Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the only class I took at STITCHES South 2016 was "Reversible Entrelac" with Gwen Bortner. It was an advanced class and on Sunday morning. I was a little concerned the class might not make, but we had exactly four people. Whew! Some of you may be wondering why I would take this class. After all, I've already posted the Sir Thomas scarf , which is a reversible entrelac project. But Gwen's approach is different from Jay Petersen's. Always good to survey the range of technique. You'll recall in entrelac you are joining little blocks as you go. These blocks join in two places. When you start a new block, you work up stitches off the side of a block in the previous tier. That is one place to think about reversibility. As you work back and forth on the new block, you also join one selvedge edge to live stitches from a block in the previous tier. That's the second place to think about reversibility. You'll recall f...

At the beginning of April I drove up to Nashville for STITCHES South 2016. First off, the Tennessee Department of Transportation does not seem to realize that tourism is an important component of their state economy. A drive that should have taken just under four hours took more than six! Due to construction, traffic was unbelievable around Chattanooga. I expect that kind of slow crawl in a snow storm but not on a pretty spring Saturday. More construction on I-24 heading over the mountains added another hour. By the time I got to the STITCHES South market, I needed to walk around and just unwind as I breathed in the calming yarn fumes. I did just a little shopping on Saturday but more on Sunday right before I left. I haven't read Knit My Skirt yet. Like many people, I was a little uncertain about the book. Skirts? As it turned out, a friend gave me a lovely embroidered Indian blouse and I am having a poor time finding a skirt that matches. I bought the coral-colored Claudia...

As I explore and develop reversible lace, I keep adding new techniques. I usually start with, "Ok, I like this technique on one-sided fabric. How do I do it reversibly?" One of the increases I like is the yarn-over version of make 1. There are at least three different increase methods I know of that go by the name "make 1." One technique involves co-opting the running thread. The second method (used by Elizabeth Zimmermann) is casting on a backward loop. The third method is throwing a yarn over or reverse yarn over and then twisting it closed on the next row or round. Since it is twisted, this means there is a left-leaning and a right-leaning version. Working reversibly, here is the version that leans left on the obverse and right on the reverse. And here is the version that leans to the right on the obverse and the left on the reverse. Of course, there are other ways to increase. And I admit these are fairly fiddly. As with so many things in knitting, th...

I can crochet. I don't always remember I can do this. I learned to crochet when I was about nine or ten years old. I can remember working on crochet in school when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Both of my grandmothers as well as my great grandmother were crocheters. And when I was in college, I used to crochet snowflakes. That was a great way to learn the basic stitches, because snowflakes usually incorporate a variety of stitch heights to create their patterns. I would hang the snowflakes against the large sliding glass windows of my dorm room. As we know, Ravelry is the Internet Wonderland of knit and crochet. On the Woolly Thoughts board was a thread titled " Amish Puzzle Ball ." What's that? For an adult, the puzzle ball isn't that difficult. But for a child, it would be an interesting object for learning three dimensions (width, length, height or for pilots, pitch, roll, and yaw). I followed links over to this website , where I learned what a puzzle ball ...

There have been some questions for the Georgia FiberFest knit-along. While it has been advertised as a mystery knit along, quite a few people have been curious. The schematic at left will give you some idea of the overall shape. When you wear this shape, it turns out to be rather flirty and cute. The Bootkicked scarf also used a similar shape. Several people are using gradient yarns other than the ones called for in the pattern. That's fine. In fact, that is part of the fun of a knit-along. How will the final projects be similar or different? The trick is, I wrote directions for dividing the yarn (with pins, please don't cut the yarn!) based on the Camelid Cottage yarn. This is a post about how to divide the yarn if you are making your own design decisions. The first questions is, "How much yarn do you have?" The second question is, "How many zig-zags do you want?" The third question is, "How much do you want to blend when you change colors?...

The downside of the technical experimentation I do is in trying to describe a new technique. If you are doing something that isn't commonly done, what words do you use to explain something that doesn't yet have a name? As with teaching, the key is to find terms that are already common knowledge and build upon them. The following three videos are intended to clarify these terms. Some of these might be things you already know. I'm just showing you what the words are that I use to describe them. This first video is the difference between yarn over and reverse yarn over. In some of my patterns, I do differentiate between the two! If you are a standard Western European/North American knitter, may I please recommend you make the regular yarn over your habit? The regular yarn over will have the same stitch facing as the rest of your stitches, so you won't have to think about it later. This second video shows the difference between Western and Eastern stitch facings. ...