Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

This has been a quiet year for reversible knitting. I taught at many shows, but "Introduction to Versa Lace" was rarely on the schedule. I ran an advanced reversible knitting class at South Carolina Knit Inn way back in February. I haven't done anything with that class since running it. I know it needs more work. I'm not sure when or how to polish it. Even if I'm not teaching reversible techniques, that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about them. I've moved from the original versa lace ideas where I could only translate stockinette-based fabrics upward to being able to work some purl stitches reversibly, such as in illusion knitting. I thought it might be fun to have a go at working Fox Paws reversibly. Fox Paws is the popular stunt knit written by Xandy Peters. The pattern is garter-stitch based, but uses stacked increases and stacked decreases to wildly deform the rows of knitting. The resulting patterns can be fantastic as ...

I don't talk much about my dad. If you are in my age cohort, that is not a strange thing. If you live far away from where you grew up, as I do, you might not see your parents often. My father died fifty years ago today.   He was the second officer on United Airlines Flight 553 from Washington National Airport (today Reagan National, DCA) to Chicago Midway (MDW). The 737 was named "City of Lincoln." This is back when commercial airplanes had names, not merely tail numbers. As you might guess, I was very young. I have few memories of him. Much of what I know is from what relatives have said. I know he loved flying. Being a pilot was his dream. He only lived it a few years, but he lived it. Not everyone lives their dream even one day. He had four years of it, or about 1,500 days. I looked up the information about the crash, so I could synchronize this post. Even after all these years, reading about it made me cry. It's a good reminder that when you lose people yo...

Sometimes the creative process takes you in a different direction and on a different timeline. We are past the busy autumn festival schedule. While it seems crazy, my body actually began to bother me. I had so much fun! How could I be hurting myself? But at some point, my body started to say, "Um, hey, could we maybe take a break? Rest a little? Sleep in our own bed for a whole month?" I'm not accustomed to making such accommodations. This has been a good reminder that right now we are entering the restful time of the year. The harvest is over. Yes, we are coming into the holiday season. But at the same time, the holidays should be joyful, not exhausting. Cuddly Hubby and I spent a delightful Thanksgiving holiday weekend together at home. We played games with friends. We saw a movie in a movie theater. (Yes, with popcorn and a Slurpie. Sadly, Pepsi not Coca-Cola. Zero-world problem.) I am looking forward to spending the whole end-of-year hol...

For me, 2022 has been the "return to normal" year. Mensa gatherings — yes! Science fictions conventions — sign me up! Wool festivals — I am there! This year I was especially fortunate. I was able to attend the three major east coast wool festivals — Maryland Sheep and Wool (MD), New York State Sheep and Wool (Rhinebeck), and Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF). If you live close to one of these festivals, then attending is a short drive, the price of admission, and whatever you spend on shopping and possibly food. (If you need to keep costs down, you can bring your own brown bag lunch, trail rations, or the like,) If you do not live close, then attending can involve long drives or flying, possibly a car rental, and likely overnight accommodations. This can eat into your stash budget, converting precious dollars into things other than fleeces, yarn, dye stock, textile equipment, spectacular handmade clothing, workshop fees, and the like. Since a single trip to one of these i...

Last weekend was my first trip to Texas. It was a privilege to teach at the Dallas Fort-Worth Fiber Festival . If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you know I love fiber festivals, even when I'm not teaching at them. Festival. Go! See! It has been a few years since we had STITCHES South or Georgia FiberFest, although we do have Georgia Mountain Needle Arts Festival. There are still several festivals in North Carolina, including Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (coming up in October), Carolina Fiber Fest (March), and Blue Ridge Fiber Fest (June) as well as retreats such as Kanuga Knitting and Quilting (January) and Unwind (April). If you live in Georgia but don't want to drive to a festival, I suggest you fly to Texas. Here's why. The board that organizes DFW FiberFest is fantastic! They are friendly, generous, competent, enthusiastic, and completely committed to the goal of advancing the fiber arts. They take care of their vendors...

I'm very much a do-it-myself sort of person. If I know how to do something, it can be hard for me to pay someone else to do it. I recently had a very pleasant experience where I let someone else do something. It turned out excellent! Over the past couple years, I acquired a set of Prym double-pointed needles . I like them. They are 8 inches long, which makes them fantastic for swatching, experimenting, and demonstrating. They also don't fit in standard needle cases. I searched the Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival last year. There was one vendor in particular who had nice cases, but didn't yet have anything to fit Prym. Eventually, I purchased some fabric at the local JoAnn's in California, Maryland, just up the road from Lexington Park. For a small big box store — and this really was a cramped JoAnn's — they had a fantastic selection of quilt fabrics. I am guessing quilting is a popular hobby in southern Maryland? I figured at some point I would make a fabric roll ...

What's the difference between a beginning knitter and an intermediate or advanced knitter? One of the big differences is: intermediate and advanced knitters don't follow the pattern. I know that doesn't make sense. Wouldn't it make more sense to say intermediate and advanced knitters are better at following the pattern? It would, but that isn't necessarily the case. Let me share an example. booties — even the bind offs are mirrored I recently made a pair of baby booties. These are the "Lace and Bobble Bootees" from Debbie Bliss Cotton Knits for All Seasons (North Pomfret, Vermont: Traflagar Square Publishing 2002, pp. 46-7). Here is how I changed the pattern. There's no schematic or construction diagram. And there's only one picture of the booties. I sat down with practice yarn and worked the first dozen rows of the pattern. There's some working back and forth and increasing. From that and reading ahead, I was able to understand how the boo...

The last part of the sock knit along involves working happily up the leg and then binding off. Two at a time is not difficult. I don't even teach it as a separate class. Rather, I do teach it as part of my knitting in the round class. If you are using the two circular needles method, then one needle goes in the first half of both socks and the other needle goes in the second half of both socks. If you are doing magic loop, then thread first half of the first sock, all of the second sock, and the second half of the first sock. It is that half—whole—other half threading that I think messes people up. While I prefer magic loop, two circulars is very useful and possibly more versatile. You can work very small circumference with both techniques. However, you can also work very large circumferences with the two circulars method by making it three or four or more. I could, theoretically, knit a house cozy simply by having many, many circular needles. Knowing which method you like for work...

If you are doing the sock knit along, hopefully you finished the toe and foot of your sock and are ready for the heel turn. I'm using a short row or hourglass heel. You can work this using whatever short row method you like. I'm using twin stitches, sometimes called shadow wraps or dopplegänger stitches. I haven't had time to run a proper short-row sock experiment. There are several parameters: Do I use clean up rows between the top and bottom of the hourglass or not? Which type of short rows do I use — wrap & turn, Japanese, German, or twin? Plus, I think there might be a couple different ways to work wrap & turn — one way throws the wraps to the private side of the work and the other leaves them as a decorative line. That looks like at least 10 different heel turns. For the moment, I think I will continue to work on the socks. By the way, I spent 2 months swatching for pattern. I cast on Monday and turned the heel Thursday. This is a good reminder to me that I am ...

I'm active in both of my local knitting guilds — Atlanta Knitting Guild and North Georgia Knitting Guild. Sibel, who is currently leading programs for North Georgia Knitting Guild, asked if I could please lead a knit along for socks. I have some sock yarn that has been languishing for awhile. This seemed like a good motivation to turn that yarn into socks. Initially, I thought I would demonstrate the techniques at consecutive guild meetings. After some thought, I decided it would be nice to have video members could watch ahead of time. That way, I don't need to take up a big chunk of a guild meeting. I want instead to concentrate on assisting members who are having difficulty. So, here are the first two videos as well as some instructions. To start your sock, please swatch. Swatch until you have achieved these things: You have produced a fabric you like for socks (dense for wear but stretchy). You have figured out which needles you like best for working this yarn. You have figu...

Having learned from the shibori experience (take pictures, document your work), I was better prepared for Jessica Kaufman's "Incredible Ice Dye" class at Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance last weekend. Jess is the owner of Waxon Studio in Asheville, North Carolina. Jess teaches dye techniques, sells materials, and sells finished dyed goods. This time, I took pictures in progress and afterwards. For our class Jess had five-gallon buckets of "mordant" ready — recipe is one cup of soda ash/washing soda to one gallon water. Jess said this mixture can be used repeatedly. As for any dyeing project, start with clean laundered fabric. We dunked our fabric in the soda ash water for at least 10 minutes. This makes the fabric ready to activate the dye by shifting the pH to alkaline. Jess mentioned soda ash is sometimes used in pool maintenance and comes in 50 pound bags. If you have a friend with a swimming pool, you might be able to ...

It seems 2022 is the Year of Learning. At least, that's been the start. In addition to some knitting classes, I've taken two dye classes already this year. The first was shibori and the second was ice dyeing. Both techniques are easy and fun. Both used cotton fabric. Both used fiber-reactive dyes . In January, Textile Appreciation Society of Atlanta held a shibori dye workshop at Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance . Our teacher was Sophie Monsibais. She was excellent — I definitely recommend her! She showed us three different techniques. The first is an accordion pleating technique which is the basis of many shibori patterns. The second was a twisting and binding technique that produces rings. The third — which I watched but didn't do — was binding rocks or pebbles. Sophie had the dye vats already prepared. Although we were using fiber-reactive dyes, Sophie heated them, because she said she gets better results if they "cook" for about 2...

Having Cuddly Hubby home has been fantastic! We are still unpacking. Essentially, we've combined two households. The theme in our home right now is abundance. Too many pillows. An extra bed. Boxes of coat hangers. Books! (There is a younger generation whose reading collection is entirely digital. They shall never know what it was to curse your literacy every time you moved.) Extra bottles of personal care products and cleaning supplies. If you have a bottle of something and a spare in each household, when you combine households you now have one active bottle and three spares. Cupboards are not designed for this. Eating ice cream every evening has been a requirement because, I kid you not, we had too much high-quality ice cream (Ben & Jerry's, Jeni's, Daddy O'Brien's) and were running out of room in the freezer. These are the sorts of problems I am delighted to have. I haven't had much time for crafting. Instead I'm mostly clean...

This new year is starting off with promise. We shall see if it delivers. I spent the holiday break at the Maryland man cave, helping pack up. I spent three-quarters of December at home — repairing, reorganizing, recycling, donating. There will be more. This meant I did not spend the end-of-year break gaming or crafting much. Since I could see this was where the schedule was going, I decided to force myself to take a break. I signed up for Esther's "Sculptural Corespinning" class at STITCHES Expo at Home . You may remember I have taken art yarn classes from Esther before . Esther has fabulous creative energy which, of course, attracts other people with similar energy or a desire to have such. And this is one of the advantages of taking a class over watching a video or reading a book. There's interaction. Someone else in class does something that I wouldn't have done, but gets an intriguing result. There's a reason the history of gr...