I don’t learn quickly, but when I learn something, I’m like a dog with a bone, and I find a million different ways to use the one little thing I finally figured out. Sure, everybody else who has a Brother electronic knitting machine with preprogrammed Stitchworld patterns takes it home, sets it up, figures out … More Closing the Circle
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?
One of my favorite sources of design inspiration is… pigheadedness. Also technical failure. Or both, as was the case for this pullover for my older daughter that combined both of these elements. The pigheadedness expressed itself by prompting me to take up the challenge of using a Wollmeise colorway that one of my Ravelry friends … More Lipstick Samples
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
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
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
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 