Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

You probably noticed the STITCHES South peach link popped up on this blog a couple months ago. My class is still open. I don't know how many people have signed up, but I'm looking forward to the experience whether I have three or thirty. I've gotten good feedback on my practice run. I feel confident that if you are someone who has been thinking about moving beyond simple projects and trying a sweater, my class will give you the confidence to choose a sweater project that will give you success. I have plenty of tricks to share to make the knitting more enjoyable. And none of my examples involve knitting each section separately and sewing them all together at the end. Of course, I'll also be taking a few classes myself. I've signed up for: Jean Frost: Chasing the Hounds, Tooth that is; Thursday afternoon Edie Eckman: Pattern Writing 101; Friday all day Carson Demers: Ergonomics for Knitters; Sunday morning Merike Saarniit; Three 2-color patterns, One color at a...

Where does the month go? I've been very busy knitting away. I'm not done with either project, so no finished objects to show yet. But I did want to show a little bit. I'm working on a couple extra sweaters I want to add to my STITCHES South class. I've made good progress on both, so I have to just keep at it. One of them I cast on just a week ago. I'm using the hand-dyed cotton yarn Crayons Lite from Rainbow Mills. This is one of those handpainted yarns with color changes every few inches rather than every few feet. (Schaefer Laurel is similar.) I swatched this yarn about a month ago, trying different pattern stitches. The yarn is meant for plain stockinette in the round to create a tie-dye effect t-shirt. But I knew I would be knitting a cardigan jacket back and forth. After much testing, I settled on linen stitch. Both sides of the fabric are interesting, so much so that I'm not sure which is the public side. Perhaps this will be a reversible gar...

I'm not sure how many helmet liners I've made at this point -- maybe half a dozen? I can knock one out in just a couple nights. They are easy knitting in the round, plus they have enough going to keep me interested. There is some 2x2 ribbing. There is the interesting way in which the face opening is created. There is a plain stockinette section, perfect for television or knit night knitting. There are a few decrease rounds to close the top. And then the whole thing comes to a close with some picked-up ribbing around the face. I've been asked to teach a helmet liner class at Rare Purls in Duluth. While it may not seem as if there is a lot to cover, there is quite a bit if you are looking to refine the pattern. To begin with: How to cast on? There's the trick of making the cast-on edge match the 2x2 ribbing in elasticity. This is important in a sock cuff that must hug the calf but fit over the foot. It is really important in a helmet liner that must hug the n...

Yesterday evening I was casting on a helmet liner. I've made about a half-dozen of these over the last few years. In fact, I plan to be teaching a workshop on helmet liners at Rare Purls in Duluth. A helmet liner begins with a lot of 2x2 ribbing. Since the ribbing needs to stretch to go over the head, the cast on needs to be very stretchy. There are several ways to achieve this -- a long-tail cast-on with a double-thickness of yarn in the tail (Lucy Neatby), a German twisted cast-on (Beth Brown-Reinsel), or a tubular cast-on (Elizabeth Zimmermann). I got to thinking about the tubular cast-on. Imagine the black line in the drawing is a row of knitting, all by itself without a row above or a row below. The bright green line represents a piece of waste yarn or a narrow needle or wire. If you've done Elizabeth Zimmermann's provisional cast-on, you've done this on your needles. You create a single row of knitting that is ready to be worked in either direction beca...