Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

When I was first learning fiber crafts, I would get an embroidery kit. I followed the directions meticulously. I achieved the result on the package. For many of us, this is a solid way to learn a new skill. The project can have a skill level matched to our level of comfort. Everything can be planned so a beginner is successful. Nothing is too difficult nor uncertain. At some point, crafting is about more than following instructions. There's a difference in art class between "let's copy this famous painting" and "pick your own subject and express it." Yes, copying and following directions can help you acquire skills. Crafting at its highest artistic level is about using those skills to create items reflecting the personal expression of the maker. It is about transmuting tradition into innovation, old into new. For knitters, the transition to innovation is often subtle. It may start with, "Oh, I like this pattern, but I can't find...

Today's post is about how I made a grief blanket. The overall design is modular. I printed and cut out 1-inch squares with the design on them, then moved them around on a table. It was much like designing a quilt block, but using texture rather than color and value. The most common block has a two triangle pattern, with half the block in moss stitch and half the block in welts. The "joining" block is a double-moss stitch, essentially a 2×2 checkerboard. I could have played with other block patterns. Indeed, I generated multiple options. I ended up with three innovations on this project: a refinement of a Mondragon loop block join, a continuous chain selvedge, and an improved way to add a perpendicular border to a chain-stitch edging. The blocks are knit both vertically and horizontally. While normally I would have picked up blocks as for a modular project, the joins in this project are Mondragon loops. Because the welts are narrow str...

Elizabeth Zimmermann advised us to, "Knit on with confidence and hope through all crises." While this is primarily a blog about knitting, grief and loss have popped up as a recurring theme. In the time I've had this blog, I've lost a friend, a grandparent, a parent, multiple pets, zoo animals, and even a fiber festival. We all deal with loss in our own way. The important thing is to deal with it. Figure out what works for you. Then do that. In that sense, grieving is as individual as we are. It reveals who we are, too. Some cultures have a tradition of setting a time limit or completing a ritual. You grieve for a certain number of days or months or you do a thing. Then you declare yourself done. More and more, I find I need activity when I am unhappy. If I am upset, I go for a walk or pace up and down my cul-de-sac or spend a whole day doing active household chores. If I am anxious, I need to fix something or craft something. I am a do...

Twenty-five years of pandas is not enough. These last few days I've been crafting aggressively, mostly to alleviate my grief. ZooAtlanta's giant pandas, Lun Lun, Yang Yang, Ya Lun, and Xi Lun traveled to Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China last weekend. The panda building at ZooAtlanta is closed and empty. I was a docent more than twenty years ago when Lun Lun and Yang Yang were young and the hot new thing in town. For a couple years, I spent a few hours nearly every week with them and the people visiting them. I heard panda stories from people who had traveled across the country or around the world just to see giant pandas. At the beginning, Lun Lun and Yang Yang were sub-adults housed together. I can remember them playing king of the mountain. Lun Lun usually won, although Yang Yang was bigger. I could never figure out if she was better at the game or if he was letting her win? I can recall a panda thudding to the ground, then c...

Well, here we are in October. For us southeastern crafters, we should be coming up on Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. But we all know what happened to Asheville on 27 September 2024. I had expected to spend this week planning and packing and driving up to the mountains for a lovely weekend with friends. This year SAFF and Rhinebeck were again scheduled for the same weekend. I understand that beginning next year, SAFF is on the fourth weekend for a decade. That means 10 years of Rhinebeck weekend followed by SAFF weekend. The world is slowly moving back into alignment. Dragon side In anticipation of SAFF, I worked diligently and monogamously on Dragons' Lore . This is the two-faced double-knit scarf designed by Rik Schell of Purl's Yarn Emporium . I purchased the scarf kit in January when I was nearby at Kanuga. I'd had nearly annual conversations with Rik at SAFF. I knew he had developed an alternative way of working two-faced double-knits...

Yes, Dragon Con was wonderful as always, thank you for asking. However, I did something that was not entirely well-considered. I wore a lovely lacy shawl and a shoulder dragon at the same time. Somehow, a thread in the shawl tore, creating a hole. If this happens to you, what do you do? First, do not panic. That does not mean do not react. Strong language is acceptable in this situation. But you do not want to react in a way that makes the situation worse. When I discovered the tear, I took off the shawl, gently wadded it up, and put it in my suitcase. I did not want to stretch it, which could make the hole bigger and encourage even more stitches to run. So first thing is: do not make the situation worse. As you can see, I added some pins to hold stitches. This prevented stitches from running farther and creating even more mischief. I waited for a quiet morning after a good night's rest. Then I set about the repair. I was fortunate to hav...

I just got back from Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival. It is a wonderful show. Thank you to Laura, who picked it up and kept it going after the pandemic. The students are wonderful. I am especially grateful to the repeat students who have entrusted class time to me year after year. You are all dear to my heart! I mention this because the "upcoming" section in the blog sidebar is getting thin. My schedule is opening up. I have not been putting in proposals. I am intentionally making 2025 a year of staying at home and getting things done. That 90-page handout from my Folk School class looks a lot like a rough draft for a book about reversible knitting. Additionally, registrations in knitting classes seem to be down. Crochet is having a moment. Knitting not so much. Now might be just the time to skip what had been my regular circuit of shows, do a new show here or there, or teach for a guild, but not overload my schedule. Speaking of overloaded ...

My normal practice with e-mail newsletters is to edit aggressively. Although I am not a quilter, I left A Crafted Cottage in Suwanee in my whitelist. It is a sweet little shop catering to quilters by offering quilt fabric, quilting supplies such as templates and thread, and long-arm quilting services. Once a week on Wednesdays, Frank comes to the shop to drop off repaired sewing machines and pick up machines that need repairs. For a long time, I have wondered about the sewing machines that belonged to my grandmothers. The one from my maternal grandmother is a Singer 66-6, serial number AC741270 (shown above). It is still in its much-used cabinet. And it still has its user manual and attachments. It has been in my possession for about 25 years. I had never attempted to plug it in or turn it on. I didn't even know if it was safe to do so. The other machine is a Singer 401A, serial number NB700931, that belonged to my paternal grandmother. She was an accomplished...

I don't always buy a new knitting book in time to get a book review written up. In this case, I managed to pre-order Short-Row Colorwork Knitting by Woolly Wormhead. Sixth & Spring Books are the publisher, meaning the book was available for pre-order from the Vogue Knitting website . I ordered this book for a specific reason. I had tried designing with the "eye" or "leaf" shape in short rows a few years ago, but had trouble with the fabric not lying flat. I suspected it was because I was turning the short rows too close together — only one stitch difference horizontally. Woolly Wormhead does not address that concern specifically. However, when I look at the eye-shaped patterns, I can see they typically turn the short row with one stitch separation. In German short rows, this either means creating the new double-stitch two stitches before the last turn, or working the double-stitch from the last row, working a stitch, and then creating a...

The satisfaction of making things is much connected to the beauty of the thing made. When you yourself craft something beautiful and of high-quality, the personal satisfaction is what encourages/compels you to do more. Climbing the skill ladder, however, sometimes means you make things that are ugly. Behold! obverse reverse What is this? This is the obverse and reverse of my swatch from Harry Wells' "Colorwork the Easy Way: Mosaic Knitting" class at The Knitting Guild Association Next Level Knitting Conference a couple weekends ago. I either attended in real time or watched the replay of eight of those conference classes. While I had done mosaic knitting a long time ago, I thought a refresher from an excellent teacher might be good. The pattern at the bottom of the swatch is the pattern worked in class. Of course, I then decided I wanted to work it reversibly. My first attempt was not entirely successful. But above it, you can see t...

I've continued my march through the embroidery stash. This set of projects did not come from my mother. Rather, I found these in my own stash a couple years ago. I do not remember how they were acquired. Had I bought them? Did my mother gift them to me? Did they come from the stash of one of my mother's friends who had died? I do not recall. Again, for a reason I do not recall, I decided to work on these in maybe 2021 or 2022? There were three of them in my stash. As I got close to finishing the third one in late 2022, I noticed the kit numbers were almost sequential. That sent me on an internet search to see if there were other kits. There were! Some of them were holiday-themed, some not. Not all of them appealed to me, but I did like the snowman, so I bought it for a modest fee. I remember starting the snowman and thinking, "I won't have it done for 2022, but I'll have these finished for Yule 2023." Well, that was before my moth...

I've been in a recent period of yo-yo crafting. By that, I mean I move forward on something, only to discover I need to move backward to move forward again. While this is part of knitting, some days I'd like success to stick! To that end, I am creeping up on completion of a very long spinning project. This project goes all the way back to my first spinning fleece purchase at the Knit and Crochet Fall Show September 2011 in Charlotte, North Carolina. I made the mistake(?) of touching a particularly soft black alpaca fleece. In autumn of 2020, I decided this fleece had aged long enough in stash. It was time to spin it. The slowness in getting around to spinning this fleece came from multiple directions. Partly, the fleece was "precious." I wanted to do it justice. Part of it was the material. Spinning alpaca is not the same as spinning wool. I've had a surprisingly difficult time finding resources about how to spin alpaca. Even PLY Magazine , my first-choice source...

Lately I've been enjoying some knitting history online! The Knitting History Forum Conference is an annual conference. It is now online, but was previously in-person in the United Kingdom. Of course, the great thing about having it online is that people from all over the world can enjoy the presentations. I attended the 2024 conference on Saturday 3 February 2024. The topics were fascinating, including research on the famous silk shirt possibly worn by Charles I to his execution . Other topics included liturgical gloves , Frances Lambert (author of one of the earliest knitting books ), Korsnäs sweaters in Finland, the effect of yarn twist and ply on knit fabric, and Fair Isle fishermans' keps (hats). The conference started at 11:15 Greenwich Mean Time, which meant 06:15 Eastern Standard Time. It was well worth the getting up early on a Saturday. If you missed the conference, no worries! You can purchase access to the recording of the 2024...

Well, we are almost at the end of month #1 of 2024. I got off to a start that was both busy and slow. Busy enough to keep me from getting after things I wanted to get to, thus making it feel slow because I wasn't crossing things off the To Do list. It was the third week of the new year before I got the holiday decorations put away. So that was only 18 days behind schedule. I haven't blogged much about shows after the fact. I thought this month I'd write a little about Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Retreat. My dear friend Varian Brandon organizes this retreat. Kanuga is an Episcopal conference center and campground in the mountains in North Carolina. Their mailing address is Hendersonville, which is where my friends and I usually find a rental house for Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. If you are driving up from Atlanta, it is about half an hour before you get to Asheville. The center was founded in 1928, so is creeping up on its centennial....