Knitaway® in the Studio 2011

The dates are set for the Knitaway® in the Studio, October 12th to 16th, 2011.  Registration opens the first week of May. 

    After seventeen years of the Knitaway® on the road, I am excited to also be opening the Studio for these events.  If you are local or traveling through Denver, there are classes happening here throughout the year. The new schedule goes up this week in a couple of weeks. To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite wandering heroines, there really is no place like home. I do hope you'll join me!

Eyedazzlers

Another museum trip this week.

      The new American Indian art galleries at the Denver Art Museum opened recently with intensely colored Navajo weavings from the museum's collection hanging just inside the main entrance.

        Navajo weavers tradtionally dyed their yarn with vegetal dyes which gave subtle colors. When the brightly colored yarns dyed with aniline dyes became available in the mid-1800's, the Navajo embraced the opportunity to use them to great effect.  These blankets, so contemporary in design, were woven and most popular among collectors during the last 20 years of the 19th century. They came to be called Eyedazzlers.  And they are dazzling, almost hypnotizing.  I could scarcely pull myself away.  Now I have a delicious urge to knit off-kilter geometric designs with oranges and reds next to deep blues and tawny golds.  

        Well, you see how I am.
photo © C. Oberle 2011

Amazing Ammonites!

 

 For countless centuries the spiral has "inspired" artist and craftspeople.   Recently in a favorite haunt, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science , a display of ammonites captured my camera's focus.  Fossilized and extinct, these elegant creatures were named for the Egyptian god, Amun (also spelled Amon), who wore a helmet adorned with rams horns.  Now every knitter knows that a ram's horn means wool and wool, to me, means fiber joy.

                           

And speaking of fiber joy, recently it was my pleasure to be interviewed by the lovely Lara for the Math4Knitters podcast.  Those of you who know me will be able to tell I was "thinking on my feet" even though Lara had kindly provided me with her  questions ahead of time. I have always been best at improv because I can't keep to a script (or a pattern!). And just don't listen to me when I talk about taking a sabbatical (as if!) from the Knitaway® this year...see here for what's really happening. The interview for Math4Knitters was a really warm and enjoyable experience.  And take a look at the bottom of Lara's featured project....do I detect yet another a spiral design?  Take a listen.  And thank you, Lara.

photos © C. Oberle 2011