Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

My theme for 2014 is: Catch up from 2013. I'm also in the middle of Things Not Going As Planned. I was supposed to be visiting in Pennsylvania and Maryland right now. But I am home in Georgia because my sweet, cuddly, fluffy ball of joy and love -- Vincent -- turned up lame the evening of Friday the 13th. A fortnight later, he is doing much better and so am I. It was a scary several days where he was doing the zombie shuffle with his hind legs and I didn't have a prognosis. He is on medication twice a day right now and I expect he will have follow up appointments with his veterinarian or the specialty veterinarians who performed a myelogram and MRI on him. So right now, I'm recovering from being emotionally and financially drained, but I am very grateful I still have a two feline household. This also means I now have two unscheduled weeks in front of me. After all, I was going to be away, so I cleared my schedule. So, it is time to catch up. Updating my Ravelry projec...

When I teach at shows, I am usually asked to provide a biography. In that biography, I usually mention that I learned to cross stitch at age four. My mother sat me down and taught me. I'm not sure why she decided -- maybe I showed an interest? My dad said I was too young. I didn't even yet write my own name. Well, here is the proof. During my childhood, I tried many, many different types of needle arts including cross stitch, embroidery, crewel, bargello, hardanger, needlepoint, and canvas work. My mother, sister, and I were all in the local chapter of Embroiderers' Guild of America . Of course, now that I'm in two knitting guilds, I see how strange it is to have a minor in the guild! But as a teenager, it didn't seem strange to me at all. I was just one more female in a big group of other females who all liked stitching. My mother was always very encouraging as I tried different stitching techniques. It was a hobby that connected all the women in my family. Even...

I get so caught up in stunt knitting that I sometimes forget simplicity is often the secret to good design. And so it has been with Scrawling. This is a scribble lace shawl I worked up last summer. It is one of the few fiber things that was started, worked upon, and completed during the personal mayhem of 2013. I had made a scribble lace years ago when I taught for Purly Gates. My recollection was the project was fairly quick and fun. And the finished fabric was like knitted Silly Putty -- highly malleable. Scrawling started with Esther Rodgers' "Corespinning for Fun and Function" class at STITCHES South 2013. The art batt was lovely, and the corespun yarn was fabulous. You'll recall I made this skein: I liked the skein so much, I decided to wanted to use it in a project right away so I could show it off. But I'm not usually a fan of bulky knits or projects made with only corespun. And the skein was only 73 m/80 yards long. Handspun art yarns are like high-qu...