knitting for engineers

magical knitting

Friday, 5 October, I spent the day at the Nordic Knitting Conference, which was held at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle. I took an all day class called "Magical Knitting," which was taught by Annemor Sundbø.

The class was based on Annemor's most recent book, Invisible Threads in Knitting, which weaves together Norwegian folk customs and fiber history with her experience as a knitter and as proprietor of Torridal Tweed wool recycling factory.

Annemor taught us a clever technique that she calls troll knitting. It's a method of double-knitting that allows one to easily knit even small tubes (like glove fingers) on just two needles. These small in-the-round projects are often frustrating to knit using conventional technique with multiple double-pointed needles. Troll knitting is brilliantly simple.

The photo above shows toy animals and dolls made using the troll knitting method. These are quite small. The largest tiger is about 10 cm (4 inches) tall.

Troll knitting basics: take the tube of knitting and turn it inside out, laying it flat, so that there is a front and back. Put back stitches on one needle, and front stitches on a second needle. (If you are starting from scratch to knit a tube, cast on an even number of stitches, put half the stitches on a 2nd needle, fold the caston so the two needles are held together, then proceed.) Now transfer all the stitches purlwise to a single needle, alternating back and front stitches.

To knit the flat tube, knit the back stitch, then slip the front stitch purwise. Continue to the end, turn the work, and do the same thing on the other side. You can combine the knit-slip motion to make it even easier: after the knit but before lifting the stitch off the left needle, grab the front stitch purlwise, then slip both stitches at the same time.

For the class, Annemor gave each of us a tube that had already been knitted up on an 80 year old sock machine that is part of her collection. We knitted fingers onto the tube to make gloves. The photo above shows some finished gloves that are from a pattern that's very popular in Norway now. They are called "instant messaging mittens" because the fingerless glove allows one to type messages easily, but there's also a mitten covering you can flip over to keep your hands warm. On the mittens above there is even a little mitten cap for the thumb.

Above, a trick for keeping four fingers' worth of yarn organized: wind the yarn onto old sewing-thread bobbins, which are then popped onto a spare dpn. Another method is to wind each bit of yarn into a yarn butterfly, stuff the butterflies into the inside of the tube, and draw each thread to the outside using a crochet hook. This keeps the butterflies from flying all over and tangling.

dish rag tag

7 September 2007 - Silver Medal Photo Finish

The USPS finally came through for us and put our box into Emily's mailbox first, before two others, so we get the honors of second place in dish rag tag. In addition to the glory of the Silver, we will receive a prize - I think it's knitting needles.

The fun has not ended yet, as our Team XDR has decided to do a (non-competitive, leisurely) reverse dish rag tag - rather like a Victory Lap. This will give us a chance to send something back to the person who sent to us, and, in my case, to knit a dish rag that is more presentable than the one I knit for Wendy... that one was uglier than the southbound end of a northbound donkey. Maybe I'll use one of the E. Clark patterns that Katrina sent me.

4 September 2007 - Fourth Fastest

I received an unexpected lovely surprise prize from our gracious and unflappably cheerful Team Captain, Katrina! This is a prize for turning the dish rag box around in less than 24 hours, and also for being the fourth fastest tagger on our team. Of course, a lot of the turnaround speed depends on the whim of the USPS (and as we now know very well, the USPS has a LOT of whim) but I am fairly chuffed at being an actual prizewinner. Especially with this delicious swag:

Pink Knitting 100% Peruvian wool in "Hippie" (oh boy, socks!), 3 skeins Sugar-n-Cream in "Summer Splash", "Country Stripes" and "Lime Stripes" and a booklet of Evelyn Clark ~~dishrag~~ dishcloth patterns.

30 August 2007 - I'm IT

My mail receiving service left me a message at 10:30 saying the box had arrived. I dashed out of work at 11:30, and by half past noon, I was carefully cutting open the very ~~squashed~~ well-travelled box:

This box has about a pound of tape on it. Inside I found:

Sugar 'n Cream: one skein of red and one of Neptune Ombre (pretty blues and greens). Also a sweet card from Donna and some treats:

An adorable woolly llama & a cross from Heifer International, a Bill Clinton memorial fridge magnet, cute tiny kitty-with-socks notepad, UCA lanyard (Go Bears!) and of course a neatly knitted 4 corners dishrag in cool greens.

At 12:40 I cast on the red for Wendy's dishrag. I had to get it done and packed up by 3:00 to meet the USPS pickup time, so instead of the nice lacy dishrag I had practiced, I ended up knitting my plain old waffle stitch pattern. It's not pretty, but it's 9 inches square and best of all, I got done by 2:40.

There was plenty of time to pack it up with new yarn and treats for Wendy and get it to USPS before 3. While knitting this, I listened to a recording of Stephanie's newest: Cast Off. So blame any mistakes in the dishrag on laughing-while-knitting.