Finally the long awaited thoughts on the workshop I went to with Horst Schulz. I’m not sure they will live up to the expectations after all that!

On 6th April me and my Mum went on a one day workshop in Marlow with Horst Schulz. It was the first workshop we had ever done with him before though I had heard him speak at the Design for Knitting day at the V & A a couple of years ago, and we had a chat to him at the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace a few years ago too.

He was very organised and the workshop was very interesting. The first thing we all did, was joining our 4 stripey homework squares together by knitting a square in the middle of them.

This was knitted backwards and forwards rather than circularly and then the diagonal seam was sewn using both colours so that each colour sewed together just its coloured stitches. It is one of those ideas which seems so obvious when someone suggests it but had never occured to me before!

Here is the same in different colours

Next we used our homework strip of knitting to learn how to knit another strip onto an existing strip.

The homework strip was the denim blue at the bottom of the page. We cast on the second strip (in this case the grey one) and then knitted it while at the same time attaching it to the first strip (denim blue). We used two different ways of attaching, both attaching one stitch every two rows. The first method was invisible from the right side, and the second created a decorative chain up. They are actually the reverse of each other so that the first method created the chain on the wrong side of the knitting, and the second method was invisible from the wrong side.

This method of joining involved picking up a stitch from the side of the first strip for every two rows of the second strip. Next we tried a join where we picked up stitches along the whole side of the second strip (the grey one), knitted a couple of rows, and then left these stitches on the needle to be joined to the third strip (purple). This pick up and knit is in blue so you can see it clearly on the sample. There are actually a couple of rows of the blue at the start of the purple strip but I can’t now remember why. The actual joining was very similar to the invisible join from the first two strips, the main difference being that the stitches had already been picked up and knitted from the side of the second strip, ready for attaching to the third, rather than picking them up one at a time as you got to them. We did a mitred square at the top of this strip to show that you didn’t just have to be knitting linear strips.

Lastly we picked up and knitted a kind of corrugated rib. Unfortunately I got the wrong end of the stick and messed this up. I think I was rather tired by that point in the day. Horst was very kind and actually went through this rib again with us in the pub after the workshop. Definitely beyond the call of duty! The green is the rib I did wrong, and the cream is the right one. It is a little hard to see from my picture but the purl furrows are different. The rib he was trying to get us to do involved working one row with the first colour, then sliding all the stitches back to the other end of the circular needle so that without turning the work you could knit the second row in the second colour. Then knitting back with the first colour, and again back with the second.

After that lot we had a go at his falling leaves pattern which he had used on a scarf.

I didn’t manage all this in the workshop, most of it was done at home afterwards so I could get more of a feel for how the leaves fitted together.
I really love the fact that this is reversible and I am definitely looking forward to doing some more experimenting with it. One of the ladies at the workshop had knitted a jacket using this idea and it was very nice.

All in all a very enjoyable and informative day, I had a wonderful time and learned a lot. I really must get round to finishing the mitred sweater I started in the Knitting Olympics!