The A Mano experience

Last Friday was the "Two Socks at Once" class at A Mano Yarn Center. I showed up early to take some snapshots of the yarn store. Above is the display window. What you can't see is the window seats. A great place to relax and have natural light to do knitting with.

A Mano doesn't have a super large space. But there sure are a lot of yarn! I've never realized this until I looked through the lens of the camera. Wow! No wonder the yarn often pops out and hit you when you walk by.

They have a lot of needles! Some funky ones too. I was going to get a couple of interesting Japanese circular needles made with plastic. The needles and cable are made as one piece. There's even an 8.5" circ for socks and baby hats. I'll try to remember to get them next time.

The large table in the back is where things happen. Classes, S n' B gatherings, lunch, dinner, etc.



Now on to the class. I was jumping up and down when I saw the needles did arrive in time for us. I immediately grabbed one 47" #1 and one 47" #2 Addi Turbo. I decided on a yarn that has all the colors of the rainbow (I wonder why.) Very vibrant. I am going to do another post on the yarn when I get enough length worked on the socks to show you.

Seven people showed up for the class. It was scheduled to start after the store hours. Thank goodness for that! We didn't need distraction that's for sure. It was HARD! Kathy was a very good teacher. She went through every little detail. The way she taught also encouraged us to adjust a pattern to our individual measurements.

The cast-on chosen by Kathy was Twisted German Cast-on. It is stretchier. I soon realized that it was the same as Old Norwegian Cast-on which I learned when I did my second sock. I was glad. It was a difficult technique to learn and took up a lot of time to explain and demonstrate.

Anyway, the class was fun! Only one of us decided to use two circs. Everyone else chose single circ. It was difficult. I mean really really difficult. But it was so fun to be in a class when we teased each other on. When several people are frustrated at the same time, it can be really really funny.

I frogged what I did in the class and started the whole thing over at home. I wanted to take my time to go through every step so that I could understand it completely. I also found instructions on the internet for knitting two socks on one circ. Only two rows finished at this point, but I think I am beginning to like it very much. Just like learning to use the DPNs, this method takes time to get used to. Once you get into the flow, it's quite enjoyable.