Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Yesterday I showed you swatches from Gayle Roehm's "Challenging Stitches from Japanese Designs" class. Today I present the swatches from its sequel, "Even More Challenging Stitches from Japanese Designs." In this class, Gayle labeled the swatches with numbers instead of letters. Swatch 1 from "Even More Challenging Stitches from Japanese Designs"  This first swatch is a "basic" Japanese lace pattern -- that is, it has action on both right and wrong sides. Although it is a stockinette-based lace, the increases and decreases push the wales in different directions to create a surprising amount of movement and texture. Swatch 2 from "Even More Challenging Stitches from Japanese Designs" Gayle called swatch 2 a faux paisley. Like the dogwood lace swatch B in yesterday's post, the chart has large open area of white space that are disconcerting to the uninitiated. The top of each paisley also has a strange maneuver that i...

Last month I gave a short talk about Japanese knitting for Atlanta Knitting Guild. Pam is leading the guild on a knit-along incorporating techniques from around the world. Ideally we would have had either Gayle Roehm or Fleegle come talk to the guild about Japanese knitting. Since I had taken two of Gayle's classes, I filled in. This led me to pull out my notebook of class handouts. When I took that first class at STITCHES 2009 , I was not in the habit of keeping my swatches. Rather, I learned in class, ripped back, and reused the yarn. I also put all the handout pages in one page protector. Now I know better. Now I put each page in a separate protector and I put the swatch in with the page, so I can see what it was I did. After giving my presentation for AKG, I decided to knit the missing swatches and revisit what I had learned. If you have a chance to take a class with Gayle, I recommend it. Over the past five years I have gathered about half a dozen Japanese stitch dictionar...