Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

More than three years ago, I started this blog because I knew I wanted to break into knitting designing and teaching. I saw that most people who published had a blog or a website, so I thought I'd better start a blog. In those 1000+ days, the blog has given me a chance to practice pattern writing. And it has given me a place to share new ideas. It has forced me to learn how to use certain types of software. And it has forced me to learn at least a little something about shooting digital pictures and video. Today I finally sent a submission to Knitty. I'm only 1000 days behind schedule. To all my knitting friends out there, thank you for being so supportive in my creative endeavors. I wish you all a happy, prosperous, and knitterly new year!

It has been a rare week indeed. On Monday night, we had a lunar eclipse that coincided with the winter solstice. This happy coincidence occurred most recently more than 450 years ago. This evening, it is snowing in Atlanta. My understanding is that the last white Christmas in Atlanta was in the 19th century. The photograph is a nearly current view out my studio windows. On this sacred day, it pleases me to think happy thoughts of those I love. Some are past, some are present, some are future, and some never were. The Cuddly Hubby reading a book or running a D&D game. The Yarn Pimp spinning or knitting with a cat or two close by. The Bard eating a gourmet meal somewhere in France. Carole decking her halls. Ginny hosting Thanksgiving. Andy playing a game. Elalyr & Tegyrius' wedding. Dana & John's pirate wedding. Vincent eating tuna. Brûlée pouncing on the feather toy. My grandmother sewing something beautiful. My other grandmother cooking somethi...

There are some days when you just can't put a value on the networking on Ravelry. I've been knitting madly on a pink shawl during the last week. By about Friday, I could see that maybe I was going to be just a wee bit short on the yarn. When I cast off on Monday morning, I came up short. My usual approach is to go find other people who have finished a project with the same yarn. In this case not so much luck, as they are in Italy, France, and Finland. But I did find someone in Ohio who had started a project with it. And I am figuring she'll still be able to finish hers, as I'm only needing about half a gram of yarn out of the 100 grams she has. And it is nice to be able to talk to knitters about this, as these are the sorts of people who understand. Thank goodness this particular shawl needs to be done before the new year but not necessarily before Christmas. My rescuer has a very crafty and creative blog and an Etsy shop called Maiden Jane . Her blog is full of...

Some places have snow days. Today isn't a snow day here, but it is a cold day. The temperature in Mableton right now is below freezing. This is in the middle of a sunny afternoon. A typical mid-winter day in Atlanta involves dipping just below freezing overnight but climbing into the mid-40s Fahrenheit during the day. I have no idea how much snow removal equipment is owned by Cobb County, but I've heard tell that the city of Atlanta has a -- yes, one single -- snow plow. I'm sure it is meant only for emergencies. Cuddly Hubby advised me to stay indoors today, and I've taken his advice. The house needed a good cleaning, and all the moving about kept me warmer. I put five Christmas CDs in the player, lit some frankincense and myrrh incense, dug out the wrapping paper, and went to work on wrapping the gifts for the nephews and niece. And now I'm here, at the computer, with a nice cup of hot chocolate to keep me company. Even the cats are hiding someplace warm...

It's that time of the year. No, I'm not referring to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the great triumvirate of cool-weather dark-day holidays. No, it's time to start signing up for all the great knitting offerings in 2011. Registration has just opened this morning for STITCHES South 2011. Because of where Easter falls on the calendar, STITCHES South will be a week early on 14 through 17 April. Good for us, as the spring flowering trees should be in even better blossom than the previous two years. XRX will be setting up the party at the Renaissance Waverly Hotel & Cobb Galleria Centre, just off I-285 and I-75 on the north side of Atlanta. (Clicking the link at upper left will take you to the STITCHES main portal page. Clicking the link at the top of the sidebar will take you to the description of my class.) Once again, it is my privilege to teach at STITCHES South. I'll be teaching "More Than One Way to Skin a Sweater." This is an overview o...

North Georgia Knitting Guild has been hosting an annual auction as a way to raise funds. This year's auction was held during the October meeting. This is one of the advantages to being in a smaller guild. Atlanta Knitting Guild has too many members for something of this scale, although AKG is planning a yarn swap at the December meeting. I was being pretty tight with money this time, partly because I was in the midst of closing an old checking account and opening a new one. I didn't have the new checks yet, I didn't want to write any more checks on an account I was about to close, and my money was split between the two, so that kept me well-behaved. I spent between $20 and $30 for what you see in the photograph. The three small booklets were all one lot. I find it interesting to browse even simple pamphlets. Sometimes you find something just a little interesting and out of the way. And you never know what will be lurking inside a stitch dictionary. I was pleased ...

The Whole Nine Yarns has a sock guild. This is a sock club that meets once a month for social time and for education. Each month is a different, exclusive sock pattern and hand-dyed sock yarn to go with that pattern. It is a very cool idea and has proven to be a good way for sock knitters to try different techniques. Some socks are knit toe up, some top down, some lace, some texture, some cables. For January, JennaB the Yarn Pimp designed a sock with beautiful cabled Saxon Braid cuffs knit sideways. I'll get to that in a couple paragraphs. First, I want to draw your attention to the yarn. Yup, that's it. It really doesn't look like all that much, does it? It is mostly still the same undyed white. There is a little bit of pale grey at each end, and some pale rusty orange in the middle. When it first showed up in the shop, I noticed it for how quiet it is compared to some of the complicated sock guild yarns. This is a yarn you have to knit up to understand. JennaB...

The other shop we visited in Spokane was A Grand Yarn. This one is also a little tricky to find, as the shopping center sits perpendicular rather than parallel to the main road. You need to look for the dark brown buildings with the very slanted roofs. A Grand Yarn is just a few doors in from the road. The shop had lots of lovely samples and a fine selection of books as well as yarns. This is just the sort of good friendly local yarn shop every knitter ought to have close to her home. We chatted with both Mary, the outgoing owner, and Libby and Nancy, the incoming owners. All these ladies are clearly devoted to their knitting customers. I purchased a few spare stitch holders and a copy of Myra Wood's Crazy Lace . The beautiful color and cleverly-styled photographs will lure you into adding this book to your shelf. This is definitely a book for the free-spirited knitter. If you are somebody who doesn't like lace because it involves too much following of rules, then you...

During the summer, I decided to take Elizabeth Zimmermann's advice about travel knitting. She suggested a nice shawl, as it is light, easy to transport, and gives hours upon hours of knitting pleasure. For our trip out west, Lyra seemed like the perfect choice. I had purchased the yarn and pattern from the Yarn Place during a moment of unexplained weakness on the last day of STITCHES South 2010. Now one of the things I really need to learn -- and by learn I mean totally take to heart -- is the idea that you ought to cast on such projects before you leave home. I've made this mistake the last two years in a row for Dragon*Con as well, spending four days of sitting and listening sans knitting. (I believe one year I got my Dragon*Con project cast on too early. I liked it too much and finished the whole thing in a week.) Because the trip west involved flying, I was greatly limited in what I could pack. Part of why I'll schlep the day and a half drive to Pennsylvania t...

I haven't gotten nearly as much knitting done lately as I would like. I did, however, finally manage to finish this swatch for an upcoming class. I've been surprised when I teach by how many knitters only know one or two ways to increase. There are so very many, and they each have their own best application. So I've created this swatch which demonstrates 42 different mirrored double-increases in stockinette. I did not include any examples here of hiding the increase behind a cable or traveling stitch, as that would open up another whole area of exploration. I also haven't included on this swatch increasing by knitting with more than one strand at a time, such as using the tail or using the other yarn when doing double knitting or Fair Isle stranded knitting. And I didn't include casting on in the middle of a row, such as with an e-loop, crochet cast-on, knitted-on cast-on, or cable cast-on. Some of these are quite decorative. I've used yarn overs, knitti...

I wanted to have something a little special to show in my "More Than One Way to Skin a Sweater" class back in April. This plain cropped jacket has an unusual construction method which I call "origami" because it can be represented by a rectangle that is cut and folded. You'll recall this jacket is worked in linen stitch. I only had the one large skein, so I weighed it. This allowed for me to make calculations as I knit. How much fabric did I have? How much yarn had I used? How long could the sleeves be without running out of yarn? These questions can be answered with some confidence if you weigh the skein before beginning and at intervals as you knit. I crochet cast-on at the bottom edge and treated the bottom part of the jacket as a rectangle. I planned and used about 35-40% of the skein. When I got to the underarms, I folded the rectangle as if it were the bottom of a cardigan -- right front, back, left front. I was at the beginning of a right-side ...

I've been enjoying spinning the Louet Northern Lights roving I bought at The Mannings during Christmas. This is a standard roving, color 28 Violets. It actually has a fair amount of blue and green, including a nice shock of hot kiwi and a little punch of almost plain white or very pale blue. There were two hanks in the shop and I bought both, figuring that eight ounces would give me enough yardage to produce a substantial project. One of the problems for me with spinning is going to be projects. I don't need or wear a lot of hats or gloves. Most of the things I make for myself are shawls or sweaters which require a significant amount of yarn. So my hope for this roving was that I'd have enough yardage at the end to really make something. As per my typical practice, I pre-drafted the roving. Because I'm still a novice, I used the second-lowest ratio on my wheel. Sometimes I attend the Monday spin nights at The Whole Nine Yarns . It is a nice group, smaller and ...

(Photo: Cuddy Hubby and I looking into a late afternoon sun with Flathead Lake, Montana behind us.) After two years and three previous blog posts ( 18 July 2008 , 4 June 2010 , 5 June 2010 ), I am elated to report that I have completed the Puzzlemaker Jacket by Kerry Ferguson. I completed it while on vacation in Washington State in late June. The knitting had been completed in Atlanta, but there was the matter of weaving in ends and devising a closure. What I learned: Even if you live in the South, cotton is not your friend if your project involves a lot of ends. I got the best results for weaving in mercerized cotton by splitting the plies and running them in different directions, then weaving the yarn back on itself and splitting it with a chenille needle. This is similar to the technique used in a Russian join or for weaving in ends on needlepoint canvaswork. There are triangles which took as much time to weave in ends as they did to knit. Changing the pattern from two colors to thr...

My six-year-old niece learned to knit on Tuesday. I was up in Pennsylvania visiting family in June, and the Little Princess asked if I would teach her to knit. I wasn't sure she was really, truly serious. But I did go visit the friendly local yarn shop, Uncommon Threads , and buy a skein of heathered pink Cascade 220 and size 4.5mm/US 7 bamboo Clover circular knitting needles. When I returned to Pennsylvania in July, she was still talking about wanting to knit. She had discovered some bright, multicolored craft yarn in her mother's stash. I cast on thirty stitches and worked the first couple rows. Then I let the Little Princess manipulate the needles. She made the sticks move, and I wrapped the yarn. It was a little awkward, but it also gave her the chance to learn the dexterity of moving the needles without also tensioning the yarn. By the late evening, she was venturing into working the needles and the yarn by herself, and our tandem team knitting was unnecessary. In the phot...

I've been updating my Ravelry files with some older projects. I realized I needed to add the Jester Tentacles Bag from Cat Bordhi's Second Treasury of Magical Knitting when someone wanted to trade for the four skeins of heathered Cascade 220 in my stash. Ummm, well, I don't really have four skeins of it anymore. I must admit that I initially passed on the whole mobius knitting thing. The First Treasury of Magical Knitting is nice, but it is mostly scarves. Granted, what I didn't understand on a quick glance is that some lace patterns do very interesting things when you put them in a mobius. But when the sequel came out with its felted bowls and this crazy bag, I jumped in and bought both. I had felted Cascade 220 before. This was a good thing, because I had written down the before and after numbers, so I could do the math to figure out how big to knit before felting. In the pattern, Cat Bordhi has the straps as separate long tentacles that are tied together after felt...

Today was the opening day for the new Trader's Alley exhibit area at ZooAtlanta. Although there are other things I ought to be doing, and it was a wicked sticky hot day, I scooted down for a quick peak. The zoo was pretty full by the time I left at 11 AM. As a bear fan, I am super excited about Xander and Sabah, the new Malayan sun bears. This pair does have a breeding recommendation, although Dr. Snyder stated during the press conference that they can be tricky to breed in captivity. Bless Dr. Snyder -- she's becoming a love expert on unromantic bears. She and her team have managed with Lun Lun and Yang Yang, so we'll hope that Sabah and Xander are easy compared to giant pandas. Sun bears are active and will require lots of enrichment. Of course, today all I got was a distant view of a shy Xander. There is a small black blob in the center of the photo at right. At least you can see what a nice space it is and where the overlook is located. Once the bears are accu...

Long before I met Rick Mondragon in person, I learned his name from an old Threads magazine article. If you have the February 1995 issue, or the reprint in Great Knits (Newton CT: Taunton Press 1995, pp. 58-61), you can read his article "Knit in Blocks of Color -- without Bobbins." Rick's technique allows you to knit individual blocks and then connect as you go. In that regard it is similar to modular knitting, except you really are ending up with the yarn in exactly the same place it would be if you had lined up a long row of little balls or bobbins and knit not-so-merrily across in intarsia. And if you are a Kaffe Fassett fan, this technique could open up a whole new world! One way to learn this is to knit two plain intarsia blocks and then unpick only one of them. (The white dots are the tops of the pin heads. I've pinned this swatch flat to a pillow.) I've unpicked the top eight rows of knitting on the blue half of this swatch. Do you see the paire...

I've been knitting on some older projects that just need to get off the needles. In particular, I've come back to Puzzlemaker. You may recall that I started this project in 2008 . I was moving along rather nicely that summer, and got a lot done during the Beijing Summer Olympic Games. This is when things went bad. I believe the Egregious Error was made sometime during one of the beach vollyball finals. The Americans were playing rather well at beach volleyball, and I got hooked on it. With the twelve-hour time difference, the finals that started at 1 PM Beijing time were at 1 AM Atlanta time. I couldn't resist staying up to watch the finals LIVE. And I knit along merrily. Do you recall in Gremlins how you aren't supposed to feed the cute little creatures after midnight? I believe there may be a similar rule for knitting. If it requires the least bit of thought, do not attempt after your normal bedtime. Just don't risk it. Well, not only did I make a mis...

On Saturday, North Georgia Knitting Guild took a day trip to Seven Gables Farm in Milton, Georgia. In addition to the guild, many thanks are also due to Knit Witch and Only Ewe and Cotton Too for organizing the outing. We had a lovely time both watching the animals and enjoying our outdoor picnic. There was also a lot of socializing and a lot of knitting. We were lucky, too, because the day was overcast in the morning. As it got sunnier around two or three o'clock, it got hot and less comfortable outdoors. The alpacas share a pasture with two burros and many goats. One of the goats was clearly a male, who strode about like an emperor overseeing his peasants. When we first arrived and a few of us walked over towards that pasture, this goat came over but not too close. He was checking us out and making sure we understood that this place is his domain. (See photo at right.) After lunch, I spent a fair amount of time out in the pasture. Most of the animals only let me get...

Just wanted to share two photographs Leena sent. Her book and cards arrived safely on the 18th, which was ten days after I sent them and less than the two weeks the mail clerk anticipated. I am impressed by what a talented photographer and gardener Leena must be. This first photograph is peeking down inside the mail envelope. I never would have thought of putting the purple flower in the corner of the image. This second photo is the congratulatory cards. I love the flowers and the play of sunlight. :-)

The post starts: It began with the forging of the Great Stashes. Three were given to the cats, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings, because, you know, it's good for hunting and batting with your little paws. Seven to the Crochet Ladies, great hookers and craftswomen of the church halls. Follow this link to read the rest. (Thank you, Elalyr!)

You may recall more than a year ago that I entered a pair of socks in the Think Outside the Sox contest. I didn't win any prizes, and my socks weren't chosen for publication in the book. But I did make a friend thousands of miles away. Leena Siikaniemi e-mailed me last year after seeing my post . We exchanged e-mails about the contest and about knitting. Because the socks came to STITCHES South, I was able to see and touch Leena's socks. And she shared with me a secret -- her socks, which appear to be circular intarsia, are actually double knitting! If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you've probably figured out that I am a fan of double knitting. I might have thought of it for a sock cuff, but not for the whole sock. The idea is true genius! So I am very excited that the Think Outside the Sox book is now out and available. You can follow the pattern to make Doublefun socks for yourself, beginning on page 120. Leena also created the very first s...

My mother taught me to do cross stitch when I was four years old. That means I learned to handle a needle and thread before I learned to write my own name. My paternal grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was about ten. And between these two wonderful women, summers with my maternal grandmother, and classes with the White Rose Embroiderers' Guild of America chapter, I learned many, many needlework techniques. My mother especially enjoyed cross stitch, crewel, and eventually canvas work. Needlecraft was a hobby we shared together, a point where we could connect regardless of our differences. But my mother does not knit. About a decade ago I discovered knitting. Oh, there are still cross stitch kits and other needle arts tucked away in the cedar chest in my guest bedroom. But I went off and discovered a new territory where my mother had never been. I love the way I can think in three dimensions with knitting. I love how knitting can be functional. And I love how knit...