As you might have gathered from my last post, I’ve started processing fleece. I’d heard spinners wax poetic about the wonder of spinning wool you’d processed yourself: So lofty! So easy to spin! It’s like eating prime steak after a steady diet of hamburger! (I think that last one was Judith MacKenzie.) My curiosity was piqued. I like steak; I like getting heavily into the minutia of making things; how could I not like this? Continue reading
knitting
What to knit when your brain is sludge
Home! I am home. Hello, home. I missed you so. It was wonderful to spend so much time surrounded by family and old friends, and to walk around my old stomping grounds (and boy, did I walk. Everywhere. Vancouver is great for that.) Still, there’s no substitute for being in your own space and sleeping in your own bed, and I missed himself and Chicken-Leg Al the Wonder Cat. Continue reading
Knit fast, die warm
I don’t often get out to local yarn stores. I know, I know: shock, horror, the collapse of the institution, etcetera. The thing is, I live in the ass end of nowhere that is 70s era American suburbia, and I don’t get out much. Instead, I buy online from…wait for it…local yarn stores. They’re just not local to me, except in the more abstract, internet-as-global-community kind of way. When I get the chance, though, I do like to stick my head into an actual bricks-and-mortar store to admire the yarn in person and geek out with fellow knitters using my voice, rather than my keyboard. If such a chance arises while traveling, well, souvenir yarn makes for some good, guilt-free stash enhancement. Continue reading
Published
Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2012 is out, and great day in the morning, I have two designs in there. Now, this is the first time my designs have appeared in a print magazine, so please excuse me if I gush a bit. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. Continue reading
Mawata Colossus: the Peephole block
Being part 3 of a series of tutorials for the Mawata Colossus project. The first part explains how to knit with mawata or silk hankies, and the second gives a recipe for the Picture Window block. Because mawata don’t come in a standard yarn weight and you may have your own preferences for the gauge and size of your blocks, these posts describe how I make the blocks and give guidelines on making your own. They’re more sort of recipes, rather than proper tested, tech edited patterns. Continue reading
The knitter’s version of ‘calm blue ocean’
We’re back from Asheville, and back to the home repairs. Asheville (indeed, all of that part of North Carolina) is just gorgeous, the people we met were delightful, the weather was at least 10F cooler than Birmingham, and the occasional rain made for many pleasant hours spent knitting on my friend’s back porch. Continue reading
Great expectations
Tomorrow, we head out on another road trip, this time to visit a good friend in Asheville, NC. I’m excited for all sorts of reasons: I haven’t seen this friend in a couple of years; it’s a chance to see a whole new swathe of the South (anything east of Atlanta on this trip will be new to me); my friend knits, and knows where to go in Asheville for local yarn and fibre (woo!); and the drive is about 6 hours each way. That’s twelve whole hours in the car. That’s some serious knitting time, folks. So right now, my brain looks something like this:
Mawata Colossus: the Picture Window block
Being part 2 of a series of tutorials for the Mawata Colossus project. Here is the first part, on how to knit with mawata. Because mawata don’t come in a standard yarn weight and you may have your own preferences for the weight and size of your blocks, these instructions are more guidelines than proper tested, tech edited patterns.
Mawata Quilt Blocks: How do I knit with these things?
Since the Mawata Colossus post, a lot of people have asked me how it all works: how to knit with mawata, and how to make quilt-ish blocks from them.
Since it’s a pretty loosey-goosey process, this series of posts will describe how I make the blocks, more as basic formulas than real, gauge-specific, tested and edited patterns. Continue reading
E. Elliott Knits 