YOUR FRIENDLY KNITTED-UP SPIDERMAN
Somewhere out in the dark of nightlurks Mark Newport; a fiber artist with time, imagination, and a fullattic of vintage comic books.
Mr. Newportknits head-to-toe superhero suits. You canpurchase his one-of-a-kindSpiderman; Mid ’60s Batman; Daredevil (with nifty ribbed hood) or Mr. Fantasticoutfits. If he selected a nice, springy wool,he’s probably figured out what I never could as a kid – howReed Richards wasable to stretch his arm to ten feet long butneverburst out of his suit. (Later when I got older I thought of the implications of being his wife Sue Storm, but that’s another speculation left over from a more innocent time.) My embroiderer and comic-collector selves also really appreciate the oddity ofMr. Newport’s embroidery on papercomic book samplers, too.
Mr. Newport’s work is being gathered into an upcoming exhibit at the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Washington. Be warned however – he overembroiders or embellishes many types of printed matter in addition to comic pages, including what in a more genteel era would have been called "French Postcards." The gallery’s site does explore those materials as well.
Yarn Reviews at wiseNeedle
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Since yesterday 24 new reviews have been logged in. That’sthe most reviews received in one day since early ’95, when the collection was just starting out! Knitters everywhere will be extremely grateful as they find your comments on all those yarns. I’m particularly impressed with the blog community, and the way that it’s rallied behind this project. I feel like I’m back in ’94,part ofa happy band of knitting zealotsspreading their shared banner throughthe electronic ether. Thanks also to the folk from the KnitList who slogged on over to the site to add their experiences to the pile. I also really appreciate all the people who took time to say they’d miss the yarn review collection if it disappeared.
I’ve still not decided what to do to make the collection self-supporting, but I did get a couple of good ideas to chase down, both left as comments on yesterday’s page and mailed to me directly. I notice that other people don’t have the ethical/editorial independence problem I see with accepting ads from yarn makers or retailers. One person wrote to suggest that I offer a "buy me" sidebar, with a list of vendors appearing whenever a review is pulled up. The logistics on that might not be feasible, especially considering that many individual yarns have the half-life of a mayfly, and the indexing would have to be done by manufacturer’s line rather than individual offering. Plus, I’m afraid that if I become dependent on money from industry sources, the collection will become less impartial as people become hesitant to criticize the same stuff they see advertised. Also I might be swayed (even unconsciously) to favor advertisers over non-advertisers. Perhaps I’m too much a stickler here. More thought is needed.
Another intriguingidea was to see if sellers of knitting inventory software might be interested in licensing the database. Another was to sell bags or tee-shirts with knitting-related stuff on them. If anyone has had experience with Cafe Press or similar collateral services, could I beg a little guidance? (You can send me an eMail off-blog at using the "contact" link at the right.)I also got a suggestionto add a line of for-pay patterns to the free ones already there. I’m not convinced though that anyone would pay for these as the more complex ones are working descriptions rather than stitch-exact direction sets; and the less complex ones are so intuitive that I can’t believe people would plunk down a fee for them. Then again, there are people selling other simple patterns on the web and on eBay at surprisingly large prices…
Buttons?
Some people asked for a closer view of the ceramicbuttons I’ll be using on the fulled pillow. Here they are, both with and without the little yellowplastic onesI’ll be using to hold them on.
REQUEST FOR SUPPORT
As most of you know,I’m the person responsible for wiseNeedleand its on-line yarn review collection. That collection is now nine years old. It began in 1995 as a round-robin text file I collected then circulated among members of the old KnitList mailing list (back in its pre-Yahoo days).The databasehas grown to fully searchable index of basic info on more than 4,800 different yarns, and contains around 2,000 reviews detailing more than 1,300 products (many yarns have more than one review).
I provide the forum, knitters world-wide write in to report their experiences on real knitting projects. No yarn maker or distributer subsidizes the site in any way, nor is it backed by any magazine, publisher or yarn retailer. It’s a 100% volunteer consumer-to-consumer info sharing effort in the best tradition of the early Internet.
It’s been fun, but now I am wondering if this all-volunteer effort has outlived its usefulness. There are now other commercial forums that provide yarn reviews. While foot traffic through the site has remained more or less on the same level, the number of reviews being submitted is way, way down. Plus the majority of the visitors are now coming for free patterns rather than to the yarn review collection. People just don’t seem to be interested in providing info, although there still seems to be limited interest in obtaining it.
So, I’m in a quandry. Do I continue to shell out to support the tenth year of an effort that isn’t earning hearts and minds in the greater community? Do I pull the plug? Do I muddlethrough for another year or sohoping that the idea will someday catch on?
Or do mutatewiseNeedle in some way so that it becomes self-supporting? If the last option is pursued, what can be done? Charging for membership? Accepting paid advertising from the yarn industry? Selling patterns or collateral material? Flogging the whole site to an interested buyer, providing some entity could be found?
Ideas and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
DIPPED IN CHOCOLATE
Monday the kids asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Igave the standard Mom reply: "Good children."
Then the little one piped up "…dipped in chocolate."
Sothis eveningthe big one gave me my present:
Too cute.
WORKING REPORT – FULLED PILLOW II
After two weeks of intensive laundry treatment, it appears that the fulled pillow has reached its maximum shrinkage potential. It’s not as small or as tight as I’d hoped (you can still see the ridges), but it’s much softer and about as small as it’s going to get:
The pillow is unstuffed here. I haven’t sewn on the buttons yet – they’re just placed where I intend them to go. Each button unit is made up of a flat ceramic piece with a large center hole, plus a pale yellow plastic button to hold the ceramic in place. The Boston Globe page underneath the pillow is cut about the same size as the pre-washed size of the pillow (actually the pillow was about an inch longer, but I was too lazy to tape a one-inch strip on the end of the newspaper).
One interesting thing to note – the different colors of this yarn did not full evenly. As you can see, the yellow shrank more in both length and width than did the green or blue. I’ve test-stuffed the pillow with an old lumpy form I had in the closet, and the unevenness of the width isn’t as evident as it is when it’s laid out flat and unstuffed as pictured.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS TEE
A retrograde forwards-and-back type progress continues to be made on my tee. I’ve decided that I want to use a series of vertical strips, joined with something other than entrelac (more experimentation needed). I’ll bury increases and decreases in the join areas to give the garment a bit more shape. Here’s how I envision placement of the strips. Don’t worry. I’ll fill in the missing parts, like the bulk of the arms and add some kind of neck and bottom edge treatment. Possibly I-cord, possibly ribbing, depending on how I feel.
And here’s the first completed strip:
To answer the people who have written to ask why I’m not doing a knit-along or other shared project, I’d have to say I’ve always been a lone wolf knitter. Sometimes I do things inspired by others, but very rarely do I jump in when everyone else is doing them. There was a good five year lag time between the time I read the first Dale Lillehammer feeding frenzy on line, and the time I decided to knit one. I can’t say why this is. Perhaps there are always more things I want to try than I have time to try them so new ideas need to get in queue before they’re addressed.
Today is my birthday. Or rather it’s the day on which I celebrate the anniversary of my 21st birthday. I have no plans in particular, other than taking advantage of the day off to get as much as possible done in preparation for our upcoming move. We’re also suffering birthday cake exhaustion in the house, as both of my kids had birthdays last week. But if you’re itching to pony up good wishes, I would ask you to share that good will with the rest of the on-lineknitting world instead of with me.Consider adding a yarn reviewto the yarn review collection at wiseNeedle. The easiest way to do this is to look up your yarn by name on the search page, then click on the "review this yarn" link.
And for the few of you who may not have heard about this yet (and in honor of the US holiday of Memorial Day), I point out that the Red Cross is currently selling commemorative WWII knitting kits. This offering is paired with an on-line museum exhibit, and a historical article. Their assistance toservice people. and for civilians caught in both man-made and natural disasters deservesrecognition and support.
FUN WITH LAGOMORPHS
UPDATE: THIS DESIGN IS AVAILABLE ON THE EMBROIDERY PATTERNS LINK ABOVE, IN EASY-TO-PRINT PDF FORMAT.
SECOND UPDATE:
The source for this is under re-evaluation. I’ve found it in Bernhard Jobin’s New kuenstlichs Modelbuch von allerhand artlichen und gerechten Moedeln auff der Laden zuwircken oder mit der Zopffnot Creutz und Judenstich und anderer gewonlicher weisz zumachen, published in 1596. I believe that when I first transcribed this from microfiche in the early ’70s there was a mixup in the labeling of the fiches I consulted. If TNCM gets reissued, I will insert the correction.
I was re-graphing this rabbit from my book of embroidery patterns, and I thought angora-fanciers might like to work it into a headband or sweater front.
The original plate from 1597 showed a large group of animal motifs clustered together to save space. It included this one, two coursing dogs (possibly greyhounds) a squirrel, an owl, a stag, a unicorn,a parrot, a yale, and the lion I previously shared for Gryffindor pullovers.
I-CORD TRIX
I was playing around with I-cord last night, in part because I’ve decided to re-think the Entrelac piece (I’m going to do the vertical strips thing, as an entire front of unbroken entrelac in my size boded to make me look like thebacksideof an enormouspoison arrow frog).
I’m sure I’m not the first one to do this, but given recent explorations on knitting edgings onto things, and to attaching I-cord to terminal stitch edges (like in the poncho); I wanted to see if I could do I-cord attached to a vertical edge. I fooled around a bit and came up with this sample:
I apologize for the blurry pix. I had better luck knitting the sample than I did in photgraphing it.
This piece is ten stitches wide. It has I-cord at both the left and right edges, knit at the same time as the two-stitches of garter in the center. Here’s what I did:
Cast on 10
Row 1: K6, bring the yarn to the front without making a loop on the needle; slip 4 stitches purlwise
Repeat Row 1, making sure topull thefirst stitch especially tightly to create the I-cord effect
I could have done something similar to create a double I-cord strip for the poncho, had I started with 8 stitches, and done K4, slip 4.
As is at 10 stitches wide, this sort of strip might be useful for someone making belts or bag handles. It would work well fulled to make a wider bag handle than standard I-cord. I need to experiment more, but I think that if I started out with 12 stitches (4 for each edge, plus 4 for the center), I might be able to do some order swapping to make a braided cable.
But there’s no reason to stop there. I happen to detest the loose, flabby edges on most simple scarves and blankets. The next time I knit a scarf or blanket, I’m going to figure in four stitches on each side. I’ll begin each row with four knits, and slip the last four stitches purlwise. I’ll need to experiment more to see if this sort of thing tames Dreaded Stockinette Curl (I rather doubt it), but I think it would be a nifty edge treatment none the less.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS
Yes, I know I’m stuck in a rut reporting on this, but between schooling my unruly fingers into a new way of knitting and tackling a design (on the fly) in a technique that’s new to me, I’ve got a high fascination quotient here. I lead off with some advice I’ve received.
Mary-Helen wrote to share some experiences she’s had designing and knitting entrelac projects, and gave me permission to share her hints here. She advises that being produced on the bias,entrelac piecesdo hang quite differently from items knit in vertical orientation. For starters, entrelac can be loose-fitting and blousy. (I found this out the hard way when I over-calculated my starting width). She suggests that since I said I wanted a closer but not tight fit, that I plan on not being overly generous in adding garment ease. She says that she’s achieved a pleasing fit in some entrelac pieces by working the back of the garment in stockinette. Doing both would help avoid the maternity-smock/boxy-baggy effect. She says that with careful planning, I might not need to do any waist shaping, as the piece will fit well enough on its own.
Mary-Helen alsonoted that I’ve not mentioned any ribbing. She suggests addingeither ribbing or a garter stitch bandlater to help tame the bottom edge. (She observed that many entrelac piecesdo blouse out over the ribbing, in the puffy-body look popular in the 1980s.)
She went on to discuss square-formation. She said that adding cable details to eachsquare helps hers draw in a bit, avoiding the puffy mushroom-field look that some entrelacs have. Finally, she mentioned that the February archives of Witty Knitter contain some detailed musings on entrelac design.
Thank you, M-H! I hope I haven’t misinterpreted your notes too badly.
As you can see, I’m just about to begin the second course of teeny rectangles. You also get to see some of my collection of fancy stitch markers:
It looks like it will take about an hour to do one course of the rectangles, as I completed this one while watching Enterprise last night. I’ll keep going plain for a couple more courses. Then if necessary, I’ll think about nipping in a bit at the waist by doing a few rectangles per row on five stitches instead of six. I’ll probably work those decreases on rectangles at the edge and at the points at which the waist nips happen in princess-style seaming.
Right now I’ve got little or no ease. If I don’t like the effect in about six more inches, I think I’ll retool and begin again – taking all this good advice close to heart. Perhaps I’ll begin again on a different stitch count.Perhaps I’ll investigaterunning vertical panels of entrelac, withsmall columns of stockinette in between (I could bury the shaping in the stockinette columns.)
Good thing I don’t mind ripping back on a think-piece.
WORKING REPORT – ENTRE DEUX LACS TEE
Thank you to everyone who wrote with hints on how to tame the entrelac beast!
I mentioned wanting to introduce shaping into my garment, and Jaya (of extensive modular knitting experience) suggested I plan on changing the size of the entrelac blocks in those areas. She says she uses either extra decreases or increases to alter the size of individual modules as required and then restores them to their original shape after the need for the width alteration has passed. (You can see some of Jaya’s killer work in her picture album). She also suggested I look at Annabelle Dawson’s entrelac sock pattern because that uses entrelac diamonds of different sizes to change the diameter of the total piece.
Debbi sent in some thoughts about yardage consumption. She said that the entrelac front of Oat Couture’s Tuxedo Vest used less yardage than she would have expected, so I shouldn’t worry about not having enough yarn. Just in case, I’ll do the front of my project first. I can always do plain stockinette for the back.
As to what that thing will be, I’m not sure yet, but I didn’t let that stop me from casting on. I did the math on my gauge swatch, and cast on 138 stitches. I’m working the short-row method for the foundation row of triangles, as per Carol Wyche’s Untangling Entrelac article(great resource!).
I’ll do a couple of courses then begin to think about trimming out a small bit of bulk to make a nip-in at the waist. Not much, but enough to avoid an overly boxy sillhouette. I haven’t decided on much for the upper body. I’m thinking square neckline. I’ve got an Elizabethan shape, so they work well on me, plus it should be easier to do a square neckline than a Vee in entrelac. We’ll see how much yarn I end up having left over for sleeves. I’m open to anything from "just barely" to three-quarters. Which brings me to my big learning experience of the day:
Backwards We Will Be Knitting
The most commonly repeated hint I ran across was that given the back-and-forth nature of entrelac, lifewould beless cumbersome if one learned to knit backwards – from left to right. That way the little entrelac gobbets could be done without the need to flip the work over. Given the fact that I’ll be doing LOTS of 6-stitch wide gobbets, I thought I’d play with it.
Since the whole idea of knitting backwards is to minimize all interruptions in the flow of stitch formation, I decided I didn’t want to switch the hands in which I was holding my yarn. That means I’d be going forward in my usual Continental style, but heading back doing some left-handed variant on English/throwing style.
Now, I’m a Continental knitter to the bone. I’ve done contrasting colors in using throwing, mostly back before I learned to hold both colors in the same handwhile stranding. I’ve also taught others to do it, and in a pinch can demonstrate most techniques in it for people who have problems seeing what I do and translating it to their way. But it’s not my method of choice, and certainly far from a habit that’s become hard-wired for me (I knit Continental exclusively when I dream about knitting. What? you don’t dream about knitting? Hmmm….) At this point, I have to think hard to knit properly using throwing.
I killed most of yesterday playing with different ways of wrapping the yarn and forming the stitches. First forwards, then backwards – sometimes both at once on two different sets of needles so I could see where I was going wrong. I will say that if you want to experiment with this, there are two knitting basics of which youmust be aware. First, make sure you’refamiliar with the difference between stitches mounted on the needle with their leading legs in front, and stitches mounted with their leading legs behind:
The leg in front orientation is the most common. It’s the expected orientationagainst which 99.999% of knitting patterns are written. There are exceptions of course. People who knit Eastern Uncrossed like my mom alternate orientations between knit and purl rows, but they knit into the back of their stitches when working stockinette so that they avoid making twisted stitches. The second thing to recognize is whether or not the way you are forming a stitch will produce a normal U-shaped stitch, or a twisted one. (The twisted ones look like toddlers-in-trainingpostponing the inevitable.)
Recognize these knitting basics and experiment with different ways of wrapping the yarn and making stitches so you know what combo of stitch entry and yarn looping produces each effect. That will make it easier to figure out what’s happening when you try toknit backwards. It took quite a few passes before I was able to produce normal untwisted/leading-leg-forward stitches.
What I ended up doing was keeping my yarn in the left hand, exactly as I usually hold it. I took my left hand needle tip and put it into the stitch to be knit, from front to back, as if I were knitting through the back of the stitch (pretty much what my Mom does when she makes a knit stitch, but from left to right instead of right to left). Then I used my yarn-holding index finger to wrap my yarn down over the left-hand needle tip. I then used the right-hand needle to lift the old stitch over the newly made loop, dropping it off the end of the needle. Voila! One backwards-knit knit stitch.I apologize for not having pix, but I’m alone right now and without growing several new appendages, I can’t photograph and knit at the same time.
Needless to say I’m kitten-clumsy on this, and have nothing like the speed with which I can knit in the normal orientation. But after working across my entire short-rowed set of edge triangles, it doesn’t feel as abjectly alien as it did last night.
OOP BOOK REVIEW – KNITTING DESIGN BOOK
Everyone knows about the well-known knitting books – everything from Mary Thomas Knitting Patterns to Principles of Knitting but there are not an inconsiderable number of others that either never made the "big time," or made very little splash. Lots of theseexist in library collections and on home bookshelves even though they are out of print (OOP).
While no book is unformly perfect in every way for every reader, many of these older overlooked books do have worth. Don’t turn up your nose at them just because the fashions illustrated are now stale or funky, or because they are lacking in color illustrations.
I recently received a copy of The Knitting Design Book: Using Color, Pattern and Stitch to Create Your Own Unique Sweaters. It was written by ank Bredewold and Anneke Pleiter, and was published by Lark Books in 1991 and 1998. The original was in Dutch: Breinen naar eigen ontwerp, and came out in 1985. It’s a slim paperback volume – under 90 pages, illustrated with both black and white and color photos and drawings.
No patterns are presented, rather this book is meant to be an inspiration and guide to creative thought. There are some general formulae for armscyes and collar shaping, but not in the detail shown in other books dedicated to pattern drafting. There’s also a color composition and motif placement minicourse, delivered from the "rules are meant to be broken" standpoint.
This book is a great snapshot of the styles and thoughts that were rebounding across knitting in the 1980s – mostly in European and Japanese designs. Many of the concepts it explores are current again. These include modular knitting, mixed fiber types and weights in one garment. It also discusses directional knitting (meaning knitting that proceeds in a direction other than bottom-up or top-down, with lots of attention paid to knitting on the bias. Shapes are cropped, many with deep or Dolman or kimono style sleeves. There are even a couple of patterns that play with adaptations of early computer-generated or computer-inspired graphics.
It’s no surprise to note that many of the ideas being touted as new and different right now are reiterations of earlier concepts.Modular knitting is discussed in this book under the heanding "Composite Shapes." The approach is rather free-form. The examples cited are made of triangle units, worked off each other either in in spirals or as more randomly placed motifs. Elongated stitches and mixing very light yarns with heavier, fluffy or textured yarnsare stressed throughout the book.Other ideasthat pop up hereinclude mixing gauges and directions; creating garments from multiple strips or draping pieces from larger units (like making a sleeveless raglan surplice top from several large triangles).
Now I’m not saying that this book was the first to introduce these concepts. Almost all of them appear elsewhere in sources that predate this one. Nor am I saying you should run out and buy this one right away (it is interesting to note that the European used book market valuesthis book more highly than it is in the US). What I am saying is that you can find excellent ideas and resources in these older, overlooked items – many of which are available for free borrowing at public libraries.
String-Or-Nothing 
