This weekend I took some online classes with Rowan Connect! Rowan offers online events throughout the year, sometimes just short previews of upcoming magazines or collections, sometimes multi-day events. This weekend was a multi-day event called Rowan Connect. They offered a bunch of different classes Friday through Sunday, and a number of complimentary events as well – interviews with designers, free quick tutorials, presentations on yarns they wanted to spotlight and so on.

I took two classes – Estonian Inlay and Crochet for Knitters. I have done an Estonian inlay (aka roositude) class before with a different teacher, but sometimes it is interesting to go over the same techniques with different people. Everyone has a different angle or way of explaining things. Estonian inlay was with Florence Spurling, who uses the technique quite a bit in her work. It was a fun class and I learned a lot!

Estonian Inlay sampler, with a little bit of lace thrown in there.

The other class was taught by two Canadian sisters who do a lot of podcasting and knitting classes and tutorials, Barb Barone and Cynthia Hyslop. It was about various crochet techniques knitters can use to facilitate or embellish their knitting. That included two types of crochet provisional cast-ons, crochet bind-off, adding crochet buttonhole edging, folding an edge hem, and adding crochet stripes to your knitting. It was very informative, and the handout will be very useful going forward!

Crochet for knitting sampler swatch

I did also sign up for some of the complimentary sessions, but didn’t get to any of them. However, everything is recorded, so I can go back and watch if I decide I want to within the next two weeks.

All in all, it was a really nice experience. The classes were interesting, there was a good variety of things to participate in, and it was very, very well organized and run. I’m looking forward to the next one!