Part Two of my “soft protest” knitting took much longer to make than Part One, even though Part Two was a machine knitted garment, and isn’t machine knitting supposed to be quicker than hand knitting? My second garment protesting the new authoritarian takeover of American democracy is less explicit than decorating a sweater with words … More Soft Protest Part Two
I dedicated most of my annual January Swatchathon this year to exploring machine knitting techniques illustrated by the British textile designer Alison Dupernex, especially her use of color in circular tuck stitch shapes. I have owned her book Machine Knitting: Designing with Colour for some years, but it took some years for me to get … More Channeling Alison Dupernex
January is my annual swatching season. I dedicate the entire month, and sometimes some of the previous and following months, to swatching projects I plan to knit and to learning new techniques in hand knitting, machine knitting, crochet, and other fiber media. This year I focused almost exclusively on hand-manipulated fabrics knitted on the LK150 … More January 2025 Swatchathon
My younger daughter got married at the end of June to a fellow who has many pursuits, among them a detailed interest in meteorology. The two of them have jobs whose work doesn’t end when they leave the office, and they stay up late and wake up early to complete it. They are sleepy people … More Madison Wisconsin USA January-December 2023
The origin for this work dates back to fall 2022, when I ran into a sweater during my daily perusal of my Ravelry friends activity that featured a sweater with a round yoke festooned with tufts of irregularly spun art yarn poking out of the surface of the knitting. It was a kind of roosimine, … More Old Weird Barbie
Last summer I figured out the mechanics of machine-knit intarsia, and discovered that it was the perfect vehicle for some self-striping mercerized cotton DK yarn that I had had lying around for several years. My first intarsia summer top, made of Uneek Cotton yarn, was supposed to have been a stash-buster, but it came out … More The Heart in Summer
Last year’s January Swatchathon, my annual month dedicated to making swatches and trying new techniques, was a particularly productive one for numbers of swatches and new techniques attempted. But in terms of completed garments based on the swatches, it was a bit of a bust. I was overly ambitious. When I first started dedicating my … More January 2024 Swatchathon
Things don’t always go as planned, in needle-work and art as well as in life. I can’t absolutely assert that resilience and resourcefulness in fixing fiber art problems translates to resilience and resourcefulness in fixing life problems, but I can confidently state that fixing fiber art problems makes you better and more creative at fixing … More A One-Eyed Solution
I’ve been flirting for some time with the idea of Hønsestrikk, a style of knitting developed by the Danish knitter Kirsten Hofstätter in the 1970’s as a protest against the yarn companies’ linking of garment patterns with yarn purchases. Hofstätter promoted and popularized personalizing basic sweater shapes with stranded motifs that were meaningful to the … More When Will This Sweater Be a Crime?
I have a big, huge, overwhelming yarn stash. It happens. I’m not the only one. That’s why so many people write “stashbuster” patterns, and I just made two of them that actually did make a tiny dent in my stash. Many months ago I was attracted to a pattern for a crocheted and felted rug … More Sisyphus Meets My Stash
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 