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
I’m not the first to have noticed that the limitations of my skills and equipment stimulate designs that get around those limitations or turn them into design features. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Or is it “mother is the invention of necessity”? Or “invention is the necessity of mother”? Whatever, last spring … More A Panel Discussion
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
I took an online machine knitting seminar in February with Diana Sullivan that she called “From String to Things.” One of those things was a recipe for machine-knitted mukluks, which I thought might be adaptable for use as socks. I really need new socks since my current wardrobe of socks is sprouting holes every which … More On My Feet
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
This project was born from three factors: First, our potholders were full of burn holes and should have been replaced years ago. Second, I found a free pattern on Ravelry for a pretty flower-shaped potholder made of two crocheted circles joined together by a contrast color that delineates the last four rows of the pattern … More Make It Work!
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 Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 