WEBS yarn shop in Northampton, MA got online so early in the game than they snagged the url www.yarn.com. They have a wide selection, and I’ve had good experiences ordering there.
Well, that’s why they only let fully trained comedians like Josh Gondelman and his UK/Commonwealth analogues host the podcast. 😉
Relatable. As a US follower of the Bugle podcast, I’ve been on the other side of that coin plenty of times. “For our American listeners, let me try to explain Jacob Rees-Mogg…”
Three spools of top stitching thread strung with black seed beads and silver round beads. Each spool is wrapped in beaded thread, with a tail of more beaded thread trailing off each spool to the side. Little paper tags with letters from A to Q (some repeated several times) mark the different pattern sections. This is the setup for a bead crochet necklace I made long ago for my mother.
❤️
On the other hand, could be worse… 🫠
In particular, “In popular culture” and “Death and succession” are what you’re missing.
Ha—of course you do! I ran into your post on a different feed than usual, and totally forgot that your designs are why I follow your account. 🤦♀️
Anyway, I love the rabbits! Kudos!
Beautiful! Are you following a pattern or making it up?
☺️
My Samen shawl laid out on a wooden deck floor. The shawl is a very long, shallow asymmetrical triangle. The shorter half, farthest from the camera, consists of six thick garter stripes in three blended colors, a reddish tan, a pale blue flecked with brown, and a deep maroon. The stripes bend between the two (unequal) halves of the shawl, and on the closer, longer half, there is a wedge of stockinette lace with a simple eyelet grid in between each pair of garter stripes. Each of these regions is a different color combination made by remixing the fingering wool and mohair lace colors. From the center to the outermost chevron, the wedges are pale blue with chestnut flecks, deep chocolate brown, tan with chestnut flecks, tan with dark brown flecks, and pale blue with maroon flecks. I didn’t quite have enough aubergine wool and maroon mohair, so the outer chevron is a couple of rows thinner than the others, and the bind off is aubergine wool with chestnut mohair.
My Samen shawl next to my 20-pound cockapoo, for scale. Kiko is happy that I haven’t wrapped her up in the shawl—yet. Maybe after I block it. The original pattern, by Stephen West, only has six color combinations, with the lace wedges alternating between three color blends. Back when I bought all the yarn, I had vague thoughts of mixing this up, and when I saw how low the contrast was between the aubergine and maroon garter stitch stripe and the aubergine and brown lace wedge, I was certain I wanted to remix the other wedges. As in the original pattern, each wedge uses the wool color from one adjacent garter stripe and the mohair from the other. Counting the thin edge of aubergine and chestnut at the bind off, the shawl has all nine color combinations of wool and mohair.
My Samen-dedicated haul of yarn from Stephen and Penelope, to which I made a pilgrimage while passing through Amsterdam. There are two skeins of each of the six colors. In the top row, Glowhair, a mohair-silk blend, in corduroy (the one I’ve been calling maroon), chestnut, and truffle. In the bottom row, Bicycle (100% merino wool), in aubergine, biscuit, and cirrus. The fabric from holding these together is SO plush, and knitting with them was a tactile delight.
#ShowMeYourKnits
My not-yet-blocked silly-huge Samen shawl, knit with yarn from Amsterdam. Three colors of wool fingering held together with three colors of mohair in giant #garterstitch chevrons with interspersed lace wedges.
🧶 #knitsky #westknitsarethebestknits
www.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...
Yes, with more practice I think you’ll get used to reading ssk or skpsso as just “left decrease” and do whichever one works best for you. I still occasionally rewrite or rechart part of a pattern if it seems helpful.
Because you don’t want it to freeze, of course. 😉
You might want to check out @pattylyons.bsky.social’s material. She is good at rethinking and reframing a lot of knitting fundamentals.
As long as you’re making the correct stitches and it’s comfortable for you, you can knit any way you like. It’s worth trying out different techniques just to see how they affect your comfort, efficiency, and enjoyment, but you can get a good fabric many different ways.
crazy that the website that I randomly decided to put together at 10AM yesterday has had over 25k unique visitors in 24 hours.
please keep sharing with your networks.
They don’t sting, I promise. 😉
Aw, thanks! ☺️
Just going to leave this here…
The Little Train that Died, from very early SNL: youtu.be/Ny837E635D0?...
If you’re printing, you really only need two copies: the first 24 rows of the shorter pattern twice, then the first 32 rows plus the first 16 rows of the longer pattern.
Suggestion: print multiple copies, cut out the repeating part of each pattern and carefully tape together four copies of the 12-row cable and three of the 16-row cable so they line up for the complete chart. Or you could try the same on the computer with digital cut-and-paste.
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It’s not an event with a fixed location, though. It’s in a different city each year. But all the art catalogs are online at gallery.bridgesmathart.org, and there are many other knit, crochet, and beadwork pieces. It’s a very deep rabbit hole.
Catalog links for the last two pieces.
#cellularautomata #sevencolortorus
Redistribution, 2023
gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/...
Map Coloring Jewelry Set, 2014
gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/...
Thanks to Christopher at the Michaels frame shop for making the folding mat screen!
Catalog links for the first three pieces.
#friezegroups #wallpapergroups
Fundamental Frieze Scroll II, 2018
gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/...
The Fundamentals of Lace, 2025
gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/...
Float Free, Bumblebee, 2018
gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/...
My featured-artist display at JMM 2026 in Washington DC. Four of the works are hanging on a zig-zag of beige, custom-cut mats, and the fifth is on three black jewelry stands. All pieces were accepted into one or more juried exhibits at JMM or Bridges in the past decade. The blue knitted wall hanging, second from the left, is the solo piece that was accepted into this year’s exhibition.
A closer view of the first two panels of the folded mat backing. The three pieces were 28 inches tall and 14, 28, and 28 inches wide, which is bigger than it sounds when you’re carrying them. On the left is Fundamental Frieze Scroll II from 2018, a tan knitted wall hanging which was the precursor for the new piece to its right. That new piece, The Fundamentals of Lace, is knitted in blue on smaller needles but is both wider and taller than the older work. Both wall hangings are composed of the same fundamental region, a small lace motif in a lambda or Y shape, and both have colored beads embedded in the fabric to mark the symmetries. For more details, go to the following post for the online catalog links.
A close up of the rightmost mat panel and the jewelry set. As before, for more details you can follow the catalog links in the following posts. The last mat panel has two knitting wall hangings suspended from pins at the top of the panel. To the left is Float Free, Bumblebee, a wall hanging in two-color mosaic knitting with yellow and black yarn. Like the two pieces in the previous photo, the knitted fabric is rectangular and lashed to dowels at the top and bottom. The fabric is divided into horizontal and vertical strips with different repeating abstract designs. On the right of the mat is Redistribution, a wall hanging that has the overall shape of an hourglass whose top segment is shorter than the bottom segment. The upper portion is fan-shaped, with a network of dark purple stitches over a background of pale green stitches. The lower portion is flared like a trumpet and juts away from the wall, with a network of light purple stitches on a background of dark green. To the right of the folding backdrop is Map Coloring Jewelry Set, the oldest artwork in this display. A bead crocheted necklace with pendant, a bead crocheted bracelet, and bead woven earrings in eight matte colors with gold accents hang on a black necklace form and black bracelet and earring stands. This jewelry set won a prize in the JMM 2015 exhibit, and now and then, I still wear it.
#mathart #mathknitting #JMM2026
This year, the math art exhibition at the Joint Mathematics Meetings invited me to be a featured artist, giving me the chance to assemble this mini-retrospective of my knitted and beaded work. Links to the catalog entries are in the following posts.
🧶 #knitsky ☺️
Sometimes if you overpull the yarn when you turn your work, you hike up the last stitch so that the sides of the loop below look like two stitches where there should be just one. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened with the green rows. You’ll get the hang of it, and for now, bonus stitches!
🧶🧶🧶 knit yarn 🧶🧶🧶
A solitary knit sock lying on its side, waiting for me to finish its mate. The pattern is essentially Serendipitous Journey, but with the toe and heel from Vanilla Extract. I’m using a stashed sock set from the now defunct Lollipop Yarns in the color way Bluely Madly Deeply, which alternates four stripes in dark blues with four stripes in brighter blues and purples with dark blue flecks. The toe, heel, and cuff are solid dark blue, with the tonal variations of hand-dyed yarn.
The same striped sock in Bluely Madly Deeply, except this time it’s on my left foot. On the top of the foot and the front of the leg, the brighter blue and purple stripes are in reverse stockinette, making them pop out above the dark blues in stockinette. The sole of the foot is in smooth stockinette, while the back of the leg and the cuff are in 2 by 2 ribbing.
#ShowMeYourKnits
My JMM 2026 conference-talk knitting. One down, one to go. #WIP
🧶 #knitsky 🧦
www.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...
www.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...
“Shhhhhhhhh… what yarn?” 🤫😉
As long as there’s a safe word. 😉
Seriously, the initial chain is always the hardest to stitch into. If you hang on until you have something more than a chain to stitch into, it gets easier, in my experience.
