courtesy of Card Catalog Generator at blyberg.net

As a knitting teacher, I often go home from class and send my students emails with internet resources that I hope will help them reinforce the skills we learned in class. I am sure I will be referring students to this site often, which is why I reccomend you add this site to your knitting bookmarks: let me explainKnit.

Sara's blog is subtitled "Sara's blog for explaining knitting things." Her posts are detailed and thoughtful explanations of some of the more confusing and/or difficult knitting techniques, such as double pointed needles, twisted stitches, chart reading, and much more. The site does not include pictures to demonstrate what Sara talks about, but if you are a verbal learner this is a most excellent resource.

"Swatch this!" by swisskiltbear

A new, free, and volunteer resource for knitters has begun: The Walker Treasury Project. The website seeks to create a companion resource to Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries by collecting and displaying new color photographs of all the stitch patterns in her treasury collections.

You've probably heard about this project already when Brenda Dayne talked about it, or maybe at Craftzine, or even Lime and Violet. And I know that. I just couldn't resist an excellent pun! (Get it? Swatch? !!)

The Wisonson State Journal wrote an excellent overview of University of Wisconsin Madison's exhibit on Elizabeth Zimmerman. The article included a short biography of the mother of modern knitting as well as a great description of the exhibit itself.

"New School Knitting: The Influence of Elizabeth Zimmermann and Schoolhouse Press" runs through December 17, 2006 in the Design Gallery at The School of Human Ecology, UW-Madison. The gallery is even having a knitting night every Thursday while the exhibit is up from 7 to 9 pm.

Setbacks seem to be my middle name these days. I have a big ball of i-cord that I'm just itching to turn into a rug to compliment this woven one I made a while ago.

I consulted The Knitted Rug by Donna Druchunas. The instructions for the "Coiled Cord Oval Rug" called to use a whipstitch on the wrong side to hold the i-cord together making sure to make sure that the cord doesn't twist. I've done that and it's puckering! The bigger it gets, the more it puckers.

Even though I've already spent many hours working on this, I think it's time to rip out the whipstitching and try another technique. I really think the effort will be worth it, though. Any suggestions?

I got a bad haircut that looks a little better with hats and headbands. I like both, but don't have enough of the latter. So I thought I'd make some up.

This is a design in progress. I plan on making several continually-improving versions while my hair grows out. But I thought I share the process with all of you.

I started with some handspun I had laying around. 84 yards of a two ply handspun to be exact. I think the white portions are merino and the blue is a merino/tencel blend, but I could be wrong.

Consulting my WPI (wraps per inch) tool told me that I had a yarn averageing 9 wpi. My handy chart informed me that this translated into an appropriate needle size of US 9. (By the way, if you are ever working with unidentified yarn of any kind, a WPI tool is an excellent thing to have on hand. I highly reccomend haivng one.)

Into a ball the yarn went. Knitting commenced and voila I had a headband.

This is merely a passable headband. It is stockinette, which means it rolls unless you steam block the hell out of it.

Passable Headband
copyright ninaclock designs 2006

- cast on 2 sts
- knit 9 inches of i-cord
- P1, M1, P1
- K row
- P1, M1, P1, M1, P1
- K row
- P1, M1, P3, M1, P1
- K row
- P1, M1, P5, M1, P1
- K in stockinette stitches until piece mearsures 13 inches from 1st increase
- K1, ssk, K4, K2tog, K1
- P row
- K1, ssk, K2, K2tog, K1
- P row
- K1, K3tog, K1
- P row
- K2tog, K1
- knit 9 inches of i-cord
- bind off all sts

It's a merely passable headband. A non-curling fabric and a smaller gauge would go a long way to improving it. But sometimes when I design I just have to start. Actually, I think this headband design is actually going to morph into a hat. We'll see!