Saturday and Sunday at the Creativ Festival

The Creativ Festival is over for another year, and while I feel creatively re-energized, I am absolutely exhausted.

(I’m sorry for the dull pictures. It isn’t very sunny here today.)

Saturday was a very long day. My first class was at 9am, and was a needlework designer round robin. Alma Laidlaw of Sew Fancy taught goldwork. We did a little flower piece using several types of sadi (coiled wire). It was very simple to do, and the results are stunning. I am already thinking of ways I can incorporate this into my regular needlework. (I didn’t do a very good job of couching the wire of the stem, but it still looks okay, I think.)

Goldwork Flower (class from Alma Laidlaw)

The second instructor was Christine Allan of Fun and Fast Patterns, and she taught us Swedish (or Huck) Weaving. It is another simple technique that gives fabulous results, and I can see myself doing more of it the future. The picture is a close-up of the small area of a towel border that I was able to finish during the class.

Mountain Mist Towel (class by Christine Allan)

The third teacher was Jennifer Aikman-Smith of Dragon Dreams. She taught a lovely snowflake ornament on perforated paper. If you go to this page, you can see a picture of the centre of the ornament, which says “Peace”.

Peace Ornament (WIP; class by Jennifer Aikman-Smith)

My second class of the day was yet another class with Jennifer. (She is a fabulous teacher!) I’m not going to share that one yet, since it is very nearly done.

My final class on Saturday was about a provisional cast-on method of knitting. I wasn’t impressed with the teacher or the method. This YouTube video explains it better, and it only takes about three minutes, rather than an hour and a half class.

Saturday night I attended the “gala” dinner and fashion show. The dinner was nice, but the fashion show was far too long. It was a showcase of designs from the local fashion school (Ryerson, for those who know Toronto colleges), and some of the designs were fabulous. Some, however, actually made the audience laugh. Really, an audience of crafty ladies are probably not too interested in “high fashion’ designs from college kids.

Sunday was a short day, thankfully. I took a very short class on needle tatting, where we learned how to do the double stitch and picots. I tried shuttle tatting years ago by taking a class at my then LNS Golden Threads (I miss your shop terribly, Michelle!), but I promptly forgot how to do it. Needle tatting seems much easier to me, and hopefully I’ll be able to figure out some more advanced techniques with the books I’ve bought.

My very last class was an ornament taught by Laura Dickson of Enchanting Lair.  Unfortunately, there was a problem with the class kit. The design is stitched on three Tokens & Trifles triangle cards, but the distributor has had none since the spring and the company itself seems to have disappeared. Laura was terribly upset about it all, but she was not allowed to cancel the class. She did give us each one card, as well as all the treads required in full skeins (!), and she is continuing her hunt for more of the cards to send to us if she can find them. If your shop has some of the triangle cards, please let her (or me) know!

And that is about it. I did more shopping then I meant to, but the things I bought were few and exactly what I wanted: some Interweave Knit back issues, yarn for shawls and a sweater for Baby Man, a couple of Dinky Dyes oops packs (which are fabulous!), a design pre-order from Laura, a small piece of fabric from DoveStitch (which I’m not overly happy with, truthfully, as it feels very rough), a couple of beads, and a couple of cross stitch leaflets. There were so few needlework vendors there this year, so it was more difficult to find things to spend money on.

I am already looking forward to next year. I love taking classes with favourite instructors and seeing all the ladies I only see there. It is also great to get away are re-charge creatively.