Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

During the first weekend of November, I took a two-day sprang workshop with Carol James. Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance offered the class in this amazing but rare technique. Unstretched I was interested in the technique because it is sometimes confused with knit and crochet in historic collections. Center for Knit and Crochet at some point will want to have resources on their website to help curators and collectors discern among knit and crochet as well as tatting, nålebinding, sprang, and the like. When we reach that point, I want to be useful. I came away with an appreciation for this amazing technique that dates all the way back to the bronze age. Carol showed us a picture of a Greek vase where the weaver appears to be making sprang. (There's an archeology journal article here .) The technique was common in European military sashes, which is how Carol was introduced to it through her business producing military sashes for reenactors. She also showed us pictures of M...

I've gotten very little knitting accomplished in 2018. I did, however, do some spinning. Mountain Colors Summertime + Ruby Red (above) Mountain Colors Ruby Red + Ruby Red (below) I have a vision for a little red riding hood costume for Dragon*Con. I think it would be great to make the whole cape out of handspun. Ideally, I'd like the entire outfit to be handwoven, hand-knitted, crocheted, sprang-ed, and the like. I've been buying and spinning red. I don't have a plan. My thought is just to make a big pile of red yarn using my default spinning technique, then figure out what goes where. I also have some fleeces with locks, as I think an edging of locks on the cape would be dramatic. I decided to spin some of the red Mountain Colors Bluefaced Leicester in my stash. Let me just pause right now and say, I adore Mountain Colors . Their colorways are rich, saturated, and vibrant. I had three bumps of Ruby River . Is there a better basic red out there? My original plan...

Jan Stephens (7 December 1931 - 22 September 2018) was my friend and mentor. I was asked to speak at her memorial service last Saturday, 10 November, which was also Skacel's day to create 10,000 new knitters. Below is a version of my comments. Knitting is about turning something that is intangible — love — into something tangible. You can feel love, but you can't see it. It isn't as if you can sit love on a table in good light, take a picture of it, and post it on Instagram. When we knit a scarf for the child going off to college — in the school colors, of course — or an heirloom baby blanket for that precious new arrival, or a chemo hat for a stranger going through one of the toughest years of his or her life, we are turning love into something that can be seen. We are saying, "You are loved. You are important to someone. You are cared about." Jan loved two things — people and knitting. It isn't surprising, as the one followed logically from the other. ...

I don't know who it was, but somebody played the "everyone discard down to one cat" card. Several of my friends have lost cats this year, including one who started out the year with three cats and lost two. Brûlée's appetite had been waning, but he was otherwise acting like himself. We tried some medications to improve his appetite, but they didn't seem to help. A couple weeks ago, my veterinarian performed an ultrasound. There was a lot that was normal, but a couple places in Brûlée's upper and lower small intestine were a little odd. We already knew he had some kidney insufficiency issues. The veterinarian suggested doing biopsy surgery. I let that thought sit for a couple weeks. Then, Brûlée definitely did not have a good day on Sunday. He didn't greet me at the bottom of the stairs, meowing his usual greeting of, "Chop, chop, human! I'm hungry! Get with it!" One of us would reward him with an egg toy full of treats. Since Brûlée was c...