Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Since I posted a picture of my house in winter, I thought I'd post another of it in springtime. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago on 8 April, so today that pink dogwood in front is a lot more green and a lot less pink. Springtime is my favorite time of year in Atlanta. It creeps in around early March, although I've seen crocus or hardy daffodiles in bloom here in late February. In mid-March there's a week of bradford pear whiteness. Then the cherry trees bloom for about ten days. Azaleas run about three or four weeks, as varieties bloom at different times. Dogwoods also last much of April. In my neighborhood this week, I've seen tulips and iris. And I took a hike around Kennesaw Mountain last Friday and saw several different types of wildflowers. I do not, however, know the names of any of the stuff I saw. Today's high was around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, so we are at the beginning of the warm weather. As we head into May, summer will take hold. More about that...

The last sweater in this series is another inspiration from the brilliant mind of Debbie New. For the labyrinth sweater, I stayed fairly close to her pattern. Of course, I used different yarn (Cascade 220 and Schaefer Miss Priss in the Margaret Sanger colorway). That pretty orchid purple (color 8901) is the cast-on edge. The marigold yellow (color 7825) is the cast-off edge. The cast-on started in the straight area in the lower left of the back. It took about 4 hours to cast-on -- many, many stitches and many, many stitch markers in two colors. And much double- and triple-checking. And do not, do not, DO NOT, twist the cast-on before you join it. No need to ask me how I know this. Once the cast-on is done, then the fun begins. I think I only knit about 9 or 10 rows total. Granted, all the rows were very, very long. Each colored marker represents either a double-increase or a double-decrease. So, you knit a few stitches, work the appropriate increase or decrease, work a few more stitche...

The last two sweaters I'm posting in this series both come from Debbie New's wonderful book Unexpected Knitting (Pittsville, WI: Schoolhouse Press 2003). This is knitting for PhDs. And do not try to read the whole thing at once. Read one chapter. Give it time to digest. Then read another. Do be nice to your brain. The same sweater, above and below. The magic of double-knitting! I decided that I wanted to try the ouroborus sweater. Ms. New works hers from the center outwards, using double-increases. As tidy double-increases are not as easy to work as tidy double-decreases, I did the math to work mine in the other direction. The yarn is Takhi Cotton Classic left over from a flamingo-patterned sweater that I made for ZooAtlanta's 2004 Beastly Feast. The fair isle heart pattern is of my own devising. And, silly me, I couldn't decided whether I wanted white hearts on pink or pink hearts on white, so I compromised and double-knit the whole thing. It is reversible...

This is the classic pattern by Elizabeth Zimmermann. The cast-on edge is at the cuffs and across the back. Double-decreases lead to arm shaping on the back side of the sleeves. Then double-increases lead to shaping on the front of the jacket. There is a little bit of neck shaping by casting-on and off stitches. Extra rows are worked at the back for length across the diaper-clad tush. Buttons and button bands are at the end. The last step is one seam -- the top across the shoulders and sleeves. And the whole thing is in garter stitch. If you haven't knit one yet -- why not? This is one of the classic, top 10 patterns of all time. This is my second baby surprise jacket. Last year I knit both a baby surprise jacket and an EZ surplice baby jacket (see Vogue Knitting, spring/summer 2007, pp. 28 & 30) for a friend who was expecting twin boys. For this second time around, I used a provisional cast-on so that I would have live stitches for the i-cord edging and seam at the end. The c...

I do a fair bit of my own designing, so I'm particular about whose patterns I knit. This pattern is called the "Bamboo Kimono" and it comes from Two Sticks and a String by Kerry Ferguson. The copyright is 1999 from Fiber Studio Press. I happened upon it in one of the not-quite-local yarn shops. This is one of the few pattern books -- rather than technique books -- I've bought and it has lots of beautiful designs. At some point, I'd also like to knit the "Puzzlemaker Jacket." And a note about the sizing in this book -- most of these patterns are for bigger people. I dropped down several needle sizes to change the gauge so that the Bamboo Kimono would fit me. Ms. Ferguson's original is a 52-inch chest -- about 20 inches more than what I need. As with Judy's Grandmother's Baby Sweater, the Bamboo Kimono was originally designed to be knit all in the same color. Once again, I acquired a supply of Knit One Crochet Too Paintbox color #08 Painted Des...

This pretty lace cardigan is my own design for my niece, Bailie Jayne. It took three skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in the Happy Valley colorway. If you look very closely, you can see that one skein was from a different dye lot. The shop in Pennsylvania where I found this yarn sold it primarily as sock yarn, to the point that the skeins were tied together in pairs and most of their inventory was two skeins total of each colorway. I didn't realize I was going to need three skeins until later and, knowing that I had bought the last, had to settle for finding a skein of a different dye lot in a shop local to me in Georgia. Most of the colors were identical, but the green was visibly different. And I used a skein of the matching angora for trim, just because I wanted an excuse to play with angora. The sweater was knit in blocks in just the right width to cause the yarn to flash. I cast-on at the bottom and worked the first skein, back and forth, in feather & fan stitch....

The pattern for this adorable baby sweater comes from Suzan Mischer et al Greetings from Knit Cafe . In fact, I bought the book simply for this one pattern, "Judy's Grandmother's Baby Sweater" by Judy Spector, pp. 60-63. Proof of the quality of the pattern -- Ms. Spector includes the cable cast-on and the slipped selvedge stitch in her instructions so that the ties look very nice indeed. I knit this simply for the pleasure of knitting it, using some stash yarn orphaned from a larger project. I have no clue whose baby will eventually wear this reversible sweater. It is a charming example of a sweater that is knit cuff to cuff in a combination of honeycomb and garter stitches. In this case, it is cast on at the end of one of the ties, worked sideways with appropriate increases or decreases, and cast off at the end of the other tie. I used waste yarn to leave openings for the sleeves, which were added after the body was finished. The pattern called for seaming the sleeve...

This Valentine-themed gansey is my own design. My resources were Beth Brown-Reinsel 's Knitting Ganseys from 1993 and the Barbara Walker Treasuries . Ms. Reinsel's book is very well-written with all the information that might be needed about how to construct a gansey. She also has some wonderfully classic sample patterns, including some children's patterns for those who would like to try a gansey but are not quite ready to go after an adult-sized challenged. I should add that I took Ms. Reinsel's Swedish Cast-Ons class in March of 2007 and can recommend her as an instructor. (Her blog is here .) Like the yoke and Aran sweaters, it was knit in the round beginning at the bottom. At the underarms, the work was divided into front and back and continued flat (with neck shaping) on separate needles and with separate balls of yarn to the top. In order to make the saddle shoulders, I provisionally cast-on stitches to bridge the shoulder/neck gap, put those two groups of stitch...