Knitting & Purling

It's about as serious as things can get right now.  We're hunkered down when we'd prefer to go out, volunteer, and somehow try and save lives and reduce suffering, staying home unless we are essential. Because, we understand, it's the kindest thing we can do for others right now, not to mention for ourselves and our families. So I've been sewing masks for our local health center. And, naturally, I've also turned again to knitting from time to time. Recently when my neighbor Marc and I were chatting over the fence at a respectable 18-foot distance, he said he had a new idea for a hat, and it should say "roll." "Why roll?" he said recently on Instagram. "Because that's what my father would say: roll with the punches. So that's what we need to do now."   If I were this professor's student, I'd get on with it.  And knowing I had some leftover yarn tucked away in my stash, I got to work. Now to me, Marc i...

Knitting colorful throw pillows is another wonderful way to use leftover, stashed yarn. This pillow uses more than a dozen worsted-weight yarns saved from more than ten years of knitting. It has been in the works off and on since last winter, and I finished it last weekend. The design is my own. The neutral browns in the foreground help the bright palette of mostly autumn colors pop, with beige vertical lines to add geometric structure along with the diamond pattern. As a finishing touch: tassels! Just for fun, it's reversible. Sorting the stash into yarn weights and colors. Knitting gets underway. It gets messy before it gets beautiful. The finished pillow--except for the... Tassels!

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...