Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

Last weekend was my first trip to Texas. It was a privilege to teach at the Dallas Fort-Worth Fiber Festival . If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you know I love fiber festivals, even when I'm not teaching at them. Festival. Go! See! It has been a few years since we had STITCHES South or Georgia FiberFest, although we do have Georgia Mountain Needle Arts Festival. There are still several festivals in North Carolina, including Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (coming up in October), Carolina Fiber Fest (March), and Blue Ridge Fiber Fest (June) as well as retreats such as Kanuga Knitting and Quilting (January) and Unwind (April). If you live in Georgia but don't want to drive to a festival, I suggest you fly to Texas. Here's why. The board that organizes DFW FiberFest is fantastic! They are friendly, generous, competent, enthusiastic, and completely committed to the goal of advancing the fiber arts. They take care of their vendors...

I'm very much a do-it-myself sort of person. If I know how to do something, it can be hard for me to pay someone else to do it. I recently had a very pleasant experience where I let someone else do something. It turned out excellent! Over the past couple years, I acquired a set of Prym double-pointed needles . I like them. They are 8 inches long, which makes them fantastic for swatching, experimenting, and demonstrating. They also don't fit in standard needle cases. I searched the Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival last year. There was one vendor in particular who had nice cases, but didn't yet have anything to fit Prym. Eventually, I purchased some fabric at the local JoAnn's in California, Maryland, just up the road from Lexington Park. For a small big box store — and this really was a cramped JoAnn's — they had a fantastic selection of quilt fabrics. I am guessing quilting is a popular hobby in southern Maryland? I figured at some point I would make a fabric roll ...

What's the difference between a beginning knitter and an intermediate or advanced knitter? One of the big differences is: intermediate and advanced knitters don't follow the pattern. I know that doesn't make sense. Wouldn't it make more sense to say intermediate and advanced knitters are better at following the pattern? It would, but that isn't necessarily the case. Let me share an example. booties — even the bind offs are mirrored I recently made a pair of baby booties. These are the "Lace and Bobble Bootees" from Debbie Bliss Cotton Knits for All Seasons (North Pomfret, Vermont: Traflagar Square Publishing 2002, pp. 46-7). Here is how I changed the pattern. There's no schematic or construction diagram. And there's only one picture of the booties. I sat down with practice yarn and worked the first dozen rows of the pattern. There's some working back and forth and increasing. From that and reading ahead, I was able to understand how the boo...

The last part of the sock knit along involves working happily up the leg and then binding off. Two at a time is not difficult. I don't even teach it as a separate class. Rather, I do teach it as part of my knitting in the round class. If you are using the two circular needles method, then one needle goes in the first half of both socks and the other needle goes in the second half of both socks. If you are doing magic loop, then thread first half of the first sock, all of the second sock, and the second half of the first sock. It is that half—whole—other half threading that I think messes people up. While I prefer magic loop, two circulars is very useful and possibly more versatile. You can work very small circumference with both techniques. However, you can also work very large circumferences with the two circulars method by making it three or four or more. I could, theoretically, knit a house cozy simply by having many, many circular needles. Knowing which method you like for work...

If you are doing the sock knit along, hopefully you finished the toe and foot of your sock and are ready for the heel turn. I'm using a short row or hourglass heel. You can work this using whatever short row method you like. I'm using twin stitches, sometimes called shadow wraps or dopplegänger stitches. I haven't had time to run a proper short-row sock experiment. There are several parameters: Do I use clean up rows between the top and bottom of the hourglass or not? Which type of short rows do I use — wrap & turn, Japanese, German, or twin? Plus, I think there might be a couple different ways to work wrap & turn — one way throws the wraps to the private side of the work and the other leaves them as a decorative line. That looks like at least 10 different heel turns. For the moment, I think I will continue to work on the socks. By the way, I spent 2 months swatching for pattern. I cast on Monday and turned the heel Thursday. This is a good reminder to me that I am ...

I'm active in both of my local knitting guilds — Atlanta Knitting Guild and North Georgia Knitting Guild. Sibel, who is currently leading programs for North Georgia Knitting Guild, asked if I could please lead a knit along for socks. I have some sock yarn that has been languishing for awhile. This seemed like a good motivation to turn that yarn into socks. Initially, I thought I would demonstrate the techniques at consecutive guild meetings. After some thought, I decided it would be nice to have video members could watch ahead of time. That way, I don't need to take up a big chunk of a guild meeting. I want instead to concentrate on assisting members who are having difficulty. So, here are the first two videos as well as some instructions. To start your sock, please swatch. Swatch until you have achieved these things: You have produced a fabric you like for socks (dense for wear but stretchy). You have figured out which needles you like best for working this yarn. You have figu...

Having learned from the shibori experience (take pictures, document your work), I was better prepared for Jessica Kaufman's "Incredible Ice Dye" class at Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance last weekend. Jess is the owner of Waxon Studio in Asheville, North Carolina. Jess teaches dye techniques, sells materials, and sells finished dyed goods. This time, I took pictures in progress and afterwards. For our class Jess had five-gallon buckets of "mordant" ready — recipe is one cup of soda ash/washing soda to one gallon water. Jess said this mixture can be used repeatedly. As for any dyeing project, start with clean laundered fabric. We dunked our fabric in the soda ash water for at least 10 minutes. This makes the fabric ready to activate the dye by shifting the pH to alkaline. Jess mentioned soda ash is sometimes used in pool maintenance and comes in 50 pound bags. If you have a friend with a swimming pool, you might be able to ...