Favorite Knitting Books
I've reached a point in my knitting life where I'm not very interested in eye-candy books and magazines with must-knit sweaters. I've given away and sold a lot of these. (Thank you, Alice Starmore fans on eBay! You financed my new spinning wheel.) What I'm writing about here are the knitting books I wouldn't part with. These are knitting books that I reread often, books that suggest alternative ways of approaching knitting problems, that remind me how to do things I have forgotten, that inspire me to try unfamiliar knitting techniques.
Elizabeth Zimmermann
I really like Elizabeth Zimmermann's books. I'd been knitting for about ten years when I found Knitting without tears: Basic techniques and easy-to-follow directions for garments to fit all sizes. It had actually been a long time since I'd shed tears over knitting, but I was inspired afresh, and the book has changed the way I knit. For example, since I first read Ms. Zimmermann, I have never again knit a sweater as flat pattern pieces to be sewn together. All her publications are available new at Schoolhouse Press, a mail-order service for hand knitters founded by Ms. Zimmermann in 1959 and carried on by her daughter, Meg Swansen.
Barbara G. Walker
I thought I knew how to knit until I got my hands on A Treasury of Knitting Patterns and A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns around 1980. I spent years pouring over the patterns in these books, making swatches, trying to visualize patterns from the directions, and adding decorative elements to plain sweater and scarf designs. Then I found Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns and I learned how to chart my own patterns.
Just when I thought I knew how to knit, I got a copy of Knitting from the Top. Ms. Walker includes directions for every style of sweater, pants, skirt and hat, to be knit top down, the way raglan sweaters are often done. It's a fascinating way to look at shaping, and is the best approach I've ever found for knitting to fit. Knitting from the Top and Ms. Walker's new book, A Fourth Treasury of Knitting Patterns, are most easily obtained from Schoolhouse Press.
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History of Knitting
I've spent many many hours reading and pouring over the old photographs in these wonderful books
Favorite Fiber Arts Internet Resources
- The Socknitters Home Page This is the home page for a mailing list that has morphed into a forum. I've never been an active forum member, but this is a great repository of information on knitting socks. They modestly describe themselves thus: "Socknitters is a mailing list for anyone interested in knitting socks by hand. The Socknitters Home Page provides resources for the socknitting community."
- Schoolhouse Press, the publishing company that started with Elizabeth Zimmermann's knitting newsletters and books. Excellent publications on knitting, mostly, along with the best in yarns, needles, and other necessary knitting tools.
- Sock knitting machines. Antique hand-cranked sock knitting machines. I don't have one, probably never will, but I can dream, can't I?
- HJS Studio Tutorials. Some of the best-written fiber how-to articles I've found on the Internet. Spinning, Knitting, mending, and other topics.
- Joy of Handspinning. Excellent how-to's for beginning spinners, with helpful photographs. She has some videos as well, but my dial-up connection is too slow for me to check them out. I'm not familiar with her products, but this is the resource that helped me most when I was learning to spin.
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Recent Fiber Arts Projects
These are a few of my knitting and spinning projects, selected at random. (Actually, they're included if I remembered to scan or photograph them before I had worn them into a state of "not-new-anymore-ness.")
2005
This past winter, I went wild with hats, designing and selling a dozen or so in Elaine Diller's Morning Star Folk Arts shop in Hillsboro. This is the only one I thought to scan before it went out the door: it's knit out of one of my early handspinning and hand-dying experiments. It's the least interesting and most practical of my knitting designs. I made this one, like all the others, top down, in the Barbara Walker fashion.
The yarn is spun from some Brown's Sheep Farm fiber, a pretty mixture of white, black and brown roving. I spun a sport-weight single, then plied it into a bulky weight. Then I over-dyed it in a crockpot, sprinkling dye powder over the saturated yarn as it lay in the hot water.
Super-wash handspun. This is a swatch I knitted from some of my own handspun. The bulky two-ply yarn was spun from a batt of Browns Sheep Farm Superwash Wool. Blue and red fibers predominate, but they are not mixed well enough to give a purple effect. I was pleased with the random color effects. I sold this yarn at Morning Star Folk Arts. I was excited to see a friend knitting a scarf from it this past February.
2004
Summer and Fall Projects, 2004
Novelty cotton, linen, and rayon yarns. I tried a few different approaches to color with this batch of odd balls (bought on sale in 1992) of summer fibers. I eventually went with the low contrast set, in order to make the horizontal stripes a little less pronounced. (Horizontal stripes are not my best look.) I used the Barbara Walker Knitting from the Top approach for set-in sleeves.
My initial measurements and tryings-on led me to make the pullover sweater much too big. I solved this problem by sewing inch-deep side seams under the arms and down the body, and then I cut away the excess fabric. This worked very well. Of course, you can't unravel and redo, but you can't do that with these fussy novelty yarns anyway. The sweater has proven quite satisfactory.
Another top-down summer sweater. I've been attempting to get a perfect fit in both raglan and set-in sleeve sweaters, so I've been making "slopers" out of my large collection of cotton and novelty yarns. This combination of colors (turquoise, pink, purple, and variegated) turned into another summer top with set-in sleeves. This one gave a better fit, but the tops of the sleeve caps were still not quite right. Some harsh blocking has made them adequate to their task.
Pink cables swatch in "Cambridge" wool/cotton blend. As I recall, I bought this yarn at the dear departed Wool Gatherer yarn shop in Dupont Circle, in Our Nation's Capital, before 1990. (I don't rush into projects.) This eventually became a drop-shoulder cut-down-the-front zippered cardigan, ala Elizabeth Zimmermann. Not long after I finished this cardigan, I made a top-down zippered raglan cardigan using this same yarn in black. I used different cables, and the overall effect was quite pleasing, although unphotographable, due to the color.
Winter Projects, 2004
Scrap yarn socks and mittens.An ideal January project, I used worsted-weight wool scraps to make these socks inspired by the pictures in Anna Zilborg's Simply Socks. I used four different shades of white and four teal shades, and threw in the rusty brown just for a surprise. These are wearing very well with indoors with sandals or outdoors with winter boots. Below are other approaches to teal socks, both inspired by Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. The sock on the left is based on the Woodsman's Thick Socks, and the one on the right is a Moccasin Sock, one capable of retread. Sadly, the first place these socks have sprung leaks is on the top of the foot. Oh well. I'm an experienced darner.
My mother bought these red and white worsted-weight yarns in the late forties or early fifties, probably to make mittens and hats for my cousins. I didn't come into the picture until later. You can see that my yarn and fabric stash has real depth. The inspiration for these mittens came from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around, while the socks use patterns from Traditional Fair Isle Knitting by Sheila McGregor.
Using up odds and ends has been a major knitting theme for me the past few years.
Thistle-yoke pullover sweater.This sweater is a recreation of a project from my past. The overall design is the bottom-up, seamless yoke sweater in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears. I used favorite patterns from Traditional Fair Isle Knitting by Sheila McGregor for the cuffs and yoke. The blue yarn is a 50-50 blend of kid mohair and wool, which I bought in 1987. The white and red yarns are left-over bits, origin unknown.