It was still snowing and cold when I let Bode out early this morning but there was a heartwarming story in the Natural Stitches newsletter when I checked email.
I am still indebted to my friend Linda Lorenz for introducing me to Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitting Without Tears book after I moved to Champaign-Urbana IL for graduate school. Even if you are not fond of EZ patterns the attitude that comes with them is enough to make a novice into a rabid knitter.
With the current stretch of cold weather and snow there has been an incentive to pick up some knitting. I finished (except for putting elastic in the waistband) a pair of relaxed fit black knit pants following directions from Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top book. I have been pulling them on (she recommends trying on your garment frequently during construction) and they are warm and comfortable.
Currently on the needles is favorite pair of navy blue wool socks going through their second re-treading that is picking them apart at the ankle and knitting in a new foot when the toe, heel, and sole wear thin. I do some mending but my experience has been that by the time the sock gets that worn the results are better if you just redo the foot. I am using No. 1 size double point needles with fingering weight yarn I bought on a cone.
I used to pick up an odd skein here and there, but as I grow older have been finding yarns I like then buying a fairly large quantity of them. Once you “learn” a yarn, for instance by making a pair of socks or fingerless gloves before starting a sweater, you have plenty to work with for getting a design the way you like plus leftovers for repairs or remodeling (making a pullover into a cardigan, adding pockets or a collar) later.
No pictures, sorry. Those dark colors that go with everything and that become staples of your wardrobe do not photograph well at all. You can see many clear pictures in my 2004 Socks Blog (actually a collection of static pages).
Anyway, here are links to the story, courtesy of Natural Stitches:
Channeling Elizabeth Zimmerman
The Tale of the Green Sweater
EZ Was Here
My own Elizabeth Zimmerman connection is that I mail ordered yarn, books and accessories from her and her daughter Meg Swanson then discovered people knew them from their UW days in Milwaukee. The written out pattern is to be available for order soon on Meg’s Schoolhouse Press web site.)
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Something seemed very familiar about the Twist Collective web site. When I looked at the footer, saw that it was a Joomla! site. Although I really like Joomla! I have found that it is just too complicated for many people. WordPress is my current suggestion for most people who want to set up new web sites. In addition to being easy to use, they seem to keep their database structure intact through upgrades. That means that those cute little Perl DBI:DBD scripts that excerpt snippets from the blog database and insert them as SSI continue to work.
