This past weekend, I did my first-ever virtual knitting show! It probably sounds weird, but I shied away from virtual shows last year because the thought of spending my free time on Zoom felt a little too much like work. I'm not sure why it's different now that I've changed jobs, because I still work from home and do a ton of meetings virtually, but for some reason, it does seem different. The human brain is weird, what can I say?!
I went to the first and second VK Live events in Chicago (which ended up being the only ones, LOL) and always had a really great time, although I never signed up for a class. So when Faina Gobestein posted on Instagram that she was teaching a class on fixing brioche mistakes, I signed up - and that is one superpower I would very much like to have in my knitting toolkit!
When I signed up for the class, they offered me an upgrade to a "Superpass" for a few extra dollars, so I figured why not? It ended up being kind of a dud since I only dropped in on a few demos on the first day, but I did get to "see" a few of my former clients give presentations, which was nice. The one thing I was really interested to see was the Superpass demo of Pattern Genius, which is a new knitwear design app by knitCompanion. To say it really is genius is no exaggeration - it looks way more intuitive than any other app I've used before (and I've used quite a few). If I ever get back to designing for realsies, I will definitely take Pattern Genius for a test drive.
There were a fair number of "free" events which came with the class fee, although I really didn't take advantage of that aspect of the show. But I will say that being able to view the schedule and navigate to where you want to be was super easy. They also got major points for emailing me a reminder about my class 30 minutes before the start - in fact, this as an issue I had with a sewing class I signed up for last fall; somehow, I'd gotten my wires crossed and had written it on my calendar for the day after it actually took place. Not only that, it was a total scavenger hunt to find where to access the class I thought I was supposed to be taking - there were no emails with links or steps to follow to log in, and nothing even close to a schedule or when I was trying to log in to take that class I thought I was supposed to be in (even something that said when it took place, i.e. that I missed it, would have been appreciated!). To top it all off, it took over a week for them to upload the video replay of the class. On the whole, it was not a great experience...which is a long-winded way of saying how much I appreciated the user-friendliness of my Virtual VK Live experience.
I was absolutely not disappointed with my virtual classroom experience - in fact, it might have been slightly better than in-person because Faina had an overhead camera where she could show what she was talking about in great detail so everyone could see. It was fantastic! I learned so much and had several "aha" moments throughout the 2-hour class. - there are a lot of things I will be referring back to later on. Although I have successfully knit several brioche projects, I was really clueless about what to do when things went wrong. Quite honestly, if I spotted a mistake several rows or rounds back, I would either have to rip the whole thing out and start again, or live with it. Neither of those are very good options, are they?
Now, I feel like I have a much better understanding of the structure of brioche, and how to go about tinking back and fixing things when they go south. Faina also showed how she adds life lines to her brioche projects (which also works for any other kind of knitting project, of course) and it was a real game-changer for me.
I'm so glad that I signed up for this class, and I would definitely do another Virtual VK Live, now that I know what to expect. If there are any other virtual yarn shows that should be on my radar for 2021, let me know in the comments!
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