Signature Needle Arts

Every show we go to has at least one memorable customer and the Maryland Sheep and Wool was no exception. We saw several young women with shirts that said “I’m With Hot Pants”. Of course we had to ask and found out they were with a charming young guy who had actually knit, and was wearing, orange hot pants complete with cabled embellishment along the sides! Definitely worthy of having special shirts. I only wish we had a picture to share.

Laura and I flew in and Daniella and her wonderful fire fighter husband, Mark drove the van with all the needles and booth stuff and set up. We just had to waltz in and wait for the customers to arrive. Mark took over the duties my husband Kent did in the past—getting us cool drinks, food, and whatever else we needed, hauling and carrying without complaint. I was glad he could see in person how huge this festival is and why we are so tired when we get home.

The festival was jam packed with wonderful customers and just plain packed with long lines for anything cool. The heat was a real shock for us who are used to Wisconsin Mays which may include snow flurries.

Every aisle was filled and we were so glad to see many old friends and get to meet  so many new folks. Early on Saturday Clara Parkes from Knitter’s Review stopped by. Now you should know that this is like having a rock star come by. She is the most unassuming and kind person. Actually she took some great pictures.

We had the new circulars with us and it was amazing seeing how people reacted to finding they could find a needle “stalk” that fits their hand or style of knitting. At first when someone came up I would try and size them up—look at their hands to see if they had very large or small hands but I soon realized that after trying the different length of needle “stalks” that what the knitter found perfect might not just be what seemed obvious.

The first thing that folks said was that they had never thought about it. I replied that this was because with other companies “you get what you get”—no choice allowed. However, once they tried the 3 lengths it was obvious that one was much better than the others.

After a while I was able to say with complete certainty that they would never pick up any circular needle without the thought of “do I like the stalk length or not?” coming into their head. After gleaning the many comments here are some thoughts of why you would like one over the other.

4”— People with small hands OR really large hands who want to “cup” the needle completely within their palm. The majority thought this was too short but if a very short (i.e.20” ) overall length is needed it had to be the choice even if it is not the most comfortable.

5”—The most popular length by far. Most felt this would work and be comfortable.

6”—Knitters with large hands, or those with arthritis on the sides of their hand where a short stalk just hurts but some surprises: There was a woman in a wheel chair who said she had tendonitis. She couldn’t believe the diminished stress on her hand/wrist/elbow with this length.

A Faire Isle knitter came up early on and said that this longer length would be perfect for that sort of work because more stitches stay on the stalk for easy visibility in case their might be an error. After that I mentioned this to others and every one who did Faire Isle work agreed. Actually one told me that when we have the size 3 needles ready they would be very popular for them.

Since I am not a great knitter and even though I have very small hands, I love the 6” stalk because I can see what I just did. If I have an errant stitch that is wildly large I can just fix it before it drops off onto the cable.

It seemed to me that lace patterns would also be visible for enough stitches to be able to see if there are any mistakes. I mentioned this to Clara Parkes and she agreed. OK, for me to have someone like her agree is like having Itzak Perleman agree with an observation by a 5th grade violinist!

By the way if you go to the Spring-Summer issue of Knitty.com you will see a pattern called Gams which may be just what our Hot Pants used.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.