Being BFF’s with the owner of a thriving yarn store has tangible perks for a dedicated knitter. Many knitters, and I’m one of them, accumulate more yarn than they can ever knit during their time on earth. We call it SABLE, an acronym for “stash acquisition beyond life expectancy”, and it sounds like a joke, … More Melissa’s Largesse
Who is this alien that has occupied my brain and hands and is compelling me to make sicky-sweet cute stuff? Six months in Frog and Toad World and now pink hearts and gray kittens. Some kind of cuteness bug bit me last spring, after I started knitting Frog, when I ran across a free pattern … More Hearts and Kittens
I had aged out of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books by the time they were published in the 1970’s, so they were a delightful new discovery when my husband and I came across them during our daughters’ early childhood at the beginning of the 1990’s. I remember we even had a VHS tape of … More Down the Rabbit Hole with Frog and Toad
Q: When you’re retired, what’s the difference between everyday life and vacation? A: Packing. I’m being facetious, but that reflects the fact of my privileged little life, in which what I do every day is what I want to do every day no matter where I am. Every summer, preferably in July to escape Baltimore’s … More Continuity of Operations
A couple of years ago I designed and made a pullover for myself based on a very complicated Japanese stitch pattern composed of lacy leaves, bobbles, and diagonal lines meeting up in a gathered stitch. There were so many moving parts in the stitch pattern that I couldn’t figure out how to work increases and … More Partial Amputation Will Be Required
While I was working on my master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies during my pre-knitting 20’s, I encountered an Israeli artist who attempted to explain to me the logic of her color use in one of her works. At that stage in my life, my focus was on learning the morphology of Arabic words so … More Maybe It’s Maybelline…
I saw it once on Facebook in a machine-knitting group and then never saw it again, but it burned a hole in my imagination: a yoked all-over entrelac pullover in gradients of green and pink. It sparked my year of machine-knit entrelac, which occupied my knitting machine for a lot of 2020. I mentioned this … More Chiaroscuro
I was very productive during this year’s Swatchathon, thanks to the nervous energy I needed in order to live through the events of January 2021. The topic of this blog is fiber arts, so I don’t get into politics that much, but I am a very political person and I don’t avoid the mention of … More January 2021 Swatchathon
Sometimes I get an idea for a project that pushes its way to the front of the queue because a practical need requires it, or because my curiosity is urgent and must be acted on right away. That was not the case for this bug-covered pullover for my husband. My interest in it reached such … More Delirium Tremens
The fall season tends to be the busy season for many knitters, and it is for me too, because our family birthdays have clustered in November and December and because my sisters and I get together for Thanksgiving. That’s when I want to give knitted things to my sisters because I can get photos, and … More Love in the Time of Covid
