Stitchboard Admin message #1
Yarn Craft Academy Live (newstitchaday.com) Class: Knitting 103: Lace Knitting for Beginners
January 31, 2013 at 3:05:42 PM
 
Yarn Craft Academy Live (newstitchaday.com) Class: Knitting 103: Lace Knitting for Beginners with Johnny Vasquez

I've taken a lot of classes over the years, but until now, never a live one online.  I have to say that for a first experience, it was wonderful!  I'm not a beginner knitter or a beginning lace knitter, but I had received an invitation and really wanted to experience an interactive online class.

Johnny's class is very relaxed, with instructions repeated for newbies and helpful people in the chat to advise if you need help.  Johnny speaks clearly and slowly, and he definitely knows his stuff!

The class was comprised of pre-recorded videos interspersed with live, interactive instructions.  Johnny was very responsive to questions, which made it easy for anyone to follow along with him if they got stuck (and for anyone who didn't, it was still informative, just a bit more relaxed).

I noticed that my chat got "stuck" at one point, so I was frustrated when I was trying to help someone, but that apparently was a UStream glitch and absolutely not the fault of Yarn Craft Academy.

The pre-recorded material was very helpful and nicely done.  I greatly enjoyed the segment on reading charts, because I never learned charts...as a self-taught knitter learning primarily from books available at the time, I learned how to read patterns, not charts, which apparently weren't used quite as much at the time.  There was also a pre-recorded segment on using the backwards loop cast on for a good lace knitting edge.  This is a perfect cast on, IMO, and one I'd never used, despite having knitted lace before.  I'll be sure to use it in the future.  I also loved the segment on different types of yarns.  This is essential for any beginning lace stitcher!

Overall, I would highly recommend these classes...my understanding is that if you purchase classes, you get recordings of them; with a free class, understandably, that's not the case.  Since I didn't opt for the recording, as I don't need it, I'd have to opine that for a beginner, it would be quite helpful to have the recording for reference.  The lineup of classes is excellent (culled from people's suggestions), so be sure to check them out if there's something you're interested in learning!

For the listing of the different deals they offer:
http://newstitchaday.com/Academy/
To check out the class lineup:
http://newstitchaday.com/classes/

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