Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

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...

The TNNA show is coming up later this month. Because I'm now teaching and designing (and being a guild president), I sometimes get to see several sides of the same event. For example, at STITCHES South I've seen the Market being set-up and taken down because I've been involved a little with the guild booth. While I won't be attending TNNA, one of the behind-the-scenes things that becomes an in-front-of-the-scenes thing is the Great Wall of Yarn. This is a chance for the yarn companies to show off their new offerings and get some creative ideas into the minds of the shop owners who are attending the show. Barry Klein from Trendsetter asked the STITCHES teachers if we would be willing to make swatches. This is a great chance for us to play with new yarns -- some barely on the market. And it is also a chance to show the various yarn companies what we can do. I volunteered to make four swatches. So here is what I did. First up is Moonshine from Crystal Palace Yarns. ...

My reputation for bizarre knitting being what it is, I've been asked by both North Georgia Knitting Guild and Atlanta Knitting Guild to teach a little bit about how to double knit. For NGKG, I'll be teaching a mini-workshop at our Beat the Heat Retreat on Saturday 21 July. AKG was planning on having a program on double-knitting later in the summer, and originally it was going to be during a month when I couldn't attend. But that changed. So on Thursday night, I'll be presenting a program on double-knitting to AKG. This works out fine, as I got my act together and knocked out the project and handout for NGKG. The NGKG VP of Workshops, Mary, asked me to come up with a knitted soap sack as our double-knitting project. This is a really easy project for double knitting. And it doesn't take a lot of yarn. I used about 12 yards each of two colors of Lily Sugar 'n' Cream, which is a basic kitchen cotton. This would be an easy project to kit up for a guild. The ya...