Long Lake Yarns

Ninety-three years ago, this young woman modeled fashionable knitted tennis wear on the cover of The Corticelli Yarn Book, “Lessons in Knitting and Crochet.”  The book contained an extensive assortment of fashions for men, women, children, soldiers and babies.  It was published by the Corticelli Silk Mills of Florence, Massachusetts.  Odd little crochet do-dads dangling [...]

Jared Flood’s wonderful new knitting book, “Made in Brooklyn,” is filled with updated classic designs.  Some of them, like Quincy, seem inspired by Elizabeth Zimmermann (a knit designer Flood admires).  The regular reader of my blog knows I admire EZ too.  Quincy is constructed of garter stitch, “I-cord” borders  (we are too politically correct to [...]

Knitting hats is pretty much instant gratification.  If you make a mitten, you have to make another.  If you make a sock, same thing.  A bored knitter, or for that matter an adventurous one,  can create mismatched pairs.  Still, such things must happen in twos.  But not hats.
It also helps, paraphrasing Elizabeth Zimmermann, that people [...]

It was 1917.  The Corticelli Yarn Book, “Lessons in Knitting and Crochet” published by the Corticelli Silk Mills in Florence, Massachusetts provided “instructions to help the women throughout the country who are at this time utilizing every available moment in the making of warm and comfortable garments for the boys who have responded to the [...]

Several years ago, a co-worker told me that her husband’s elderly Great Aunt Cecelia died.  Such news does not often make it into my workplace. Cecelia’s  yarn and other related knitting what-nots were en route to Michigan.  My co-worker once had knitting aspirations.  But a busy work life and I assume motherhoodedness and many other [...]

Whenever I knit multiples it’s a good pattern.  Vancouver, Washington’s Rebekah Sturtevant (a/k/a Bekah.knits) has come up with a winner.  Her Moc-a-socs, in both adult and baby sizes, combine a comfy slipper with the top of a sock.  For little ones, this is footwear with staying power.  They won’t kick off easily.  For grown-ups, they are cozy [...]

Sometimes I knit something just to say I’ve done it.  I once knit a Frilled-Neck Dragon for that reason.  I mean, how many people can say they’ve knitted that?  I’ve knit hippos in tutus and entire herds of ponies.  Anyway, this hat sort of captivated me.  It was designed by  Hannah Ingalls.  It is a [...]

Illusion knitting is the trickster technique of the knitting world.  It can’t be new.  Nothing can really be new in knitting, can it?  But my first experience of it was  knitting Elizabeth Fallone’s Shadow Spider Scarf in Shelridge Farm’s worsted weight yarn.   Knitters would say that yarn has a wonderful hand. I knitted most of [...]

I knitted this for my son while I was waiting for him to be born.  He’s 24 now and  built this blog for me this past Mother’s Day.  I remember knitting this set.  I had a lot of trouble with the intarsia tumbling blocks.  1-2-3-4-5, with 6 on the back. Intarsia is hard for me, [...]

Knitting holds on to its old words.  Ganseys, gurnseys, wristers, gauntlets, gussets, steeks and, in this case, reticule.  Of course, then there are “Magic Loops” and “frogging” and “tinking”  and “UFOs” but hold that thought for now.  This is Nicky Epstein’s “Rose Reticule” pattern from the Winter, 1994 Knitters Magazine.  I knit it soon after [...]