Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

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...