I had a afternoon class (3 hours) "Double Up & Around! Circular Double Knitting Techniques" with Lucy Neatby.  Double knitting is a technique for knitting two layers on one set of needles.  Using this technique the knitter can switch the yarn colours and end up with a reversible scarf or blanket, etc. with the design in reversed colours.  Lucy used her DVD Double Knitting Delights as a teaching aid.  It was great to see the technique being taught shown on a large screen while Lucy went around to help individuals.  I much preferred it over gathering around a teacher to look over their shoulders while they demonstrated a technique.

I had a lot of fun in the class as Lucy is a great teacher and double knitting is a fun technique.  I did have problems with the technique for knitting a pocket on a single-knit fabric using double-knitting so immediately after class I started another pocket to get the movements "into" my fingers.  My sampler started with the double cast-on for two layer knitting, then reversing the colours, then single layer knitting with double-knitted pocket.

I went to the marketplace after the class and bought copies of almost all of Lucy Neatby's DVDs: Double Knitting Delight, Intarsia Untangled 1 & 2, Knitting Essentials 1 & 2, and Finesse Your Knitting 1 & 2.  I feel these DVDs will come in very handy for remembering/learning new techniques and tricks to improve my knitting.

Saturday evening was the retreat banquet.  We had the surprise of a barber shop quartet showing up to sing.  One of the attending women's husband had hired the quartet to give his wife flowers and a song for Valentine's Day.  The quartet sang a couple of additional songs to the delight of the attendees.

Elsebeth Lavold was the featured speaker.  She talked about her history in knitting design.  She had lots of photos and was very interesting especially when talking about needing to invent new knitting techniques to display the sharp changes in viking cables and runes.  I plan to go to her exhibition "Knitting Along the Viking Trail" at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle before it closes.