Fair Isle and shopping at Madrona

The Madrona Fiber Arts retreat was this weekend and this year I signed up for the Fair Isle Simplified for Beginners. My instructor was Ann Bourgeois of Philosopher's Wool. There were less than 20 of us in class, with one poor gal having to withdraw because she got food poisoning.

As the day of my class approached closer and closer, I started to feel intimidated about learning Fair Isle, because the whole idea of knitting with two strands of yarn freaked me out. I kept thinking that I was going to fall behind and be the laughingstock of the class, but as you probably already knew, I had nothing to worry about and I had a blast! Who knew that stranded knitting is not that hard to learn??? Certainly not me :)

The folks at Philosopher's Wool are known for their instructions on two-handed Fair Isle knitting technique. So not do I only know how to knit with multiple strands of yarn, but how to knit with both hands! Crazy, I tell you!

During class, we were knitting a sampler purse pattern, which you can find here on their website. I finished about 1/3 of it during class and finished the body of the bag last night. So wanna see what I learned in class? Check it out:

I kept staring at this piece, in utter amazement that I, little ole' me, knit that piece. It was a big turning moment for me in knitting, that I've really come a long way. I'm really proud of myself :)

You can't have a weekend knitting retreat without a big yarn and fiber marketplace of course, and that's where things went downhill. I set a budget but totally blew it (heh). So wanna see what I came out with? Here's the bounty.

So here's the breakdown of what I got. Below I got two skeins of Socks That Rock. This colorway is Sam 'n Ella. I loved the name.
This colorway is called Gibson. I thought I might combine these two skeins for a chevron scarf or something.
One skein of 50% silk 50% wool laceweight yarn in Lichen from Tactile fiber arts. They offer hand dyed yarn using only natural dyes.

This is some yarn I got from Toots LeBlanc. I got 4 skeins of their 40/60 Angora/Merino laceweight in an ecru/ivory color and a silvery gray color.

These are worsted skeins in a 50/50% Alpaca/Jacob blend. I'm going to make a felted bag that my mom fell in love with last year at their booth. My plan is to get it finished before mother's day.
There's more! This is my purchase at Black Water Abbey yarns. I bought a cardi pattern called Vickie's Cardigan but originally was planning to buy yarn in a green colorway. But upon wearing their knit up sample of this cardigan in the colorway 'Rust' I decided to go with that same color instead. I love when you discover a color that you wouldn't necessarily choose to wear but discover it's a nice color on yourself once you try it on. This was definitely one of those moments!
Here's a close-up of the yarn.
I bought these buttons too. The gold colored ones will be for the cardi. The silver ones will be for another (I initially wanted the silver ones for the cardi, but they didn't go well with the warmer color of rust, but will find their way on another cardi someday!).

Maybe I can use the silver ones for a green or blue cardi down the road.
And last but not least, my name was chosen in a drawing for a gift card at one of the shops (Just Our Yarn) at the marketplace, so I also came back with 500 yards of 100% laceweight cashmere... nice stuff!

Taking this class gave me a lot more confidence to tackle something new in knitting and I feel that I've opened the big door of Opportunity now that I have a basic grasp of stranded knitting. I've got a lot of patterns to choose from now!