Mandy Moore's Blog, page 42

2015: The year it all changed for Knitty

It’s hard to even know where to begin to write about Knitty’s 2015. We could focus on some standout patterns that we published, like these:

Geek socks: 252 projects on Ravelry

 

Swink: the definition of knitting and crochet playing well together!

 

Pierrot: a sweater unlike any other…so joyous!

and the crazy innovation in the Winter issue:

Cache Cache: tame your crazy variegateds in such a beautiful way

 

Ribbon Candy: vertically stacked increases = pop art

 

Hexadot: did you know that linen stitch can create DOTS?

 

One of the biggest changes was made possible by our new Sysadmin, Christopher Gernon, who did this:

way to uncork the decade-old launch-day bottleneck, Christopher!

Though he did it with brain cells, a lot of hard work and targeted knowhow (not champagne and a thumb). We love him very  much.

 

We welcomed two new columnists: Liz Gipson who talks about Weaving for knitters on the rigid-heddle loom, and Lorilee Beltman, who is taking our techniques column to a new level of cleverness.

Then there was this:

Our most-talked-about cover EVER.

 

But without doubt, the biggest story for Knitty in 2015 was our change in how we’re funded. We’ve gone from being 100% advertising supported to a combination of support from advertisers and our readers. OUR READERS. YOU GUYS. We used the cool Patreon platform.

I talk about the process of asking for help, and the joy in finding out help was available thanks to you guys, in the latest editorial. But it cannot be overstated. Finding out our readership likes what we do enough to support us in such a huge way is the most affirming thing that could ever happen to us. Support continues to build, even after our big launch in September, which means ongoing financial security for Knitty and its staff. In case you missed it, I was able to double what we pay our designers, thanks to your support. I’ve been able to give the Tech Editors long-overdue raises, thanks to your support. We are able to hold advertising prices steady, allowing our advertisers to share their wares and services with you at affordable prices, thanks to your support. And more good things are still to come.

It’s all THANKS TO YOUR SUPPORT.

We’ve had a wonderful 2015, and we cannot wait to see where 2016 takes us. Thank you for accompanying us on this exciting journey, and please accept our best wishes for the happiest possible 2016.

Love,

Amy, Jillian and the Knitty team

WWW: NY Times recognizes spinner; Netflix and pill?; Important Lesson from Ms. Gladys Phillips

A really lovely obituary for Alden Amos, spinner, teacher and wheel-maker extraordinaire. Fabulous to see recognition of his talents and contribution to the craft in a mainstream publication.

I don’t know about you, but one of mygreat pleasures of the holiday break is some time to knit and catch up on excellent TV watching. I’ve particularly enjoyed Jessica Jones on Netflix, and was very pleased to hear that the star of the show, Krysten Ritter, is also a knitter.

Speaking of Netflix, the company has helpfully (?) suggested that we knit ourselves a pair of Netflix socks, complete with electronics that sense if you’ve fallen asleep, and pause playback. Hmm…

A reminder of why it’s always a good idea to take your knitting with you when you go to ‘powder your nose‘… 82-year old Gladys Phillips gets accidentally locked in public toilet stall for four days. Does she get upset? No, she just knits up the yarn she had in her handbag.

Not strictly knitting, but absolutely fun: a video for They Might Be Giants’ kids song “Long White Beard”, with an excellent stop-motion animation… yarn has a key role. I know that someone close to the band is a knitter, and I suspect her stash might have been very involved in the creation of this video.

Jillian’s Spinning: Inspired by Travel

My family was lucky enough to travel big this holiday to Portland, Oregon. These days I travel more for teaching and not as often as I’d like with our whole family. We had big extended family time on this trip, welcoming a new perfect baby boy. We had lots of smaller group time and wandering time. It was lovely.

A knitter beside me. Socks, I think.

Portland is a place where there is knitting and fiber everywhere. Almost everyone I saw was wearing something handknit. There were lots and lots of hats, socks, sweaters and scarves. And people knit everywhere, just as part of their day. I never see this more than in the Pacific Northwest. Last night we were having our last vacation dinner in a bustling brew pub and I counted several knitters working on small projects. Including three knitters at the table next to me.

It’s something that I am taking to heart for 2016, taking projects along and working on them as a part of my every day, not waiting for a mythical perfect time. I’m planning on using a lot of yarn this year.

Do you have a new approach to fiber for 2016?

The Sidekick Boot Socks, on ‘Sequence Knitting’; now that all your gift knitting is done…

I’m grateful for all the love for my Sidekick boot socks.

(Funny story: You can’t tell in these pictures, but the boots I was wearing had just developed a hole, and needed replacing. Shortly after we took these pictures, I got myself a new pair, and the first thing I did was make sure they still worked with socks. Because priorities.)

I’m not going to bang on about how you’ve probably got a lot of variegated sock yarn in your stash that needs using up, and how this is a great way to use up and tame a busy variegated yarn. And I’m not going to talk about how longer sock legs can take a long time to knit and that this design solves that problem, too. But there is one element of the design I do want to talk about… the pattern stitch I used on the leg.

For months, other designers were raving the wonderfulness of the book Sequence Knitting. After Laura Nelkin basically told me that she wouldn’t be friends with me any more unless I got a copy, I went ahead and ordered it. When it arrived, I flipped through it, expecting my socks to be knocked off immediately.

And I have to make a confession: based on that first cursory pass through the book, I didn’t get it. I thought I was missing something. I could see that it’s beautifully photographed, the layout is gorgeous and very usable, and it’s clearly well-written, but I didn’t get why everyone was raving about it. They’re just knit and purl stitch patterns, I was thinking… what’s the big deal?

But one night I sat up in bed, and I read it. I started right at the introduction, and actually read through the book. This is a book that needs to be read. There is a fantastically clever and wonderful and amazing concept behind the book and the pattern stitches, and it needs a little reading and thinking. But I read. And then I thought. And now I’m obsessed.

Sidekick is my first design to be inspired by Sequence Knitting, and I’m quite sure it’s not the last. This particular stitch is a three or four-stitch repeat (depending on how you’re looking at it), and it creates a wonderful, squishy, stretchy – and most importantly – reversible fabric. Ideal for a long, fold-over boot sock leg, in fact.

Your gift knitting is done, isn’t it? Nearly? (One year I finished knitting the hat I was giving my mother in the car on the way to her place Christmas morning…. I let her try it on and then took it back to weave in the ends and block it.) If so, it’s time to be selfish! And just in time for the cold weather, perhaps a pair of quick-knit boot socks?

SpaceCadet, the dyers of the lovely yarn I used for this design, is hosting a KAL, starting December 26th. There are prizes! I will be popping in to answer questions, provide guidance and generally admire the colour combos that you’ll choose! More info on the KAL in the Ravelry group. They’re also offering kits of the yarn, too….

 

WWW: Renate Hiller on Handwork

“Connecting us to the cosmos… while at the same time creating something useful and beautiful“.

I’m grateful to Kim Werker for bringing to my attention this video of spinner, knitter, fiber artist Renate Hiller, speaking of the value of handwork. It seems so very fitting at this time of year.

Jillian’s Spinning: My Favorite Books of the Year 2015

Jillian’s Favorite Books of the Year

Longtime Knitty readers know that I write most of the book reviews for Knitty. I am a craft book lover, my house is filled with bookcases, library carts and stacks of books. In all of the years I’ve reviewed books for Knitty it never gets old; I still am thrilled when a book shaped package comes in the mail. The books I’ve shown above are my favorites for this year. They represent, above all, a passion for their topic. They are original and the how-to parts of the how-to books are spot on. They all, self published or big publisher published, have a personalty, they convey the joy each writer has for their subject. They are all books that I have learned from, that I have, or will, read from cover to cover more than once. They brought more to my life than a craft, they brought knowledge and tapped into my curiosity.

Here’s the list with links:

Sequence Knitting
The Shepherd’s Life
How to Weave a Bag on a Box
Rebecca Ringquist’s Embroidery Workshops
The Modern Natural Dyer

You might notice that there is not a spinning book on that list. It’s not becasue no wonderful spinning books were published this year because there were. It’s because the spinning world lost a great this year and I want to honor him by choosing his book, still one of the best ever published, as my spinning book of the year.

Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning

If you haven’t read the beautiful words Margalit Fox wrote for the New York Times, take a minute to read about a man who brought so much life to our craft.

Cameo Flower: Alternate Charts

Today we have another in a series of occasional guest posts from JC Briar, developer of the Stitch Maps charting solution.

Let’s get something straight right up front. I don’t mind “no stitch” symbols, at least when they’re used appropriately. I get that sometimes they’re needed in grid-based charts to show where the stitch count changes.

But, the charts for Cameo Flower have a lot of “no stitch” symbols, don’t they? So many “no stitch” symbols, in fact, that they make it a little hard to see what’s going on in the pattern. Take the Filigree chart, for example.

Although the designer placed these “no stitch” symbols to help the knitter see how the pattern lines up, they create other questions: for example, where, exactly, does the stitch count change? And should the double decreases on row 9 really be directional sssk and k3tog decreases, considering that all the other double decreases in the chart are centered CDD decreases?

Instead of tripping over “no stitch” symbols, let’s try examining the pattern as a stitch map.

With column guides enabled, the motifs pop into view. Smooth lines of k2tog lean to the right, and lines of ssk lean left, joining together to create peaks. The directional double decreases of row 9 blend perfectly with existing decrease lines, and the centered double decreases on rows 13 and 15 cap off little trios of stitches. I especially like being able to see how everything comes together in the center of the stitch pattern.

Such lovely symmetry! A conventional chart with “no stitch” symbols does obscure this.

Seeing this symmetry, seeing how the decrease lines come together, is super useful to me as I’m knitting: if I don’t see the correct stitches being joined by a decrease, I know I’ve goofed and it’s time to tink back. But the point is that I’ve caught the goof early, when tinking back is still a reasonable option. And that’s part of why I love stitch maps. By getting rid of the grid and “no stitch” symbols, they make it easier to see what’s supposed to happen in a lace pattern. And being able to see the target makes it easier to hit, right?

Want more? Check out the stitch maps for Carving Flowers, and for Cameo Flower’s border as a whole.

WWW: Antique sock knitting machine for sale; donating a year’s worth of knitting; tuques for refugees

The winners of the free passes to the Vogue Knitting Live NYC marketplace are Delia Lamb and Amanda Underwood. We’ll see you there!

A warm Canadian welcome:

“Because in Quebec, the only real enemy is the cold.”

Residents of Quebec are gathering together to make tuques (warm woolly hats) to give to refugees arriving this month in Canada, from Syria. 10,000 refugees are expected in Canada before the end of the month, and winter gear has been one of the key items to be donated. Although eastern Canada is having a mild winter so far, we know that’s not going to last.

And in Whitehorse, where winter has already arrived, another group of knitters is hard at work on hats, too. A local group is sponsoring a refugee family, and they are keen to ensure that they will be well-prepared for the weather that is to greet the new arrivals.

Emma Christiansen of Omaha, Nebraska, once again plans to donate her years’ worth of knitting to those in need. This is her fortieth year of such generosity. For 2015, she’s made 233 hats, 19 pairs of mittens and 13 lap blankets.

A school in New Zealand has yarn-bombed its playground. It’s all part of a term-long program to learn about wool, and students created the woolly decorations themselves. And it wasn’t just the knitting – they washed, spun and dyed the wool themselves!

Found on Craigslist in the San Francisco area: an antique hand-crank sock knitting machine. Even if you’re not in the market for one, it’s absolutely worth a look to see all the elements of this genius device. The photos are great!

File under: what? Man arrested carrying bolt cutters and a knitting pick. “He admitted he did not knit.” Neither does the author of the article, clearly!

Jillian’s Spinning: Yarn Fest 2016 Early Bird Pricing

Early bird pricing ends January 15th!

Don’t forget that Early Bird pricing for Interweave Yarn Fest ends on January 15th. You probably need a fiber getaway this year, don’t you?

Kate and I are both teaching there again this year. We had a little bit of fun in and out of the classroom last year, plus I spent time just sighing at the Rocky Mountains.

Perfect Socks

Kate’s teaching:

Custom Fit Socks
Two Socks, Side By Side
Two Socks in One: The War & Peace Method
Custom Fit Socks
Math for Knitters
The Pi Shawl

Spin a Funky Chicken

I’m teaching:

Spin a Funky Chicken: Beginning Texture and Art Yarn Spinning

This class was suggested by one of my Yarn Fest students last year.


Twist & Ply: The Difference Ply and Direction Make to Your Knitting
Yarnitecture: Building Exactly the Yarn You Want

This class is based on my book coming out in July! I just might have some samples and pages to show.


I Like Big Yarn and I Cannot Lie: Spinning Big and Lofty Yarns
Cheaper by the Dozen: Twelve Ways to Spin Variegated Top
Batts in the Belfry: Spinning Batts

I’m already organizing my teaching fiber. Let me know if you are taking a class!

On Blocking

Hello! This is Kate with her Technical Editor Hat on! The topic of blocking came up a few times when I was editing the patterns for this most recent issue, and I thought it was worth discussing…

The word “block” tends to send knitters into a bit of a tizzy. (It did me, for years. I’m not ashamed to admit it.) It seems so complicated, with all these pieces of equipment like mats and wires and pins and buckets and towels and special washes and goodness knows what else.

The word “block” is actually a very general term: think of it like “cook”. When you “cook” dinner, sometimes you use the oven, sometimes you use the stove-top, sometimes you use the barbecue, sometimes you use the slow-cooker, sometimes you use the microwave – heck, sometimes you don’t even use any equipment at all, you just take some bread and lay slices of meat or cheese or beautiful garden-fresh tomatoes on it.

How you cook depends on the ingredients and the recipe; how you block depends on the yarn and the project.

The good news is that for the vast majority of types of yarns and projects, there is a very simple answer: wash. That’s right, just wash whatever it is. Of course, you’ll want to pay attention to the washing instructions for the yarn: if it’s wool that’s inclined to felt, hand-wash; if it’s a cotton, or a man-made fiber, or a wool that’s treated to be safe in the washing machine (i.e. “Superwash”), then you can throw it in the machine.

(And if you’re worried about washing wool, remember that sheep get rained on. Washing wool does not ruin it. Quite the opposite: wool LOVES water. Wool NEEDS water. What felts wool is not water, it’s the agitation; it’s rapid temperature changes — i.e. pouring very hot water into cold — or the sort of agitation that a top-loading washing machine creates.)

Washing a knit piece is actually rather miraculous: it evens out your stitches, it smooths the fabric, and tidies up your edges, it makes your fabric lie flatter, it opens up the lacework, it brings your cables into shape, it relaxes your colorwork. It beautifies!

But it’s also necessary: it gets the dog hair and coffee stains out, it gets rid of any unfixed overdye (I had blue feet once for a couple of days because I wore a pair of socks made of hand-dyed yarn that hadn’t properly been fixed, and the dye bled onto my feet), it removes any moisturizer than you might have applied to your hands before you started knitting. It removes any sizing that might have been applied to the yarn at the mill, any dust that might have gathered on it from the yarn shop.

And washing the pieces is super-important before you sew up. It makes it easier to sew because pieces lie flatter and edges curl less. But even more than that, a proper washing brings the fabric to its final shape and size. Just as when sewing with woven fabrics, you prewash to preshrink before cutting so that your seams aren’t puckery, you want to prewash your knit pieces before you sew them up so that the seams are tidy and neat.  After all, if you sew up and then the pieces stretch out with a first wash, then you’re going to have lumpy and funny-looking seams.

Fibers and fabrics can change pretty radically with washing: a superwash wool, especially one that is knit loosely, tends to stretch out, linen and hemps soften, silk blooms and relaxes; garter stitch will relax vertically, ribbing relaxes horizontally.

What this means, of course, is that when you’re knitting it, your fabric might not look the way the finished project will… I remember when I was just starting to seriously knit as an adult, I couldn’t figure out why the knitting on my needles never looked as good at the knitting people in my LYS were wearing: I just assumed (like everyone does) that it was because I was a rubbish knitter: nope, not true. It’s just that I hadn’t washed the pieces yet. When I’m working on something, it’s crumpled and uneven and untidy and scrunched up and often pretty awful-looking. But once I wash it, it looks much nicer! (You don’t think that the lovely Electricity hat looked that smooth and neat on the needles, did you? There is absolutely no chance in the world it did. That hat’s been washed and steamed. And Cameo Flower was absolutely a crumpled mess when it was being knitted.)

It also means that your fabric on your needles might not be sized the way the finished project will be, either… if you’re working a piece of lace, you know this instinctively, it’s smaller on your needles than when done. (Which, by the way, means that you need to measure your swatch after it’s been washed the way you intend to wash the finished project; listed gauges are always blocked gauges.)

Now, there are some projects for which you need to do more than wash: and this where the mats and wires and pins and all that goodness come in. Lace needs to be stretched to open up all the lovely yarnover holes: to do that, we get the piece good and wet – I soak it in lukewarm water for a good twenty minutes, roll it in a towel to wring it out, and stretch it out, pin it and let it dry in its stretched state. A yarn that has elasticity and a memory (wool, silk, other animal fibers), will “remember” that stretched position when it’s dry and be gorgeous. And colorwork often needs an additional steaming to tidy up any bumpy areas.

But true confession: the only projects I pin out this way are lace shawls. I don’t bother pinning garment pieces (gasp!) because I’m not going to pin them out every time I wash the thing, so I don’t want to set a precedent I’m not going to keep up with.

There are some yarns that need some treatment in addition to washing. Man-made fibers, for example, don’t stretch or change shape or relax with washing, so we apply steam to those to smooth, even out, open up those fabrics. But I still always wash: after all, I’ve still been eating chips and sharing the couch with the dog and spilling coffee, no matter what yarn I’m using.

There are times when a pattern might suggest specifically not to stretch or manipulate something too much: the designer of the Attention Span hat, for example, suggests being careful not to squish or flatten the lovely texture of the Entrelac. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have a wash: after all, it’s a winter hat, chances are it’s going to get snowed or rained on at some point!

And a garment is going to need a wash at some point, is it not? Indeed, I can’t think of anything you will knit that won’t need to be washed at some point. Most things will be worn many many more times after washing than before, yes? So knit with that in mind: make it look good after washing! More the point: let the washing make it look good! Seriously, if you’ve not been happy with how your pieces look when they’re done, try giving them a wash: I guarantee you’ll see a difference.

(Want to learn more? There’s a Craftsy class!)