Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

On a recent trip to Pennsylvania, my longtime high school friend Pam introduced me to Peggy. Peggy is in her 90s. She is a talented fiber artist, known mostly for her hooked rugs. We spent an afternoon walking around Peggy’s home. She showed me her beautiful rugs made with wool strips she dyed herself in up to eight shades of a color. She showed me a cedar chest filled with her hand knit sweaters. She showed me a closet of clothes she made herself in silks and suede. She showed me ethnic textiles she collected from her travels abroad, including three years living in Palestine. Peggy is downsizing to move to Vermont to be closer to family. She is boxing up her stash of fabric and yarn. She opened one of the boxes of fabric. Inside was this: It is a vintage Kaffe Fassett kit! The tag in the upper right indicates Peggy bought it for £49.00, probably in London. From what I can tell, it looks as if the kit is intact. There is a pair of straight knitti...

Long before I met Rick Mondragon in person, I learned his name from an old Threads magazine article. If you have the February 1995 issue, or the reprint in Great Knits (Newton CT: Taunton Press 1995, pp. 58-61), you can read his article "Knit in Blocks of Color -- without Bobbins." Rick's technique allows you to knit individual blocks and then connect as you go. In that regard it is similar to modular knitting, except you really are ending up with the yarn in exactly the same place it would be if you had lined up a long row of little balls or bobbins and knit not-so-merrily across in intarsia. And if you are a Kaffe Fassett fan, this technique could open up a whole new world! One way to learn this is to knit two plain intarsia blocks and then unpick only one of them. (The white dots are the tops of the pin heads. I've pinned this swatch flat to a pillow.) I've unpicked the top eight rows of knitting on the blue half of this swatch. Do you see the paire...