Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

During the first weekend of November, I took a two-day sprang workshop with Carol James. Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance offered the class in this amazing but rare technique. Unstretched I was interested in the technique because it is sometimes confused with knit and crochet in historic collections. Center for Knit and Crochet at some point will want to have resources on their website to help curators and collectors discern among knit and crochet as well as tatting, nålebinding, sprang, and the like. When we reach that point, I want to be useful. I came away with an appreciation for this amazing technique that dates all the way back to the bronze age. Carol showed us a picture of a Greek vase where the weaver appears to be making sprang. (There's an archeology journal article here .) The technique was common in European military sashes, which is how Carol was introduced to it through her business producing military sashes for reenactors. She also showed us pictures of M...

As I mentioned yesterday, I did work on another small project. In this case, I knocked out a square for the TNNA Great Wall of Yarn. The yarn this time is lovely stuff -- Sweet Georgia Silk Mist. This is obviously a Rowan Kidsilk Haze substitute. If you don't know what to do with it, you can browse the 1000 pages (no exaggeration) of Kidsilk Haze projects on Ravelry. I decided to work a little lace with the color stacking, so as not to muddle the beautiful spring colors in the skein. I used a provisional cast-on, leaving enough tail to be able to bind off later. After only a little fiddling, I was able to determine that something around 88 stitches would stack for me. I found a stitch pattern from p.71 of The Haapsalu Scarf by Siiri Reimann & Aime Edasi that would fit over 85 stitches, plus two for the selvedge is 87. So I cast on and knit using a US size 7 (4.5mm) pointy needle. On the downside, this did not go as quickly as I would have liked. Partly I did not spend as...