Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Geometry is interesting. And mistakes happen. I have two patterns in the handout for my "Liberating the Labyrinth" class. Debbie New's Unexpected Knitting has beautiful sweater patterns in this technique. The downside from a pedagogical perspective is these are large, complicated sweater patterns. And sweaters need to fit! For the purposes of learning, I thought it would be better to have a couple smaller, easier projects for practice that are good regardless of size. I devised two cube patterns. Each uses 6 modules. That's enough to give the flavor of the technique without overwhelming. One cube is a zig-zag cube. The pattern is 1 selvedge stitch, decrease (D), increase (I), decrease, increase, decrease, increase, 1 selvedge stitch. The cube is worked back and forth and then seamed. You could also work it in the round. I am pretty sure working DIDIDI or IDIDID doesn't matter. You'll still get a cube. The pattern is commutative...

Just before the holidays, the yarn for the Winter TNNA Great Wall of Yarn swatches arrived. I actually squealed like a preteen when I opened the package! This time I only requested three skeins of yarn, as I have a lot of other work to do right now. Two of the three skeins are long-print yarns. The third, Trendsetter Phoenix, has long-print textural changes. I figured these swatches would be a great opportunity to play with three techniques: short rows, entrelac, and labyrinth. For Trendsetter Phoenix, I chose the short row technique. I used Alice Yu's shadow wrap or twin stitch technique. The pattern is a variation of Lizard Ridge. Instead of working five plain rows between the short row pattern, I've worked only four. And I've worked those four rows as all knit. This means that both knit and purl sides of the short rows show. I thought this yarn looked good from both sides and that the change from stockinette to reverse stockinette only served to further accentuate the...

Happy New Year! I'm a little sorry to see 2012 go, as it was a pretty good year for me. But now it is time to build on the promise of 2013! One of the classes I hope to develop is about Debbie New's wonderful labyrinth knitting technique. I happen to like this technique a lot. I know many knitters are either unfamiliar with it or balk at it because it comes out of Unexpected Knitting . Mathematically it is interesting, as the concept is based on the idea of a space-filling curve. Because you are knitting a long twisting snake instead of a flat rectangle, you can shape the knitting in three-dimensions. The stitches run in all directions, which  makes the knitting very interesting indeed! And if you have color changes in the yarn or textural changes in the knitting, those elements will highlight the unusual construction. While I think a labyrinth sweater is an awesome accomplishment, I also think it is good to warm up and learn on a smaller project. To that end, I came up wit...

The last sweater in this series is another inspiration from the brilliant mind of Debbie New. For the labyrinth sweater, I stayed fairly close to her pattern. Of course, I used different yarn (Cascade 220 and Schaefer Miss Priss in the Margaret Sanger colorway). That pretty orchid purple (color 8901) is the cast-on edge. The marigold yellow (color 7825) is the cast-off edge. The cast-on started in the straight area in the lower left of the back. It took about 4 hours to cast-on -- many, many stitches and many, many stitch markers in two colors. And much double- and triple-checking. And do not, do not, DO NOT, twist the cast-on before you join it. No need to ask me how I know this. Once the cast-on is done, then the fun begins. I think I only knit about 9 or 10 rows total. Granted, all the rows were very, very long. Each colored marker represents either a double-increase or a double-decrease. So, you knit a few stitches, work the appropriate increase or decrease, work a few more stitche...