Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

I'm working on several projects right now. I've finished my Christmas in July project for The Whole Nine Yarns (more about that next month). I need to come up with a pattern for Georgia FiberFest . Several nights ago I woke up about 3 AM and could not get back to sleep for nearly two hours! I had an idea. After I got up late that morning, I cast on a möbius. I was knitting along fairly well. Then I decided to swatch from the other end in 1×1 ribbing. When you are working with a long-print yarn, the number of stitches in a row or round matters. Behold! On a round of 450 stitches, the long print in Cascade Tangier is not long enough. It produces one-row stripes. However, on a much shorter pitch of 40 stitches back and forth, the result is a nice gradient. In fact, for a gradient back and forth, I wouldn't want to work on much more than 40 stitches. Now that I think of it, wouldn't it be wonderful if yarn manufacturers included this information on long-pr...

I'm having a couple of days where my tools and I are just not getting along. I've been working on a fine-gauge reversible lace scarf. It is a lovely thing, indeed; all 75,000 stitches, 60 hours, and 97 repeats of 5 multiples of pattern. I finished it and blocked it, using the beautiful bronze Lacis blocking wires I wrote about previously . I used my typical method for blocking: thread blocking wires through the edges, pin onto mat, spray with water, ignore overnight. In less than 24 hours, the bronze oxidized and left blue-green stains on the edges of the ivory-colored scarf. Sigh. Fortunately, I was able to dig up some stain-removal information (thank you, Internet). The key was lemon juice and salt. I purchased half a dozen lemons at the grocery store. Once I squeezed them, I was armed with a cup of fresh juice. I laid the scarf in a glass baking dish, spooned lemon juice along the stained edge, and then salted. It worked! It took multiple iterations, as the whole sc...