Starstruck

Friday, and a day off, so I make my way to the i-knit London Weekender, getting off at St James's Park and walking over a few streets.

I'd booked the class on Celtic Knotwork by Alice Starmore, whose work I have admired since I first saw "The Celtic Collection"

 

I don't know what I had imagined - she has a ferocious reputation - but she was charming, friendly and helpful, patient with those having troubles.   Her accent has that Gaelic lilt, quite different from Scots but with the odd trans-Atlantic nuance.  In the picture you can see the wonderful purple cardigan she was wearing, the shaping achieved alongside the Celtic braids and cables.  It is a lightweight Aran and certainly looked quite different from the boxy affairs in Celtic Knitting", especially on her svelte figure.  She was wearing Westwood - either that or her tartan skirt had got caught up in her underwear, but no - it was Westwood.

This was my first ever knitting class, so what did I learn?  To be fair, other people all around me were having lightbulb moments, as they realised how those closed motifs are started and ended.  And I did grasp for the first time what was meant to happen at a crucial point in the manoeuvre.  But I had basically got my head round the method when I started my throw, or at least by the time I had finished it some eighteen months later.

No, what I learned was how to make use of an OHT without someone using the dreaded word "PowerPoint."  I learned something about how she began to design knots and a little about their life on a croft.  I also learned that she will be seen using natural dyes on an episode of "Coast" some time in the future, using a cauldron they unearthed in the garden of their croft, which sounds remarkably like the one I have standing in the centre of my garden which came from my parents' Cumbrian farm. 

Sadly, I didn't learn how to translate source material from Viking crosses into knitting patterns.  But it was worth every penny to have Alice Starmore declare my knitting sample excellent.