July in Baltimore has my least favorite weather of the year because it’s hot and humid and you can’t wear sweaters. I dread July so much that I especially appreciate those moments when the weather isn’t so awful, when there’s a refreshing breeze, when the frogs at the frog pond are sitting out in view … More A Spoonful of Magic Powder
In my most recent post, I reported on the inspiration and thought process behind the construction of my Johanna’s Jacket: five knitters used a work by another knitter as a jumping-off point for their own very different jackets, and the others’ work informed the knitting each knitter did. Now I’m going to get very specific … More Johanna’s Jacket, The Inside Story
This month’s post is a show-and-tell minus the tell, because I’m up to my ears in not-ready-for-primetime projects. I try to manage my crafted production so that I have something finished and ready to blog about in detail every month, but this month threatens to go by without a post. Not because I have been … More Progress Report
I started August with a very seasonal plant-dyeing agenda: another go at dyeing with dried dahlia blossoms, this time adding calcium carbonate to the water in hopes of approximating the conditions that produced orange for my friends dyeing with dahlia in the UK; dyeing with phragmites, which flower in August; and dyeing with Maryland’s state … More Questions Asked, Questions Answered
Over the last several months, I have accumulated a growing pile of yarn that I dyed my favorite way: using plants that I didn’t pay for. Spring came, spring turned into summer, plants grew, plants died. We had dinner. I went for walks. People gave me their dead plants and trimmings. It was all fodder … More Foraged, Donated, and Saved From the Drain
Not every successful machine knitter is a genius, but for me, machine knitting is a much more intellectual process than hand knitting is. It requires very careful calculations before starting a project because there’s no way to try on a work-in-progress while it’s hanging on the needles of the machine, and it isn’t possible to … More Trust the Numbers!
When I first started to get serious about learning how to use my knitting machine two and a half years ago, I decided that I was better off learning from videos and trial and error than I was from live people, after a number of scarring interactions with machine knitters who started off wanting to … More A Feral Machine Knitter Meets Civilization. And Dyes
I haven’t got statistics to back up my hunch, but I may be one of the very few people living north of the tropics in the Northern Hemisphere who avidly looks forward to January and is sorry when it ends. That’s because January is the month I dedicate to trying out methods I’m too busy, … More January 2019 Swatchathon
In a frenzied quest this last summer to meet the deadline for a juried textile art exhibition, I neglected my knitting machine all summer long while I hand-knitted wall art, and when I finished those pieces I came back to my machine wondering if I still knew how to use it. The project that verified … More Nature and the Machine
After a summer and some of an autumn dyeing and dyeing with plants I’d found within a 2-mile radius of wherever I was, it was time to start doing something with the greens, yellows, pinks, oranges, and purples that were piling up around me. I needed gloves, so gloves. I don’t like knitting with double-pointed … More A Show of Hands
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 