Vogue Knititng Live Registration Open for Charlotte

Remember when I told you that Vogue Knitting Live was going to do a pop-up show in Charlotte in September? Well, registration is now open for the vent, and it sounds like it will be a lot of fun.

Knitters in attendance at the event — part of the Southern Women’s Show Sept. 20-23 — will have access to classes by such pros as Lily Chin, Nicky Epstein and Mary Beth Temple, and Vickie Howell will be in the beginner’s lounge to help those who haven’t yet picked up their needles (or hooks!) or who need a little help mastering the basics. Classes cover a lot of ground, from fixing mistakes in lace knitting to the basics of couture knitting, knitting in circles, two-color knitting, edgings, design inspiration and more.

They’ll be a craft pavilion with make and takes form Universal Yarn, a Vogue Knitting fashion show and more. If you’re in the south and you love to knit, this is one to check out.

Lots of craft designers are understandably frustrated about the proliferation of AI “designed” patterns and photos of projects that have no basis in reality. People who don’t know how to tell if a project is AI are often also frustrated when they see a picture for something but there’s no pattern because it’s not real, or they buy a pattern that doesn’t actually explain how to make the thing or ends up looking totally different from the picture.

Some designers have taken it upon themselves to try to make some of those AI patterns that we see online, often with hilarious results.

Katherine Foster was inspired by a famous AI elephant to make what she calls “AIlephant,” which is now a free knitting pattern on Ravelry.

Her prototype uses worsted weight yarn, but you can use whatever yarn you like to make different sizes of elephants.

The elephant features a cable running down the trunk and a different cable pattern on the back. It’s worked in pieces that are joined and stuffed as you go. It uses German short row shaping on the body and includes written instructions as well as a chart for the cable patterns.

Reading through the pattern, it sounds a little fiddly, which makes sense because it was designed to look like a pattern that isn’t real. But it’s doable, as evidenced by the handful of projects you can find on Ravelry. The ears on her version aren’t quite as big and round or maybe don’t sit in quite the same place as the AI version (which if you haven’t seen it there’s a photo of that on the projects page, too). But it’s a pretty honest replica of a dishonest photo, and a really cute elephant in its own right.

If you make this one I would love to hear about it!

You can grab the free pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katherine Foster]

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