A couple of weeks ago I spent a lovely day at a workshop with Alison Ellen organised by the New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham.

Our topic was knitting interesting shapes, and it was wonderful to spend a whole day playing around with increasing, decreasing and short rows to see what would happen.

This shape was the first one I tried, and uses short rows to create a circle out of simple wedge shapes:

Then I tried another shape, using the same principles but adding casting on and decreases, Alison called this shape a star, mine has come out looking rather like a mutant starfish:

And lastly I had a go at creating a 3d shape using increasing and decreasing, and joining the sections as I went along:

This one reminds me of Snake’s Head Fritillary flowers (although my terrible photograph makes this a little hard to see).

A really enjoyable day, and I am looking forward to experimenting more with the techniques we were practising.