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...

Treasured stitches: I have finished some four dozen hats and scarves, along with several sweaters, completing half-done projects and knitting up a vast stash of high quality yarns and fibers. One day a few months after our mother passed away, my sister and I loaded up my car with a bounty of my mother's uncompleted knitting projects and her abundant stash of luxury fibers. "It's your inheritance!" my sister joked, though we were both heartbroken. She is not a knitter—not yet anyway. I'm the one with the knitting gene, and my Mom always called me "the finisher." Here is a fraction of my Mom's projects and  yarn stash — all of which I brought home. Back home, I unpacked and took a long look at my new UFO's (unfinished objects). The dozens of half-finished and nearly done scarves, hats, and sweaters filling my living room were all gorgeous, all made with quality yarn, and all just a bit overwhelming. "What on earth ...

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!

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 ...

Maybe the long winters that drive me indoors also drive me toward quirky creative projects. But that wouldn't explain the thousands of knitters who produce exuberant, extensive and extravagantly colored yarn bombs in perfect paradises.  For me, yarnbombing parking meters outside of our own Kitchen Theatre Company a few years ago was great fun. It's a joy thing. Because it's fun to surprise people by contrasting morose hardscapes with cheerful hues in soft fibers outdoors where they "don't belong." To express happiness. Show delight. Or challenge the status quo.  I wanted to capture the idea that we couldn't wait what the Kitchen would serve up next. With two parking meters right outside the front doors, it was an ideal set-up. So diving into my scrap yarn, scrounging for graph paper, and adopting some Fair Isle patterns were all I needed. After that it developed into a backstage mystery. This installation lasted more than a yea...

"All the world loves a do-it-yourselfer." That's what my Mom wrote--in 1966. She and my Dad steered us toward DIY before it was cool. He built our furniture, she knit when she had the chance, my sister sewed and embroidered, and my brother built models and things in the woods. So we were all "makers". Much as we loved it, my Mom will also tell you it was born of necessity when times were tight. But let's talk about this gorgeous vintage lopi sweater from the late 60s. Because if you are a baby boomer, you may have had one, too. Sweaters from lopi wool are knit densely to keep out the cold. Its name originally referred to wool that has not been spun. M y mother made me this sweater when I was in junior high school, and it is still in my armory for long winters. Her first lopi creation was a surprise for my father, and her frantic and secretive knitting as she tried to finish it one Christmas goes down in the family history books. I remember sittin...

In the early 1990s contemporary sweaters knit by a pre-school mother from Norway caught by eye. In a matter of weeks learning to knit them myself became a  joy. Until then I had never worked with multiple colors or knit in the round. It was fast, fun and addictive.  Do knitters have milestones, turning points or -- dare we say -- transformational moments? Well, yes -- in their own way! One of my first Norwegian sweaters for children, knit in the round. I met Gullborg Johannsson at Ithaca's UCNS pre-school, where parents all took shifts in helping to care for the children. She was knitting a maize-colored sweater at lightning speed, all the while serving as referee at the local Lego table.  In coming weeks, a small band of us trooped through snow and ice every week to learn more about her knitting techniques. She surrounded herself with stacks of hand-knit sweaters that she had made for her three children and her husband, a Cornell graduate s...