Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Jolie’s recipe for Nicky Epstein’s Knitted Buttercup This is a significant variation of the flower on page 22 of Knitted Flowers (New York: Sixth&Spring Books, 2006). The changes: specified cast on in the round not back and forth with seam centered and straight rather than slanted decreases threaded center rather than bound-off center bead instead of french knot felted instead of not felted Nicky's design is probably easier for the novice knitter to execute, certainly less fussy on the decreases. If you have the book, try both her approach and mine and see what you think. Use size 9mm/US 13 needles Samples made with Cascade 220, color 8555 (black) Yarn held double throughout Each flower uses about 6-7 grams/13¼-15½ yards Makes a 7-petal flower Flower is worked in the round on double-pointed needles, two-circulars, or a magic loop. Special techniques: dec 5 into 1 (worked over a group of 5 stitches)= slip first stitch knitwise, slip second stitch knitwise, knit third stitch (...

In the process of chaos control this autumn, I did look around at items that needed a little love. Actually, I looked around to see what needed to be tossed or donated, and what needed just a little bit of my time. This Lantern Moon bag needed a little attention. I bought it some years back at Purly Gates. I liked it a lot, but the bamboo fractured on one side. (Another bag in the shop had the same problem.) This is a wonderful project bag for a small project, but it has also been a fabulous handbag. So I didn't want to throw it out. The solution? Nicky Epstein to the rescue! I pulled out the copy of Knitted Flowers and began to browse. I decided that a few black felted flowers, artistically placed, could be just the thing to save this cute bag from the trash. While I do like Knitted Flowers , I have to admit that this book is not without its flaws. There are no diagrams, just pictures of finished flowers. This means that you may be surprised when knitting the Five...

The Cuddly Hubby gave me some alpaca fiber for Christmas. This batt is rather interesting in that it appears to have color but doesn't. The alpaca fiber is white. But it appears to be pale blue and pale pink because it has been carded with blue and pink angelina fibers. Angelina is a rather Christmas-appropriate fiber, as it is basically tinsel, just on a thinner scale. After reading Deb Menz's wonderful book Color in Spinning -- thank you to JennaB the Yarn Pimp for lending me her copy -- I need to spend some time considering how I divide this batt. I also need to consider whether I want a single, double, or triple-ply yarn. In this case, multiple plies might allow me to create some interesting color variations. Plying pink on pink will produce pink, but plying pink on white should produce a paler pink. And I need to see if the pink and blue will blend visually to produce purple. Also, I need to think about how long I would like the color changes to be. Do I want st...

Last year , I had a post similar to this. As it is the giving season again, here is another post on some unusual gift choices for the knitter who already has everything. While I'm at it, let's just make sure that we know what "everything" is. In this case, "everything" means the knitter has a pleasingly generous stash, favorite needles in the full run of sizes, needle cases, bags, notions, all the best books, subscriptions to good knitting magazines, and dvds featuring Lucy Neatby and Elizabeth Zimmermann. In other words, you've run out of the obvious things to purchase. Page Points: Levenger recently redesigned and renamed these Page Nibs . They are thin clip-on bookmarks that you can leave in the book . They are perfect for marking interesting patterns in your knitting books. Some clever soul ought to include a sample with any purchase of a Barbara Walker stitch treasury, so that you can mark interesting things as you thumb through for that other...

The Thing in question is not a Wookiee. In this case, the Thing is a mahogany African bar. The Cuddly Hubby's family lived in Ghana for two years in the mid-1970s. They brought back a lot of indigenous household goods. A few years ago, the Cuddly Hubby's dad and step mom were redecorating and some items just didn't fit in their home anymore. One of these was the bar. As you can see from the photo, it is not a small object. Furthermore, the bar had been in the basement family room and used as a plant stand for quite some time. It had not been oiled every year. And there were water stains in the top where the plants had been set. The Cuddly Hubby's sister didn't want it, and the Cuddly Hubby didn't want it to fall out of the family, so he agreed that it could be sent out here. Marriage involves compromise, and this was one of those moments for me. The bar then spent several months wrapped up on a trailer waiting to be towed from Washington state to Geor...

This autumn has turned out to be a rather busy season, mostly full of cleaning and organizing and not nearly enough raw knitting. Part of the cleaning and organizing involved looking around at what was on the needles. There were definitely projects that were only a few hours shy of completion. One of them was this little sweater. This was the project for Joan Shrouder's "Set-in Sleeves Simplified" class, which I took at STITCHES South back in April. Happily, Joan will be at STITCHES South 2010 and will be teaching this class all day Sunday. The homework for class involved knitting the bottom rectangle of the cardigan. Because I've become enamoured of it, I used Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen's method for a tubular cast-on. I arrived in class with an inch of 1x1 ribbing and several inches of plain stockinette. Over the course of the 6-hour class, Joan shows you how to shape the armhole and neck. Since the sweater is small, there is time to knit it...

For various reasons, I really needed to have a good day yesterday. And as the Henry Moore exhibition and the Scarecrows in the Garden wrap up this weekend, I thought Thursday would be a good day to get myself down to Piedmont Park. So that's what I did. I got down there about 10 AM, late enough to avoid the morning traffic. For those of you not in the Atlanta area, there is major construction in midtown where the 14th street exit used to be and will someday be again. Consequently, driving in midtown is not for the easily flustered. Half of what you knew about navigating no longer applies. And the Cuddly Hubby was away on a business trip, so the Garmin was with him. I read the maps and took the back way in on North Avenue, left turn onto Piedmont and on up to the Atlanta Botanical Garden . The scarecrows never fail to delight. It is always worth the hassle to go into the city to see them. I know that citizens of New York and Los Angeles like to think of themselves as the m...

The first skein on the spinning wheel is completed. I followed Jenna's recommendation and started off with a 4-ounce roving of Blueface Leister from Gale's Art. Gale is a local dyer and member of Atlanta Knitting Guild. Plus, her work is just dang gone fine. You don't have to twist my arm to get me to buy her rovings. The colorway is deep blue sea, which is a nice analogous colorway of blue-greens, blues, cool purple, and a little warm green the color of kelp. The roving is also a chocolate swirl roving, which means that it incorporates both white and black wool. Although the black wool does dull the colors a little, it also adds a richness of tone that makes the final yarn more interesting and worth the effort. I followed advice from both Jenna the Yarn Pimp and Lydia the Spinning Goddess. Lydia reminded me that I should breath every half hour or so, as I was tense at learning the new skill. I also followed this advice by spinning only a little at a time, for just...

On the second of July, two furry critters came to our house to foster. I've been referring to them as "Bruce's cats" because that's who they were. Jenna the Yarn Pimp just smiles at me and reminds me that they aren't Bruce's cats anymore. Patty, Bruce's sister, has not yet made a final decision. But the boys have been here for more than 100 days. For the first month, they hid in the basement. From Brûlée's clever choice of hiding spots, I could tell he was the criminal mastermind. Vincent just looks good on the wanted posters. Brûlée tended to hide on the bottom shelf of the holiday decorations or on a three-quarter-filled shelf of books. He would lurk behind the Star Wars novels, and then come out to have his nose and forehead rubbed if he deemed it safe enough. Vincent would cower in the corner, figuring that with his dark fur, he would just blend in and become invisible. He doesn't so much blend in as resemble a cat-shaped quantu...

At the beginning of October, Cuddly Hubby and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. And the gift I got will count through our anniversary, Yuletide, Valentine's day, and my birthday in the spring. The box still had the paperwork on the outside indicating where it passed through customs. The paperwork identifies the place of origin as Tauranga, New Zealand, and the value is listed in NZ$. The blue label in the upper right indicates it came by air rather than cargo freighter. The big white "ATL" label further indicates the shipment came into the country at LAX and then arrived at ATL on the 4th of August. I can't help wondering about the interesting things customs officials must see on the job. For some reason, I get misty-eyed thinking about the distance this package traveled, crossing from eastern to western hemisphere and southern to northern hemisphere on its way to my home, leaving winter in New Zealand for high summer in Atlanta. And it sat quietly in ...

Last Friday I took an all-day workshop with Candace Eisner Strick . The workshop was sponsored by Atlanta Knitting Guild. One of my favorite things about the guild is the superstars the guild invites once or twice a year to come visit and teach workshops. Candace also teaches at STITCHES. She was here for STITCHES South 2009 and she will be back again for STITCHES South 2010. Alas, she won't be teaching Strickmuster (Austrian traveling stitches) at STITCHES South 2010. She is teaching The Art of Knitting Backwards, Thumbing the Purl, Tradition!, The Ripple Effect, Kumihimo, and 2 by 2. And she did show us a little of Thumbing the Purl. If you knit Continental, seriously consider that class. I already have in my library the three Lisl Fanderl Bäuerliches Stricken books. I think I bought them at Main Street Yarns in Watkinsville sometime during the past five years. Not sure. At any rate, they are apparently now out of print and hard to find so I am all the more fortunate...

Those of you who know me well know that I have passions other than knitting. Pandas is one of those. I love pandas. Our local pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, do not look alike to me. I can often tell the difference between them in photographs. I haven't spent enough time around Mei Lan or Xi Lan, but they're good cubs, too. If you live in Atlanta, then you may have heard talk about the zoo's latest fundraising effort . Cuddly Hubby and I already gave, rather generously, back in the summer. I'm almost sorry we did then, because now the zoo is running a charity auction . So I've been over on that site today, looking at all the great panda-fanatic goodies that I'd be bidding on if we hadn't already given. They include: a photo diary of Mei Lan commemorative silk embroidery commemorative banners a behind the scenes tour for four Xi Lan paw prints a tower of chocolaty goodies And there are some things that just warm your heart. Two children -- local? I do...

Cat Bordhi taught two workshops at The Whole Nine Yarns over the weekend. Of course, I and my undivided attention were there. For the non-knitters who read this blog (the knitters already know this) Cat's second book in her current sock series releases this week. This title has been on my wish list for more than a year. You'll recall from the Interlocking Leaves socks last spring that I really enjoyed foxglove architecture from New Pathways for Sock Knitters . I think I might still prefer that architecture over Personal Footprints, but both certainly have their merits. In the Saturday workshop, we made a personal footprints discovery sock. This is basically what's in the book, but it was so very nice to have Cat on hand. Especially if you do not knit socks very often (raise my hand), it is nice to have someone who has knit many, many socks to help you with fit. I also suspect that only podiatrists have thought about or looked at as many different feet as Cat. As yo...

Sometimes a technique gets a bad reputation. Intarsia is an example. A lot of knitters will not even try it, as they've already heard the horror stories. There are reasons not to love intarsia. It can sometimes be uneven. There are lots of loose strings during the knitting and lots of ends to weave in. And it can require a lot of concentration. Of course, this is mostly true if you are making complex picture knitting. But intarsia can be used to get some very nice decorative results without getting too complicated. Several years ago I wanted to knit a ruana. I was initially inspired by the one in Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls book. At the time, I had a nice stash of Reynolds Fusion and was looking for an excuse to play with it. Reynolds had a pamphlet of four different scarf patterns, and that was an inspirational starting point. So I started with that, and knit a truncated diamond shape with diamond patterns. I taught that pattern once as a class. And I've wor...

Of course, I did take some knitting with me on the Wisconsin vacation. Had to have that! And it was so nice being on a road trip vacation with the Cuddly Hubby, as he could drive and I could knit. (I may be passionate about knitting, but I do not recommend knitting and driving at the same time. Sometimes, you just have to be patient, Grasshopper.) You'll recall I had been experimenting with some brioche/shaker/Estonian patent stitches . This project evolved out of the net stitch that I showed in the video on 17 July . I was looking for an excuse to try the technique in a project. And this particular project also served a practical purpose. The Whole Nine Yarns had been to the TNNA market in June and purchased several "skeins" of Spectacular 14 from Bjorn of Hand Painted Knitting Yarns . Part of what makes this yarn unique is that it is already cut into long lengths, rather than flowing continuously from a skein. The colors are beautiful -- complex and interesti...

I did mention that we visited some local yarn shops while in Wisconsin. In these economically tough times, I know many people are bargain shopping at the big box stores. Still, if you can afford to, I definitely encourage you to support your local yarn shops. These are the people who will be there to help you figure out a pattern, who schedule classes and workshops and book signings, who will order just the right color when it is out of stock. And let's face it, you can't perfectly check yarn softness or match colors with an outfit without having the yarn in person. In Fish Creek I visited Red Sock Yarns. This is a relatively new shop but the owner has already made some wonderful and smart choices. In addition to a nice selection of good yarns, she has a sitting area for knitters or non-knitters who need to wait. Here I bought six skeins of elsebeth lavold Hempathy in a lovely spring green shade. My thought is to make a top to go with a certain silk skirt. I'd been...