Even Experts...

First I want to thank everyone at CNCH who took my classes.  You were all spectacular!  I can't believe how enthusiastic everyone was to learn new card weaving techniques!  The conference was very smoothly run, and I think everyone had a great time.

So, I've been teaching card weaving for about 4 years now, been doing it twice as long.  And I've seen all of the mistakes my students make.  Several I used to make myself frequently.  Evidently, I'm still very capable of making those same mistakes.

This little self-admission is out there to give confidence to all you new card weavers that even when you have 100s of bands under your belt (that's a strange image), you can still really screw up if you aren't paying attention.

I was warping just 10 cards to weave some shoe laces I wanted to bring on a driving trip this Memorial Day weekend.  Granted I was in a bit of a rush, but so are most of my students.  I noticed on the second card that the first card hadn't followed the same path on my circular warp as the second which was correct.  Okay, I can fix that.  Seven cards in I noticed while checking my Zs switching to Ss that in the sixth card I put half of the threads in Z and the other half S.  Never done that before!  Untie, rethread, continue.  Um, why does card eight and nine have the same colors in the same holes?  Well, they don't, I threaded eight with colors from draft card 9.  Rethread!

Needless to say, I finally finished warping that mess. Gee, only 30% of the cards were put on incorrectly the first time!  And no, no wine or other substances were imbibed before this debacle.

So yes, even experts really screw up sometimes.  I guess the difference between an expert and a novice is that I quickly saw, before continuing too far, that there were mistakes and immediately knew how to repair them quickly.  But that's just experience folks, so keep those cards turning and you too will become experienced!

SOAR!!!

Today was a big day.  It was SOAR registration day.  This is my one conference where I just get to play!  No teaching, no card weaving, just spinning with friends.  I can't wait until October now.

You have to understand that since they went to the electronic registration, everyone sits by their computer refreshing their browser frantically, waiting for that magic "Register Now" button to appear.  Then it is a mad rush through the preliminary registration process until you get to the workshops and retreats, and then you pray that the ones you wanted are still open.

I did very well this year.  Finished registration in the first five minutes and got everything I wanted.  In case you are curious, here's my list:

Workshop: Kate Larson's Colorwork Knitting Traditions

Retreats:
Back to the draft with Jacey Boggs,
Three wild downs with Judith MacKenzie (my first Judith class!)
Plying for Colorwork, with Kate again
Jeannine's Grab Bag which was just too fun not to do again.

Hope to see you all there!