Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

I think we are all learning that a mask can be a fashion accessory.  It took me a while to find one I liked. I started out with an accordion-fold mask, but it didn't quite accommodate my prominent pointy nose. Eventually, I found a hand-dyed cotton mask on Etsy from one of the teachers who was going to be at Blue Ridge Fiber Fest. (I think it was WAXON studio .)                         I did want to point out something about her design that I like very much — the single strap. The default I see commonly is two small straps that fit around the ears. While many people like those, I'm not a fan. After a little while, the elastic irritates the back of my ears. The one-strap design means the strap goes around behind my head. I find it to be much more comfortable. Another advantage is I can pull the mask on over my head and leave it hanging around my neck. This is handy if I am run...

The experiment with Jacquard acid dyes taught me one thing quite clearly — acid dyes are not great on Texsolv. I should have known this already, as I know acid dyes work on animal fibers (wool, silk) but not on plant fibers (cotton, linen). While acid dyes work on nylon (think sock yarn), they aren't great on polyester. Texsolv heddles and cords are polyester. So, maybe the answer was to find a dye that works on polyester? Of course, I started by looking at The Woolery, Paradise Fibers, Yarn Barn of Kansas, Susan's Fiber Shop, Earth Guild, and other usual suspects. Not a lot of luck. It turns out, the answer was almost in my own backyard about three miles away at Hobby Lobby and WalMart. Let me preface this by saying I rarely go in either of these stores. In particular, I probably hadn't been in that super WalMart in close to a decade. I'm almost surprised the bank didn't call to ask if my debit card had been stolen after I shopped in both places the same week. They...

As the change tsunami rolled through my life last year, it washed away many old things, but also washed in some new things. One of those is a 16-shaft 32-inch-wide Ashford table loom. When I first started weaving, I quickly realized what intrigued me was the complex structures. I am particularly fond of doubleweave and advancing twills. Complex twills are shaft-greedy structures. I soon upgraded my four-shaft table loom with an 8-shaft expansion kit. Then I discovered I always seemed to want to weave something slightly wider than 24-inches. So I bought the 32-inch loom and sold my 24-inch loom. But I still had only eight shafts. I even wrote to Ashford and asked if they ever made the 16-shaft model in the wider width. I only ever saw it offered in the 24-inch width. Well, apparently Ashford made a run of 16-shaft looms in the wider width in early 2018. And I, somehow, did not get the memo. By the time I learned about it, they were all gone. And then representatives from Ashford w...

A question was recently posted to the Ravelry double-knitting group . The knitter wanted to work a typical two-color double-knit fabric but did not want to manipulate two colors at once. She wanted to know would it be possible to work the fabric using the slipped-stitch method? While I think it is probably more efficient to work with both colors in one pass, it is possible to work each color individually. Some caveats: You want points at both ends — use double-pointed needles or circular needles. If you like reading your knitting, it is tricky to read that second pass. You might want to set-up each row by inserting stitch markers at each color change. This method is probably slower. On the other hand, if you really can't stand carrying two colors at once or you are getting very different tension with each color, then working one color at a time may be worth it. You might find you better match the tension in both colors. You will still need to move the yarn back and forth between th...

When I bumped into Cecelia Campochiaro at STITCHES Salt Lake, I mentioned how much I loved her 2015 book Sequence Knitting . I asked if she was working on another book that would explore lace sequence knitting with yarn overs and other maneuvers. She enthusiastically replied she was working on a book about marls and was having a great time with it. At that moment, I was a little disappointed. Marls? That's just holding two colors together to make a third color. I've done that in counted cross-stitch for years. How could anyone write a whole book about that? And it's such a simple concept. What could you find to say that would fill up a book? For most of us, the subject of marling could hardly be longer than a magazine article. But, of course, in Cecelia's hands, the subject has unanticipated depth, complexity, and design possibility. Making Marls is a large affair of the coffee-table book variety. There are plenty of photographs and charts. Most are large and easy-to-r...

Galina Khmeleva's Russian lace class was not the only lace class I took at Georgia FiberFest in 2017. I also took a class called "Introduction to the History, Methods, and Styles of Lace Knitting" from Franklin Habit. Franklin talked about the various traditions including Shetland, Orenburg, and Estonian. In the class handouts he included charts of a motif typical for each tradition. I keep notebooks of the handouts from the many classes I've taken. It is often useful to have swatches with those handouts. So, I decided to knit up samples from Franklin's class. The process got me thinking about lace in general. First off, there is sometimes a distinction between lace knitting and knit lace: knitted lace = action on both right side and wrong side lace knitting = action on right side; mindless wrong side Also, some laces are stockinette-based (knit on right side, purl on wrong side) and some are garter-based (knit on both sides). Garter tends to be bumpier, ...

I did have one "Hmmm, I wonder. . . " moment in Galina's Orenburg lace class. She showed us a Russian book of lace patterns. The patterns were charted on a grid, much like other lace patterns. The difference was the decreases were not shown on the chart. And the yarn-overs were shown in different colors, to indicate groupings. This got me thinking. It implies the Orenburg lace knitters understand their patterns. They work the patterns from memory. They know where the holes go. They know where the decreases go because they know where the holes go. How do they know? First off, Orenburg lace does not worry about direction of slant on the decreases. If you need to decrease one stitch, the answer is to knit two together. A slip-slip-knit decrease is not used. If you need to decrease two stitches, the answer is to knit three together. A centered double decrease is not used. Most of the time, the lace knitter is only asking: Do I need to decrease one stitch or two? Do I p...