Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

The tussle with the Bohus Forest Darkness sweater continues. I think I am winning. Maybe? I ripped back to the colorwork, then tinked out the last color pattern including the final plain increase round. That was five rounds of 400 stitches each. It was in pulling out those rounds that I discovered the moths had nibbled on color 306 in the penultimate color pattern. That was another four rounds to pick out. Grrrr. After all the pain of tinking, I finally got to start knitting forward. The color patterns proceeded pretty well. I was able to wet-splice the yarn the moths had eaten. I put in a lifeline after the colorwork. I worked the short rows. I used the same number of short rows as written in the pattern, but I spaced them 4 stitches apart instead of 5. And I used the German short row technique. After working the crescent of short rows, I put in another lifeline. After adding about an inch and a half in the front, I divided for the body and sleeves....

For the record, I want to state that the easy part of the Forest Darkness has been the colorwork. You'll recall my challenge is the smallest size is too big for me. After more knitting and frogging and knitting and frogging, I thought I had figured things out. The instructions that come with the sweater kit have short rows as well as body and sleeve increases as you transition down the yoke towards the split for the sleeves and body. Some rounds/rows have both body and sleeve increases, and some have sleeve increases only. The short rows are turned at 5-stitch intervals, producing a gentle wedges on each side that reach from the underarm to the bust. I had already worked those instructions. I already knew they produced a sweater that was way too large for me. So I tried an alternative solution. I thought I might be able to extend the back and sleeves but not the front. The yoke is almost at my bust. I worked two inches of short rows using 2-stitch ...

It looks like we might hit our first freeze later this week. As the weather cools in Atlanta, thoughts turn to unfinished sweaters. There's a beautiful Bohus Forest Darkness that has been hibernating for awhile in my unfinished objects. According to my Ravelry notes, I started the sweater in the spring of 2015. The colorwork progressed nicely. The problem was when I got to the plain part. I worked the directions for the smallest size and discovered the smallest size is too big for me. I ripped back to the colorwork — thank goodness I put in a dental floss lifeline — and plopped the project back into a Longaberger picnic basket. I determined in order to finish the sweater, I would probably need a mannequin sized to my own body, so I could adjust fit as I knit. At one point Jenna from The Whole Nine Yarns helped me make a mannequin from an old t-shirt and duct tape. After my Aunt Carol passed away last year. I acquired her adjustable sewing mannequin. So ...

Last weekend I took Alasdair Post-Quinn's online "Double-knitting Off the Grid" workshop . While I don't double-knit often, I find it useful in certain circumstances. Alasdair's inventive exploration of the technique is always worthy of my time. Learning something new was a familiar pleasure, one I haven't indulged in much in 2020. The swatch took a couple hours to knit. Basically, the class was a deep dive into double-knit increases and decreases. The decreases are pretty much the same ones I use in versa lace. In double-knitting those decreases involve two colors not one, but are otherwise the same. Alasdair has an interesting way of working the swap between stitches #2 and #3 in a single decrease. And he has an unusual way of working the lifted increase. Also, I would have misread his charts if I hadn't taken the class.  The off the grid method allows you to create motifs that are more curved and refined, rather than pixela...

My latest pattern comes from an idea I had swatched a year or two ago. What brought it to the top of the queue was a need for grief knitting. My aerospace friend, Bob Greene, passed away from cancer in the early morning hours of Thursday 8 October 2020. He was in hospice care the final three weeks of his life. I spent a fair amount of those three weeks sitting bedside with him. I also drove out and back to Mississippi to fetch his granddaughter, and then did the same trip three days later to take her home. On my last day with Bob I downloaded the audiobook of The Martian and played that. Bob and I shared a love of all things outer space. I will miss him every time I see space news. I hope to live long enough to see humans walk on the moon again or even Mars for the first time. Bob dearly wanted to see that, too. The grief knitting turned out to be Penta Benda. The pattern is based on an interesting way of arranging right triangles, so they create an octag...

In this stressful year, I really need some mindless knitting. To be fair, a complex Aran cabled sweater may not sound like mindless knitting to you. For me, all I am doing is following someone else's pattern. I don't have to write down what I am doing. I don't have to shoot video. All I have to do is follow a chart and happily knit. The sweater is the DNA Pullover by Andrea Cull from the Winter 2019 issue of Interweave Knits. Of course, I'm going to work this in the round. It has advantages. I am happily knitting around and around. I can try on the sweater as I go. I don't have to sew seams at the end. And I don't have to worry as much about gauge issues between my knits and purls (which have somehow gotten worse not better). Those panels of stockinette should be even. Before I cast on the sweater, I needed to make a gauge swatch. What did it tell me? First, I cast on 110 stitches. Yes, that...

This year has certainly been the year of change and rethinking. I started off the year with a wonderful lineup of in-person teaching opportunities. Now I am ending the year with much less ahead —thank you, South Carolina Knitting Guild, for soldiering forth — and not a lot on the horizon. Kanuga, Carolina Fiber Fest, Unwind, STITCHES United, Blue Ridge Fiber Fest would normally be on my calendar. Some of these are canceled; some are planning but may be virtual. There is still a lot of uncertainty. I am slowly adapting to this new landscape. I've done some teaching online, most notably for virtual New York Sheep and Wool Festival. Back in the summer, one of my students contacted me for help altering a pattern. We were able to meet over Facetime; and that worked pretty well. I've been meeting some local students in person once a week. We wear masks and use hand sanitizer and generally try to be careful. I have a long list of videos I need to shoot and a new pattern is close to b...