My annual January Swatchathon is as close as I get to making New Year’s resolutions, because it’s when I try out different techniques and combinations to see if the idea I’m playing with is something I want to turn into a finished object, and I set a goal for the coming year. This year’s goal … More Taking Liberties With Junko
I have a second knitting machine that lives at my daughter’s house in Wisconsin, a plastic mid-gauge LK150 with different capabilities than my electronic standard gauge KH965i that lives upstairs in my daughters’ childhood bedroom. I was thrilled to discover that the yarn feeder on the regular, standard knitting carriage of the LK150 was equipped … More Y2K Called, It Wants Its Duster Back
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
My jaw dropped when I first encountered Steampunk, a Finnish-language pattern by Hanne Piirainen for leggings with elaborate stranded patterning of flower-like gears interconnecting over the entire fabric of the garment, with two strategically placed focal points: on the crotch and on the butt. I posted the project to my Ravelry group “The Interior of … More If Not Now, When?
It seemed in September 2022 like something I could knit on the machine with plenty of time to spare before my younger daughter’s birthday in late November. It was a blanket design by Nicky Epstein that I saw once in my friends’ activity on Ravelry, made up of garter stitch squares in different colors, sewn … More A Year and a Quarter Later
You know that thrill of meeting someone for the first time and hitting it off? When they seem completely perfect and everything seems so effortlessly natural? Then you spend more time together and you discover each other’s limitations, and starry-eyed illusions collide with reality? That happened to me very recently, not with a replacement for … More A Deeper Relationship
I have been using modular machine knitting techniques for some time as a way to create design elements while extending the width limitations imposed by a 200-needle knitting machine bed. Until now I have avoided concocting designs that had half of the neckline knitted vertically and the other half knitted horizontally because that requires one … More Goldilocks and the Three Shirts
When I got married decades ago, I was very tempted to get married the way my parents did when they were 22 and had no money, in a rabbi’s office with next to no guests, no catering, no band, nothing but the legal essentials. But I thought that I might be sorry later on if … More Not-So-Scary New Toy
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 