The autumn show season is behind me. I plan to be home until mid-January. The sentiment, "There's no place like home," feels very strong right now! There is, of course, plenty to do. I have handouts to write. I have proposals to submit. A houseful of tasks have been delayed. I find myself trying to make up the last 10½ months in only 6 weeks. Probably not possible. Likely not a good idea. I have done very little knitting this year. On the other hand, I've rediscovered my love of embroidery. My mother had a surprisingly large number of nearly-completed projects. While I gave away a bunch of things in the half-done state, there were others so close to completion I figured it was almost faster just to finish them. Here's the first one. This is a project from Cross Stitch & Country Crafts magazine May-June 1991 , pages 4-5 & 10-11. It is titled "Iris with Blackwork." The completed piece is about 8¼ inches square, mak
Geometry is interesting. And mistakes happen. I have two patterns in the handout for my "Liberating the Labyrinth" class. Debbie New's Unexpected Knitting has beautiful sweater patterns in this technique. The downside from a pedagogical perspective is these are large, complicated sweater patterns. And sweaters need to fit! For the purposes of learning, I thought it would be better to have a couple smaller, easier projects for practice that are good regardless of size. I devised two cube patterns. Each uses 6 modules. That's enough to give the flavor of the technique without overwhelming. One cube is a zig-zag cube. The pattern is 1 selvedge stitch, decrease (D), increase (I), decrease, increase, decrease, increase, 1 selvedge stitch. The cube is worked back and forth and then seamed. You could also work it in the round. I am pretty sure working DIDIDI or IDIDID doesn't matter. You'll still get a cube. The pattern is commutative