knitting Archives - amanda schwabe

What are your knitting goals this autumn? If you’ve been thinking of signing up for fall knitting classes, I’d love to help you with your projects.

I’ll be teaching in Ottawa, Kanata, and Spencerville this fall. And I have a new knitting pattern coming out in September that’s giving me all the cozy autumn vibes. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Knit Your Own Project Classes

I host these classes on Sunday afternoons and Tuesday mornings, and anything goes! This is the class for you if you have your own projects on the go and need flexible knitting help.

Here, you can learn a new technique, get help fixing a knitting problem, and ask for tips and tricks on any knitting topic. Bring in your messes, your time-outs, or your next knitting challenge.

Located in Ottawa, at Rideau Park United Church on Alta Vista.

Vineyard Murder Mystery Knitalong Class

We’re hosting six weeks of mystery knitting with a side of whodunnit at Maker Savvy in Kanata! Our kick-off event is at KIN Vineyards in Carp, with wine tasting, gourmet pizza, and … murder. (No yarn shop employees will be harmed in the making of this event.)

Wendy of Maker Savvy is writing the murder mystery story, and I’ve designed a shawl pattern with six clues to accompany it.

We’ll reveal a new clue each week, starting Wednesday, September 4th at KIN and then every following Tuesday, until the murder mystery is solved and the knitting mystery is cast off.

Join us for fun, knitting, and a finished project of a mysteriously cozy, perfect-for-fall shawl.

Vineyard Mystery Knitalong

If you can’t join us for the in-person knitalong, you can purchase the pattern on Ravelry and knit with us from anywhere in the world.

Buy the pattern any time, and you’ll receive one clue each Wednesday, starting September 4, 2024, as an automatic pattern update in your Ravelry library.

This my first mystery knitalong (MKAL), and I’d be so excited if you joined us! I’ve designed a cozy shawl that’s all about colours and texture. (Oops. I’ve said too much already.)

It features techniques that are appropriate for adventurous beginners and beyond, and detailed instructions to support all skill levels.

There are lots of colours but no complicated colourwork techniques. One yarn at a time! And only two ends to sew in when you’re done. I have some tricks to show you. 🙂

Introduction to Knitting Class

Learn to knit with this foundational 6-week class. Beginning knitters will learn all the important basics and then some. At the end of these weeks, you’ll be familiar with

knitting’s basic stitches
combining stitches to make common patterns
troubleshooting common knitting mistakes
reading knitting patterns
sewing knitted pieces together

This knitting class is in Spencerville, ON, at Spencer Street Muse Gallery, September 25th – October 30th, 2024.

Art Workshop: Acrylic Techniques for Achieving Realism

This two-session workshop will be my first art class! I’m so excited.

Expect to learn the methods I’ve collected so far for blending and layering acrylic paints to achieve different effects. If your paints don’t always do what you want them to do, this is the class for you.

In Spencerville, ON, at the Spencer Street Muse Gallery. Sign up via their website. October 5th & 19th, 2024.

Beautiful Brioche Knitting Class

Learn the basics of two-colour brioche knitting in this 3-hour workshop.

You’ll learn how to make the brioche knit and purl stitches, how to read brioche knitting patterns, and how to fix mistakes in brioche knitting. If we have time, we’ll also cover common brioche increases and decreases.

November 2, 2024 at Spencer Street Muse Gallery in Spencerville, ON.

Virtual Knitting Classes

Last but not least, I’ve been thinking of adding an online knitting class over Zoom back into my schedule. Or offering it as an option for a one-on-one help session if you can’t make it to an in-person class.

I ran these in 2020-2021 during the stuck-at-home times, and they worked surprisingly well.

What do you think? Would you be interested in a weekly or monthly virtual knitting class? Or the chance to schedule a private session from anywhere?

If there’s enough interest, I’ll start something up.

Stay tuned for more class announcements coming up in my schedule. There are more things in the works all the time.

Until next time!

Happy knitting,

Amanda

There’s a chill in the air around here, and the leaves have been turning rusty shades of sun-kissed orange and red, and a switch has flipped in my brain. I’m knitting cables.

I picked up a gorgeous skein of Fleece Artist Blue-Faced Leicester Aran on sale at a local yarn shop in the summer. It’s just brown… but oh! What a brown! When I finally got around to winding it into a ball (by hand, off the back of a kitchen chair), I discovered that there are depths of warmth and coziness in the colours. As it ran through my fingers, I fell in love with the texture. It is soft and squishy and velvety, and I’m in love.

Here’s a little sneak peak of the pattern I’m working on, which, although it was inspired by this yarn, will probably be written for a worsted weight instead. We’ll see.

I find that my favourite designs come out of experimentation, not premeditation. Maybe that’s weird. I will sometimes dream and imagine all the things I’d like to knit, but the reality of those dreams doesn’t always work out. When I sit down and just get started, playing with the yarn as I go, I often end up with something very satisfying. Cables can be especially lovely for that, since they can travel around at will as I go. Hats make a great canvas, since they are small and easily re-knit if things go horribly wrong.

Have you ever sat down and played with a hat? Here’s a glimpse of what I do: Cast on something in multiples of ten, with appropriate-sized needles for your yarn, and just go for it. Throw in some evenly spaced cables, then let them travel around when you get bored. Maybe I’m strange, but I find that to be a fun and stimulating exercise. The first hat I cast on ended up being too small, so, about halfway through, I ripped it all out. The second hat was just right (since I had looked at my stitch count on hat number one before ripping it out to see how many more stitches I’d need). I had some nice, mindless cables at the beginning, then I started to get tired of them. Where can they go? I wondered. So I sent them travelling to see what would happen. I knew from previous experience knitting other peoples’ patterns how to move a cable around (most recently the Knotty gloves, of which I have made three pairs), and I knew I could always rip things out if I had to.

As I decided on one possibility, others were discarded or filed away in my brain for later. Maybe this will turn into more than one design for a hat, or maybe there will be matching mittens. Or leg warmers! (My one love from the 80’s.) Who knows? The point is that knitting is fun, and I can go on adventures in my own kitchen, with Yo-Yo Ma playing in the background. What a great life.

Tag: knitting

Fall Knitting Classes 2024