Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

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...

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...

I haven't done much knitting in the last month. I do have a project on the needles, but it isn't a design for publication. Instead, I've devoted a fair amount of attention to spinning. Last week was Spinzilla . The Whole Nine Yarns did not field a team this year. I joined the Kromski team. I don't have a Kromski wheel, but Kromski North America is based in Georgia. They have been wonderful, gracious corporate sponsors of Georgia FiberFest for the past two years. And you'll recall I came back from the festival this year with a big pile of Polish merino in the Pavonia Peacock limited edition colorway. My goal was to spin all that fiber into a 2-ply lace weight yarn. I am envisioning a circular shawl in reversible lace. Remember, reversible lace takes twice as many stitches, therefore twice as much yarn. Magic always comes with a price. Well, by the first day I could tell that I wasn't going to get to the plying stage. By about Wednesday, I could tell I wasn...

I get so caught up in stunt knitting that I sometimes forget simplicity is often the secret to good design. And so it has been with Scrawling. This is a scribble lace shawl I worked up last summer. It is one of the few fiber things that was started, worked upon, and completed during the personal mayhem of 2013. I had made a scribble lace years ago when I taught for Purly Gates. My recollection was the project was fairly quick and fun. And the finished fabric was like knitted Silly Putty -- highly malleable. Scrawling started with Esther Rodgers' "Corespinning for Fun and Function" class at STITCHES South 2013. The art batt was lovely, and the corespun yarn was fabulous. You'll recall I made this skein: I liked the skein so much, I decided to wanted to use it in a project right away so I could show it off. But I'm not usually a fan of bulky knits or projects made with only corespun. And the skein was only 73 m/80 yards long. Handspun art yarns are like high-qu...

You'll recall I used this burst of intense summer weather to dye some fiber. During the Independence Day holiday and following weekend, I spun that fiber up into yarn. I'm trying to decide whether or not this yarn can be labeled as "successful." I was aiming for a peachy-pink color that would emulate the traits of dewy European fairy-princess flesh -- pale, pink, soft, with a gentle glow. Pink Slime/Gore/Road Kill hand spun, hand dyed, hand carded mohair Yes, it really is this color, which is why I photographed it outdoors. A couple things happened along the way. Firstly, the core fibers I dyed with pink lemonade Kool-Aid had quite a bit of brown kemp. The brown didn't show much in the rolags, but it did show when spun into the core singles. I didn't take a picture, but the core singles were noticeably both pink and brown, rather than just pink. Also, the core singles required a lot of twist. Mohair is slippery! Duh! When spinning 100% mohair, it keeps ...