Junko Okamoto is one of my favorite knitting designers, but I’m not usually an early adopter of her patterns based on the sample photos illustrating her patterns. Her sample sweaters are usually very minimalist, knitted in monochromatic neutrals, with understated, deemphasized details. When I saw her pictures for Hana, I didn’t have much reaction to … More A Season of Junko
The first thing I do every morning is to go on Ravelry. I check in on my group, The Interior of My Brain, to contribute to any discussions that might have taken place in my absence if I have something to add, and search through my friends’ activity for interesting projects or patterns that might … More Interference Glitch and Noisy Stripes
I started dedicating my Januarys to swatching in 2016. Every January Swatchathon has influenced my various fiber media for the rest of the year, although some years some of the swatching satisfies my curiosity about the technique without inspiring a project. Sometimes the swatching is just a small introduction into a method that needs to … More January 2023 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 closed my last post, Birthday Knitting Season, with unfinished business, some of which I have finished. I completed my older daughter’s birthday sweater and got it into the mail 12 days before her birthday, which hopefully will be enough to get to her in time. I’m pleased with it aesthetically and technically, and I’m … More The Monsters’ Birthday Party
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
After spending most of 2018 hand-knitting stylized faces for two pieces of wall art, DNA and Faces Come Out of the Rain, I thought I was done with knitted faces, until my Ravelry friend Rebecca Yaker created a machine knit version of the pattern and generously shared her recipe with me. I made a swatch … More Are You Really Going to Wear That? In Public???
As I keep saying, I find plain stockinette tedious to hand knit, which is why I have a knitting machine. All the while I was handknitting my Kurt, a pattern by Japanese designer Junko Okamoto for an oversized pullover of modular patchwork squares, I laboriously handknitted one stockinette square after an other and daydreamed about … More Machine Translation
I wasn’t the kind of mother who knitted “Mommy and Me” matching sweaters when my daughters were little, but I seem to be making up for lost time now that my younger daughter is an adult. The way that generally happens is that I try out a new idea for myself that would work well … More My Baby and Me
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 