Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

As it is a new year, I've been cleaning up the house, putting away the old, and starting new projects. The stack of unread knitting books is embarrassing. I used to be able to keep up! Just before Christmas I purchased Kate Davies new book, Yokes . As usual, this is one of those purchases where I innocently walked into The Whole Nine Yarns and Jenna the Yarn Pimp thrust the new book in front of me, suggesting I must have this now. As you might guess, Jenna is very often correct about this sort of thing. Kate Davies holds a doctorate in Eighteenth Century studies. For those of us with too much background in academia, this book is a wonderful treat. (Full disclosure, both Jenna and I have degrees in Art History. Just for the record, so does Franklin Habit. The world of knitting is surprisingly well-populated with defrocked art historians.) Yokes opens with seven short chapters exploring the history and tradition of yoke sweaters in the North Atlantic. Some of these chapters are...

Yesterday I wrote about the cell phone bag I made using this technique. Today I want to write a little more about the technique. I've posted the picture nice and large so you can see details (I hope!). The diamond at the bottom was worked using the techniques and chart Susanna Hansson provides. The red and yellow lines when running from lower left to upper right are worked by knitting two stitches through the back of loop, dropping the first stitch, and knitting the second stitch through the back of the loop again. When you knit a west-facing (left-facing) stitch through the back of the loop, it twists to form a "p" with the vertical strand (formerly the right leg of the stitch) on top. It is these vertical strands that mimic weaving. In the bottom diamond, there is no special technique for the lines running from lower right to upper left. They do end up a little distorted because the vertical stranding is two stitches wide. Since most people knit from right to left, ...

One of my goals for 2014 was to work down through the unfinished object pile. I've mentioned previously that February is typically Knitting Needle Liberation Month in my household. At the beginning of the year, I like to look through what I have and make decisions about what to knit and what to frog. January and February are the months to clear out the stalled projects. Unfortunately, I didn't get to the Rovaniemi wristlets until quite late in the year. I've taken many, many classes; and I typically store the handouts in three-ring binders. Susanna Hansson distributes her class handouts in a two-pocket folder. Since the class came with yarn to make wristlets, the folder looked a little strange, bulging with yarn and not fitting well on the shelf. I took the “Lapland Hand Garments” class at STITCHES South in April 2009, so it seemed it was about time for me to pull the dang thing off the shelf, knit the yarn, and make the handout folder fit. Sometimes cleaning up really ...