Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

While the holiday season can sometimes become an over-hyped Ferengi carnival of "buy, buy, buy," there are also plenty of people who remind us to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Conversation with people you care about. Good food -- especially the food items you can only get during the holidays. Sipping hot chocolate, ideally while watching the snow fall and knowing you have no place else to be anytime soon. The laughter of playing games. Making something beautiful carefully with your own hands. In my house, simple pleasures can often mean being entertained by feline antics. Observe: Vincent likes to sit in the front window and watch the leaves falls. It is a simple pleasure, and watching him watch the leaves makes me smile. Happy pets make a happy home. (A happy Cuddly Hubby is key, too.) And just because it seems appropriate: Brûlée, the criminal mastermind, in full-up gargoyle mode. Copernicus would be proud of the lording. Sophia would approve of the di...

I usually like to incorporate some sort of selvedge treatment on any edge that isn't hidden in a seam allowance. Some knitting stitches will curl or they are loose or they just don't play well at the edges. For the Albedo Shawl, I used a 2-stitch i-cord that was knit as you work rather than applied at the end. But because I was using lace patterns, I did encounter some concerns about row gauge. Most knitters worry very little about row gauge. After all, most of the time we are concerned with how wide our work will be. How tall or short it becomes is pretty easy to control in most projects by just knitting more or fewer rows. But if you are combining different stitches across the same row, then row gauge can be an issue. If you have a stitch pattern that is short in the same row with a stitch pattern that is tall, then your fabric will not want to lie flat and will be prone to puckering. This can be a fascinating textural design element, but it can also just be a frumpy mess! ...

My design process is such that I sometimes come up with what I want visually before I figure out whether or not it can be knit. In the Albedo Shawl, I decided I wanted a horizontal line that would divide the border pattern at each end from the swath of plaited basket stitch in the center. What I came up with is casting off-on. The principle is that binding off will create a horizontal line of chain stitch. Of course, if you bind off, then you don't have any live stitches on the needle. So one way to accomplish my goal would be to bind off and then knit up new stitches to replace the ones I just eliminated. But why eliminate them if you know you want them right back? So I decided to cast them back on as I bound them off. In this way, I avoided the hassle of knitting up stitches. As you'll see in the videos, the technique is a little fiddly. You need to slip stitches back and forth between left needle and right needle in order to have them in the correct location for binding ...

The plaited basket stitch involves crossing stitches -- i.e. cabling 1 over 1 -- on both the right side and wrong side rows. You are not going to want to use a cable needle for this. But you will find that working this on the needles is not as hard as you might expect. It does require some flexibility in the wrists. On the plus side, once you learn how to work this, you should be able to easily pick up on how to work a Norwegian purl. And while the videos show you how to work it for this particular stitch pattern, you should be able to adapt this information to other situations that call for crossing a single stitch over another. 1st video: How to work plaited basket stitch from the right side. 2nd video: How to work plaited basket stitch from the wrong side.

A new pattern! And a bonus chance to win yarn! Glee! Back in June I posted about some swatches I had knitted for the summer TNNA show. One of the swatches was done in Crystal Palace Moonshine, a lovely yarn with color, shimmer, and just a little halo. In late August, I got an e-mail asking if I would be willing to make a project using this yarn. I had hoped to get it cast on during Dragon*Con, but that just didn't happen. I even tried to work on it some during the convention, but the muses refused to help me. (I'm sure they were just too busy inspiring all the serious Cosplayers.) But I did get the project worked out and cast on in September. And in about a month, I knit up this lovely shawl. The name? Albedo is the reflectivity of a surface. Astronomers use the albedo of a planet, moon, or asteroid to make guesses about its composition. A shiny, icy surface is much more reflective than an ashen or rocky surface. Since the Moonshine yarn is glimmers and shines, it seemed li...

While you may not hear much about it for awhile, there is a new knit and crochet entity gestating. A group of passionate volunteers will be working behind the scenes to carefully plan and build and connect all the pieces into place. This new entity is The Center for Knit and Crochet: Preserving and promoting art, craft and scholarship. Vintage gloves from the collection of the Knitting & Crochet Guild (United Kingdom). Brought to the symposium by Angharad Thomas, Textiles Archivist. More pictures of vintage objects can be found on the Atlanta Knitting Guild blog . On Thursday morning, I flew up to Milwaukee and took the bus over to Madison, Wisconsin in order to attend the knit and crochet heritage museum symposium . Karen Kendrick-Hands has done an amazing job of nurturing the idea that knit and crochet textiles should at least enjoy the same respect as quilted and woven textiles. To that end, Karen and others, including Margaret Peterson, organized a symposium. The gathering...

I mentioned I needed to clean up the house for book club. One of the things that needed to be cleaned up was the loom. I'd had my Ashford 24-inch/60cm 4-shaft loom sitting on a card table in the living room since January. I purchased the Plus 4 upgrade kit in February, and that big box had also been loitering in the living room. In January at Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild, I took the Extreme Warp Makeover class with weaving superstar Robyn Spady. Suzi Gough, who is a past-president of CHG and the current president of SEFAA, had encouraged me to take the class. Truth is, I was in a little over my head, but in a good way. Over three days, Robyn had us weave at least fifteen different structures all on the same threading. For someone who was still learning weavish, this was a big shove up the learning curve. Lots and lots of new terms to understand. And I admit, I understand double-faced and double-weave fabrics, but I sure don't yet understand overshot. The class was also a...

Cuddly Hubby spent a couple days in meetings -- this was, after all, a business trip. I love, love, love the train system in Copenhagen. If I think too much about it, it will make me either sad or angry that a city like Atlanta, which is full of railroad tracks, does not have a train system like a European city. We did not need a rental car at all. While Cuddly Hubby was in meetings in Roskilde, I took the train in to Copenhagen and went yarn shop crawling. I used the same technique I had used for Portland, Oregon -- generate a map using the yarn finding function on Ravelry. (Previous post on how to make a yarn store map here .) I ended up visiting three yarns shops. There was a fourth for which I had an address but there did not seem to be a yarn shop on that street. The first shop was Sommerfuglen , at Vandkunsten 3. I started at København Central Station, which is across the street from Tivoli Gardens. A good way to do it as a tourist would be to exit the station on ...

I know it has been awhile since I've update the blog. Can I just say the last couple months have been busy? Here is what has been happening since the beginning of August: My first international trip -- 8 days in Denmark! Crystal Palace Moonshine yarn to be made up into a project. Dragon*Con. Vincent (shaggy black cat ball of love) sick with pancreatitis. Georgia Alpaca FiberFest at Callaway Gardens. Me meeting some nasty virus and being sick for more than a week. Me cleaning house so book club will fit in my living room on Friday. I don't know how much of this I'll write up in the next few days, but I do know I need to catch up. Visiting the Little Mermaid First things first -- Denmark! At the beginning of the summer, Cuddly Hubby came home and said there was a chance he would be taking a business trip overseas to Denmark in the summer of 2013 and would I like to go along? Sure! And then about a month later he came home and said that instead of the t...

In the pattern I wrote "jp" for "joined picot." This maneuver combines both the picot and the joined ssk, so please be sure to watch both of those videos first and work those techniques a few times so you feel familiar and confident.   This maneuver appears in only one row of the pattern. If you like, you can just work a regular joined ssk instead, but I noticed the missing picot in the selvedge. Basically, you'll set-up the two stitches to be joined, work most of the picot, then finish the join, then finish the picot. By the time you get to this row of the pattern you will have knit many picots and made many joins, so this really shouldn't give you a lot of trouble.

In the pattern I wrote "jssk" for "joined ssk." You'll need to rearrange some stitches so you can work a left-leaning decrease that will join the triangular and square sections of the scarf as you knit. The joined ssk is worked at the beginning of certain wrong-side rows. For those of you who are very clever and know how to combination knit, you can reverse-wrap the last stitch of the right-side row. When you turn, that stitch will already be turned and facing east, so all you will have to do is slip the other stitch over. This will save you a wee bit of time and effort.

In the pattern, I simply wrote "fh" for "fill hole." You'll make the holes on the right-side rows, then fill them in on the wrong-side rows. Notice that this technique could be used for different-sized holes. The ones in Bootkicked involve binding off five stitches. Whatever size you use, be sure to bind off an odd number of stitches on the make hole element because the fill hole element is (knit, yarn over) repeated as many times as you need, ending with knit. So the fill hole will always be an odd number of stitches.

In the pattern, I simply wrote "mh" for "make hole." There are other ways to make holes, but I particularly liked this version from Lucy Neatby. If you want to try this technique to make other sizes of holes, be aware you should bind off an odd number of stitches. It is easy to bind off any number you like, but when restoring the stitches on the following row, it will be easier if you are restoring an odd number rather than an even number. This is because you restore the stitches by working some variation of (k yo k) or (k yo k yo k) or (k yo k yo k yo k) into the large hole. While you could work (k yo) or (k yo k yo) or (k yo k yo k yo), I suspect ending with a knit stitch rather than a yarn over will be tidier.

Bootkicked is an intermediate level scarf. You'll be doing three or four things at once: shaping (triangles or squares) pattern (half-drop holes separated by three ridges of garter stitch) edging (picots) joining motifs as you go None of these things are difficult, per se. But all of them are probably a little more interesting than your usual knitting. So over the next few days I'll be posting five short videos to show you clearly the odd little steps to this strange little dance. First up: Picot Edging Be aware that in the pattern, I simply wrote "mp" for "make picot." There are a lot of different ways to make a picot, and you can do what I did or something you like better or you can just delete the picots entirely. Picots are made by casting on stitches and then binding them off immediately. In Bootkicked, you'll always be casting on and binding off three stitches, but you can do more or fewer to make your picots longer/larger or shorter/s...

Back in the autumn of 2008, I came up with a scarf pattern I named Bootkicked. It all started with a bad, bad skein of yarn. I am not the person who purchased the bad skein. No, that was Woofgang Pug. She fell in with a bad skein of Noro Silk Garden Sock Yarn. Remember when we were all smitten by Noro Sock? The colors were lovely, and it knit up in the mysterious long gradual color changes we adore in Noro. Except this skein. Woofgang Pug started with a toe-up sock. The toe was green, then the foot was black. And there was an intriguing midnight blue that was supposed to be in there. Woofgang Pug kept knitting, but the yarn stopped changing. She was nearly to the heel turn, but still, the yarn was black. Where was the blue? You've probably guessed this was a "norotorious" skein. Yes, we all love the beautiful colors of Noro yarn. But we also hate the way Noro all too often has knots or joins with breaks in the colors. This was one of those bad skeins. This is also a...

It is almost time again for Christmas in July at The Whole Nine Yarns. I've missed the last couple years because I've been out of town during the event. The challenge is always to come up with a quick gift knit. Since I've been doing quite a bit of double knitting lately (see the soap sack ), some double knit sachets seemed like a good idea. The yarn is Classic Elite Soft Linen, which is a linen, wool, alpaca blend. The linen gives it crispness and structure, while the animal fiber gives it softness. I came up with two different double-knit patterns. In the first, you start with Judy's Magic Cast-on, double knit the sachet, and bind off using purlwise grafting. The edges are rounded. Since some people are not going to like the cast-on and the bind-off, I designed a second pattern with a crocheted cast-on and a three-needle bind-off. The difference is that a line of chain stitch goes all the way around the sachet. The edge is squarer and sharper. It is this se...

You'll recall I used this burst of intense summer weather to dye some fiber. During the Independence Day holiday and following weekend, I spun that fiber up into yarn. I'm trying to decide whether or not this yarn can be labeled as "successful." I was aiming for a peachy-pink color that would emulate the traits of dewy European fairy-princess flesh -- pale, pink, soft, with a gentle glow. Pink Slime/Gore/Road Kill hand spun, hand dyed, hand carded mohair Yes, it really is this color, which is why I photographed it outdoors. A couple things happened along the way. Firstly, the core fibers I dyed with pink lemonade Kool-Aid had quite a bit of brown kemp. The brown didn't show much in the rolags, but it did show when spun into the core singles. I didn't take a picture, but the core singles were noticeably both pink and brown, rather than just pink. Also, the core singles required a lot of twist. Mohair is slippery! Duh! When spinning 100% mohair, it keeps ...

 . . . dye fiber! I don't wander into politics too much on this blog, but it needs to be said that at this point, the arguments against the existence of global climate change are cold comfort. (There is, however, plenty to discuss about possible causes and what our responses should be.) After that non-winter, I don't think there was a lot of surprise that summer came in with the fiery heat of a woman scorned. And I am giving a lot of thanks for all those lovely mature shady oak trees in my yard, thank you very much Atlanta developer who didn't denude my neighborhood in the 1970s. Still, there had to be something useful to do with all this heat. I've been thinking for awhile about dyeing some fiber, and had recently read this old Knitty article by Kristi Porter . She mentioned that you could dye yarn in the same way as making sun tea. So that's what I did. Yellow and pink mohair, blended with hand cards. My inspiration is a batt I suspect of being a wool a...

My knit-night friend Ginny will be a first-time grandmother later this summer. It has been delightful to see the enthusiasm with which she is greeting this event. And the little one will be a girl, which just opens so many wonderful knitterly possibilities! I was grateful when Ginny remarked one evening that she was going to knit a Baby Surprise Jacket. She had a nice queue built up of items for this baby. (I keep wondering if anyone has ordered a large cedar chest to accommodate this bounty.) So when I stepped in and asked if I could buy the yarn and it knit it for her, she agreed! In conversations about classic knitting patterns, the Baby Surprise Jacket comes up again and again. And, yes, I know I've written about it here before. So let me just show you what I did this time. The yarn is Ella Rae Seasons, which is a rather new yarn. It is chain plied, so it has nice elasticity. The size is heavy worsted. And it has long color changes, similar to Noro. While I didn't tr...

I find myself finally letting my life drop out of 5th gear overdrive and down into 3rd gear -- getting things done, but not being quite so crazy. Over the last couple weeks I've driven up and back to Columbus, Ohio for Knitters Connection; visited dear friends in Kentucky; toured the Cincinnati Zoo; dealt with my Yahoo! e-mail account getting hacked by a virus; cleaned my house; hosted a game night and a Pathfinder game; combed and prepared several ounces of raw mohair; ran a knitting guild meeting; oiled the patio furniture; baked a batch of scones; and taken cats to the vet. I had a wonderful time at Knitters Connection. A huge thank you to everyone who took a class with me! I had one crash and burn moment in the Unventions class, but by the end, I also heard several gasps of awesome delight. I was also very pleased by how several people in that class were experimenting and coming up with their own unventions by the end of class. And I was totally shocked to see 14 people in th...