Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

If you are making the Viridi pinnam pattern, there are a couple things you can do to make the knitting flow a little more smoothly. The lace pattern is 24 rows, but with action only on the 12 right-side rows. Furthermore, those rows can be divided into two groups of 6, as the Japanese feather pattern stacks up on one side for 12 rows and then the opposite side for 12 rows. The lace trellis pattern is handy for counting, since the holes alternate right or left with every right-side row. I used a large safety pin placed through the trellis hole on row 23 or row 11. In the picture, I can count holes in the trellis pattern. There are three. My yarn location puts me at the beginning of a right-side row. From the Japanese feather pattern, I can tell the pin is in row 23. Since there are three right-side rows completed since row 23, I can tell I am about to start row 7. After every 12 rows/6 holes in the trellis, I moved the large safety pin up. This made it very easy to count pattern ro...

Since my goal for this year is to get the reversible lace technique out into the world in a big way, I have been designing items using the technique. When I was at South Carolina Knit Inn, Cindy from Stony Hill Fiber Arts insisted I take a couple skeins of Pacolet Valley Fiber Company Southern Exposure organic cotton. This is a sport-weight 100% organic cotton yarn grown and spun in the United States. If we want an American textile industry, we need to purchase their products. The cotton is 50% organic naturally-colored cotton and 50% organic cotton. (To learn more about naturally-colored cotton, visit Fox Fibre .) I was keen to try the green. I must admit, it did not look green in the skein. It looked beige or brown or neutral natural (photograph at right). Definitely not green. However, being the reader of knitting and spinning and weaving literature, I had read about these naturally-colored cottons and understood they will darken when boiled. So, after I finished knittin...

It has been a busy week here. My next reversible lace pattern, Viridi pinnam, is almost ready to post on Ravelry. Spring Fling is this weekend, where I'll be teaching reversible lace on Sunday. Completely off topic from knitting — on Wednesday I attended a Congressional Visits Day. It was very interesting spending a day running around the offices for the House of Representatives and meeting with legislative staff. My group was especially fortunate to get an in-person meeting with Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia's 4th district, on the east side of Atlanta. If you have a chance to visit, I highly recommend it. Those of you who are keyed in to visual cues will learn a lot about their priorities very quickly just by looking at how our representatives decorate their offices. If I were still in art history academia, I could easily get a master's thesis out of office décor on the Hill. Friends have also sent some interesting fiber-related web links to my inbox. I must s...