The thing about teaching tapestry

I was in Golden, Colorado last week teaching a Color Gradation Techniques for Tapestry class at The Recycled Lamb. The thing about teaching a four day class in a great yarn store is that there are too many opportunities to buy more knitting yarn. I have been banned from that practice until my stash gets smaller (mostly self-imposed), but they had wonderful undyed knitting yarn. And I looked at it and looked at it and thought, heck. I could buy this white yarn and make whatever colors I want. Color Gradation in knitting!

But the class was about color gradation in tapestry. The students did a fantastic job. They came from Alaska and Nevada and Washington and Golden. They were funny and committed and just enough crazy to make the whole week fun.

I'm showing them how to fix a float on a great example of shaped pick and pick.

I like to bring a few challenging examples to each class and see if anyone bites. I love this meander pattern and Dora did an amazing job doing it in a pink gradation.

Another exercise we continue to work on is creating transparency with color blending. Kathy did a great job with this one. I was convinced these colors were going to be wrong when she started. I even told her so. Good thing she didn't listen to me.

There were hachures...

And there were exceptionally attractive rhomboids...

And there were many discussions along the lines of, "why on earth you would want to weave from the back?"

It was a fun week.