if I was in an introverted mood.

So here we are, 16 years later and there has been a lot of creative and learning water that has flowed under my knitting bridge since then, and I still am so glad to have had that early encouragement from a stranger from across the ocean who felt that it was his mission to give people an insight into what is possible if you just use your eyes and learn to educate then trust your taste.
For more information, or for tickets, email: info@janiehknits.com or phone 613-326-0626.