Category Archive

I’m asking Margery to bring her blanket in to the office for some close-up photography. I was working with the photos I had, but I can see from you comments you need more! Thanks, N

I love checking my RSS feed to see what’s up with my favorite knitting and craft blogs. (Sometimes it does get a little ahead of me - like when I have 1200 items to look at from my Ravelry friend’s favorites list - oh well). This week I was so happy to see Stephanie Japel’s finished version of the Berroco design Sanpoku from booklet 262 Yin & Yang. 

Stephanie Japel’s Sanpoku in Berroco Comfort.

Stephanie, of Glampyre Knits fame, is a designer herself and a new mom. I’m wondering how she finds the time to work on her own designs and blog and knit from our patterns as well. While she was pregnant she designed this lovely sweater in Berroco Touché:

Click on the photo to get to the pattern info on the Glampyre Knits site.

John in his finished sweater:

The boyfriend sweater is finished. Yippee!!!  Even his sisters may have to admit that he looks pretty darn good in it.  

3/28/08 - John’s sweater pattern is available now free on line:http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/john_sweater/john_sweater.html

I am super busy working on norah gaughan vol3, which will include more designs for Pure Merino along with several other still secret morsels.  

  
Lena offers her assistance.

“Oh no, it wasn’t me. It must have been the mouse I saw run behind here”

Those darn felted hearts seem to to be all over the house! Actually, they are all over the apartment. While my house (and true home) is in New Hampshire, three nights a week I knit and sleep in apartment in Providence, which is much closer to work. It’s fun to photograph with my landlady’s lovely props.
P.S. I hope all of you made it through Valentines’s day unscathed. 

The painting in my apartment reminds me of the sauna that John (of boyfriend sweater fame) built last summer. Isn’t it beautiful? Sure is sweater weather in New Hampshire now.

This setting makes me want to have wool in my hands - Pure Merino, Ultra Alpaca, Jasper,  or my current yarn of choice Ultra Alpaca Light.  I took some swatching to the sauna last week - not IN the sauna, but I knit a bit on the porch and in the changing room/dining room.  I’m looking forward to a return visit this weekend.  I should try designing after sitting in the heat, during the blissful calm period. I don’t know though, maybe designing goes hand in hand with this hyper, bouncing off the wall feeling I’m experiencing right NOW!

Even at it’s most industrial stage, yarn is beautiful.

Time to finish up my explanations of my 10 useful books list - Useful book #7: Knitting from the Netherlands, Traditional Dutch Fishermen’s Sweaters by Henriette Van Der Klift-Tellegen is a beautiful little gem filled with real Dutch fisherman in their utilitarian and gorgeous pullovers. I learned a lot about both simplicity and detailing from this lovely little volume.

#8, The Vogue Knitting Book is jam packed with all sorts of useful information about casting on and casting off in ways you never imagined - about sewing together and detailing, and designing, and so on and so on.  It’s simply a must. 

#9 & #10  are more stitch dictionaries. The New Knitting Stitch Library by Leslie Stanfield has a pictorial index of the stitches in the front for quick reference - I love that!  It’s also got a lot of nice patterns that I suspect Leslie made up herself, as they can’t be found elsewhere. The Pingouin Stitch Dictionary is an old standby that has undergone many reversions over the years. I have a soft spot for the edition from the mid-seventies, since it was my one of my first knitting books (after Knitting Without Tears, of course).

I’m in Italy looking for new yarns. They can make cables from anything here:

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (The Duomo) 

Back to my book list:
5 & 6, The Mary Thomas books are real gems. Want to know how to knit a circle? Mary Thomas tells you at least 3 different ways. Want to know how to incorporate welts or pleats or or other dress making details into your designs? Mary Thomas is your woman. Written in the 1940’s, the techniques described span from those popular in Victorian times to post WWII, but all of it is useful for modern knitting. Her attitude is very funny and relaxed too. I would have liked to have met her.

Astrid and Ruffle owe a debt to MT:

The house was feeling really good to me after Thanksgiving, and I was inspired to snap a few photos of some of the knitting related items that are so much a part of my life:

I love books, especially books about knitting. This is only about 1/4 of my collection. Some are upstairs in the bedroom, some are here in the living room and still more have made their way to the book shelves at Berroco.

I have amassed quite a collection of straight needles - at the ready next to the couch in the sunroom.

I prefer circular needles though, and my favorites are clear and nylon and from the ’70’s. I  still search for them at yard sales.