OLD & CHERISHED: Vintage Aran Cardigan

Best-quality wool, classic patterns, and quality workmanship make for a sweater that wears like iron. My mom knit me this gorgeous classic when I was in high school in the 1970s, and I've been wearing it ever since. She has always been a prodigious knitter of beautiful garments and accessories.

And it's all the more remarkable because she finished it all the while working full time at Johns Hopkins University during the Vietnam War, the feminist movement, and coeducation at a previously male institution. (But then, maybe that's why she turned to knitting: its calming nature.)

I'm third in our matriarchal line of knitters and started with a Knitting Nancy before moving on to a pair of needles. Between my grandmother's and my mother's projects, yarn and needles were never hard to find. We had deep chests of leftover yarns to root through.

With insomnia running in the family, I suspect there was a lot of middle-of-the-night knitting. My sister and I would wake up, go downstairs, and be amazed by the progress overnight.

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The Joys of Scrap-Yarn Knitting

Every knitter accumulates leftover yarn from projects. It would be a shame to waste beautiful, high-quality wool and other fibers. Over the years, these leftover balls and scraps grow into sizable stashes, especially when you inherit yarn from other knitters. So some knitters like me turn to scrap-yarn knitting. It's a fun, creative, and liberating process. You can let go of the rules and play, using only the most basic of patterns. Here's my first project, a scrap-yarn cardigan, circa 2009. Same sweater different scarf, as shown with my friend Becky. The 1985 book that riveted me. It was in the window of Homespun Boutique on the Ithaca Commons. From the richly textured stitches forming that sweater, I moved on to more color play after learning new techniques from Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably when they visited Cornell and led a weekend workshop. Kaffe's work caught my eye in the early 1980s, and the story of how this Big Sur, California...

Colorful Scrap Yarn Pillow

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My Affair with Martin Storey

First time experiences are so often memorable -- and not just the big moments, but small-scale triumphs as well, like roasting a turkey, fixing the sink, rolling out a a pie crust, or repairing a bicycle tire. Rowan Softknit Cotton As a child you leave these matters to the grown-ups and as a teen you start building some basic skills. But if you sew you still might leave those difficult buttonholes to your Mom. Or you might delegate the use of the power drill to your brother, defer to your Dad on the fallen bookshelf, or ask your sister to wire your sound system. "Killarney" by Martin Storey And that only covers the household. Let's take sports and recreation. Whether child or adult, you may learn to ride a bike, swim the backstroke, ace an overhead tennis serve, ski parallel, paddle a kayak or master a back walkover--all of which I've loved. Rowan Big Wool cowl But who can say what is the tipping point that leads you to step up to the ...

Knitting & Purling

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