Brioche Beginnings: Virtual Workshop with Michele Bernstein

Details

Date: Friday, April 25, 2025

Time: Noon-3:00 p.m. Eastern time

Location: Zoom. This is a virtual event.

Your order confirmation email will include a PDF download with the Zoom link for the workshop. 

Bonus! Your order confirmation email will also include our gift to you, MDK Field Guide No. 21: Brioche, with designs by Nancy Marchant. It’s a handy additional reference on brioche basics. 

The Class 

Michele will teach us her favorite knitting technique using her own pattern: Brioche Pastiche.

We’ll begin with basic 2-color brioche rib in the round, and then—it’s onward to a gentle introduction into brioche increases and decreases to form leafy patterns on a hat or cowl.  Work at your own pace while Michele shares tips and tricks for brioche knits and purls, chart reading, and troubleshooting mistakes.

After this workshop, you’ll be confident to jump into the world of brioche and well on your way to creating your choice of Michele’s Brioche Pastiche cowl or hat—or both! Once you get the hang of brioche, there’s no stopping you.

This will be a virtual event, held on Zoom. Due to the size of the group, participant mics will be muted, but the chat will be open. We will monitor the chat for questions and Michele will answer as many as time permits.

What you’ll need:

• Michele’s Brioche Pastiche pattern. Your confirmation email will include a code for a free download of the pattern on Ravelry.com.
• US No. 6 (4 mm) circular needle.  16 inch/40 cm length for hat, or 24 inch/60 cm length for cowl.
• 4 skeins of Atlas in two contrasting colors, or equivalent yardage from your stash. This will be enough yarn for both the hat and cowl.
• Stitch marker
• Tapestry needle

This class will be recorded. After the live session concludes, everyone enrolled in the class will receive a link to the video recording to watch at leisure.

Our Workshop Leader

Michele Lee Bernstein, known as PDXKnitterati, designs and teaches from her home base in Portland, Oregon. She loves designing accessories, especially if they use one or two skeins of very special yarn. She’s fond of texture (brioche, lace, entrelac, elongated stitches, assigned pooling), and using interesting techniques to make accessories sing. Her patterns are available through Ravelry and Payhip.

Michele loves teaching knitters to be the boss of their knitting! She’s a hot ticket, teaching around the country at fiber festivals (Vogue Knitting Live, Red Alder Fiber Arts Festival, Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival), guild meetings, retreats, and local yarn shops. Her book, Brioche Knit Love: 21 Skill Building Projects from Simple to Sublime combines her love for teaching and designing, using simple accessories to take knitters from the easiest one color brioche through more complex brioche techniques.

Michele blogs about knitting, food, and music at PDXKnitterati.com. You can also find her on Instagram, Facebook, Ravelry, YouTube, Threads, and Bluesky; she’s PDXKnitterati on all platforms.