Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

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...