Riles (they/them/elle)

Deadly bombing of Iran primary school ‘a grave violation of humanitarian law’: UNESCO The UN education agency, UNESCO, says that the bombing of a primary school during the US and Israeli military attacks on Iran on Saturday constitutes a grave violation of humanitarian law.

When the target of the much-vaunted “precision weapons” deployed by Israel and its puppet, the US is a girl’s primary school, with 150+ defenceless children massacred, you’re left in no doubt that this is state terrorism and the perpetrators are vile criminals.

news.un.org/en/story/202...

Clocking in for my shift at the Knitting Factory.

Yes, there is a cost of living crisis. AND there is a consumption crisis. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

I'm hand knitting my wedding dress, and I've restarted twice because I decided to make a major change to the design. (First time I wanted to switch the beads, second time I decided to switch from top-down to bottom-up construction.) But third time's the charm!

🧶 #Knitting #KnitSky

Show me the creative project you're most proud of from 2025! I wanna see what beautiful things y'all are making! 🧶🎨 #ArtSky #Knitting #KnitSky

How would you explain "reading your knitting" to someone just getting started?

To figure out the needle size for my lace wedding skirt, I knit the same, open lace pattern with the same yarn (the blue is just a different color), & three different size needles: 3mm, 3.25mm, & 3.5mm. I chose the 3mm because it feels like a nice balance between open-ness & structure. 🧶 #Knitting

hahaha

Benefit of knitting bottom up: completing rows goes faster and faster as you move forward, instead of becoming a slog as things get longer.

It is! It's going to take a WHILE, but I'll share along the way!

In the end, I decided on 4 wedges, + a section at the bottom that will round out the bottom of the wedge, + a knitted on hem that will connect all the wedges along the bottom.

Up next: swatching for the first motif & casting on the first wedge!

It's slightly more fiddly than just knitting in the round, BUT, this way I get to see what the pattern is looking like as it unfolds, and theoretically it will create a bit more structure to support the weight of the beads I'm going to add.

And then do you knit it all together in the round or in pieces and sew them together? What are the pros and cons of each?

After a week or so of researching and going into rabbit holes and swatching beads and lace patterns and questioning my sanity, I made a decision.

I'll do this as wedges.

Hand Knit Wedding Dress: The Design, pt 4 🧶 #Knitting #KnitSky

So I knew I wanted a circle skirt, but now there are so many more choices! Full circle? Double full circle? 3/4 circle? Some other amount of circle????

So, on to skirt planning & swatching we go...

(Follow for more, and scroll back on my profile for the dress design journey we're going on together.)

Here's my quick (non-expert!) sketch. I decided to focus on the skirt first, as it will be the focal point of the design. And as I'm 5'10" (178cm) that skirt is gonna be a LOT of fabric. Let's get this done first, and then see how much time we have left to figure out what to do with the bodice.

The overall construction goals are:
- light bodice, backless, with either v-neck or light scoop front.
- floor-length, lace circle skirt with lots of body, drape, and swoosh

Back to the planning notebook we go. I had a few ideas. I pulled together my favorite dresses from Ravelry into my planning notebook, jotting down what I liked and what I didn't from each.

Hand Knit Wedding Dress: The Design, pt 3 🧶 #Knitting #KnitSky

So I have the yarn. Now on to the fun part: swatching.

But wait, wait, wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

What am I swatching FOR? What is this dress gonna look like?

(Also: will 3600 meters be enough? I'm not certain, but it should come close, and I can order more later if I need to. At least we've gotten a start!)

Finally I found what I was looking for at @apmezga -- a 2-ply lace weight silk yarn. Beautifully shiny, and they had the perfect shade of white. (Did I buy some other shades as well, to use for other projects? Yes, yes I did. 🤫)

I picked up 6 skeins, and now we're ready to test beads and lace!

At BCN Knits, I found plenty of beautiful yarn, but I knew I needed the ONE. There was always something not quite right.

❌ Fingering weight silk yarns galore
❌ Single ply silk that takes dye beautifully, but I'm not sure how it'll hold ujp
❌ Silk blended with merino or alpaca,

🧶 Yarn requirements:
- Lace weight (for delicate lace and a light dress)
- White-ish (for keeping it bridal coded, and I can dye it afterward)
- 2-ply (for a bit more strength and less pilling than a 1 ply)
- 100% silk (for maximum shine & drape)

Hand Knit Wedding Dress: The Design, pt 2

I had about 3 weeks to find my yarn. Luckily, it was Barcelona Knits Fiber Festival in mid-November.

It’s hard to stomach the bile of Dirty Donald; a man who buried his wife in a golf course, a convicted rapist, supporter of Neo-Nazis, a life long racist & who cheated on his wife, whilst she was pregnant with his child. Anyone who finds him repugnant is ethical & a mensch.

I created my GoodNotes notebook where I'm tracking everything: inspiration pictures, lace charts, swatch photos, notes on what I like and don't like, etc. All the things you think you'll remember, but 6 months later you've forgotten entirely.

And I started looking for yarn.

I knew that we were headed to Argentina in December to spend the holidays with family, scout wedding venues, and have a few weeks off: perfect time to start knitting.

That meant I needed to at *least* have my yarn and beads decided on before we left at the end of November. I jumped into action.

Thankfully, I have until March 2027, so plenty of time. But armed with all the research I've done, I know it's taken folks up to a year to complete their projects. So I want to get started with plenty of time for mistakes, reworking, time off, etc.

A couple months ago, knitting my own wedding dress went from a loose idea to a reality: my partner and I decided to get married! So it's time to get started. 🧶 #Knitting

Confession: I have never in my decades of knitting used needle tip cover thingies. (I don't even know what they're called!) Granted, I don't use DPNs, so that helps a lot. But I've always just pulled the project onto the cable of my circulars and thrown it into my bag like a gremlin. 🙊