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
My mission for the remainder of my life is to knit through as much of my stash as I can before I die, while also supporting my friend Melissa’s yarn shop with as many new purchases as I can actually knit up. When I finally succeed at knitting up these purchases (or to be honest, … More Grazie, Mariagioia!
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
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
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
Monogamy has a specific meaning in knitter jargon: it means working on one project at a time until the project is finished. Before I retired, I was a monogamous knitter, and it was satisfying to me to focus all my thought and knitting time on the project and seeing it steadily grow. Then I retired … More Polygamy
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
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
My older daughter was an only child for a blissful two years and 49 weeks. That ended when she got the worst possible birthday present three weeks to the day from her third birthday: her younger sister. It took her a couple of years before she understood the cyclical nature of time, while she tried … More Birthday Knitting Season
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 