Look, perhaps you're cooler than me (I mean you're probably cooler than me, that's setting a really low bar). Perhaps you can knit mile after mile after mile of twisted ribbing and not lose your will to live.  Perhaps you can tell yourself that the undeniable charms of that fabric (sturdy! warm! stretchy! pretty!) are worth the clanking grinding process of actually knitting it. But I? I know my limitations. And my limitations are about an inch of the stuff before I declare it good enough and move on to the fun bits. Especially when the fun bits look like [...]

Ok, with our swatching all taken care of (remember this one was four 'do I like the stitch in this yarn' swatches and two 'do I like the fabric at this gauge' swatches, so nothing too daunting), it's time to cast on. I settled on Hypothesis Yarns' Tweed DK in Wildcat and Shibui Knits Silk Cloud in Cove.⁠ And the two held together do something suspiciously magical that I cannot quite explain but absolutely adore. At some point, I will show you the fabric with both yarns sitting on it and you'll look at it and go 'huh, how do [...]

Ok, so this is neat...look at the difference blocking makes.⁠ The first picture is the blocked swatch, the second one is the exact same swatch fresh off the needles before blocking.⁠ Look how much more clearly defined the stitch pattern is after blocking. Look at the lovely scalloped edge on the bottom of the blocked one (that you couldn't even see on the unblocked one). Look how the fabric opens up and drapes so much more nicely.⁠ All knit fabric benefits from blocking, even if it's just to let the stitches relax and even out. But fabric like this, with [...]

So here are all the ones I tried for this project. And you can see they sort of slowly narrowed in on what I wanted. I though first maybe something super bulky because that was lots of fun a few weeks ago with Semblance. But then the stitch pattern I've got in mind turned out to be a bit too big to make sizing easy at that scale. Next up I tried a yarn that calls itself heavy worsted, but that I only seem to like if I knit it at the sort of gauge you'd use for sportweight, and [...]

Alrighty, here we go! This is both the color and the fabric and the scale I was going for. Let me get it wound up and we can get started!⁠ And by 'get started,' I mean I can knit yet another swatch that's actually big enough to give me the gauge info I need, because this swatch was a 'check the stitch against the yarn' swatch not a 'make this be the size I want it to be' swatch, and those are two different things. Some day we'll talk about the different kinds of swatches and the different things they [...]

I think...I think I'm going to start showing you more of my swatches. I hear from a lot of folks saying some version of 'your yarn always looks so pretty with the stitches you use.' (Which, thank you!) But it sometimes sounds like folks think I have some sort of magical yarn/stitch pairing oracle in my stash closet that I can consult and it just hands me the right yarn when I'm ready to start a project. And, as cool as that would be, it is very very very much not the case. The reason my yarn looks good in [...]

Swatch take two! Same stitch as the one the other day, just a different yarn (I'm quite set on the stitch I want to use, I'm just looking for yarn that will give me the fabric/sizing options I want). This one is Berroco's Mochi in Plum, and it's a beautiful example of why I will never ever EVER be able to tell you what needle size to use. ⁠ I'm swatching on a US 3 (3.25 mm) and getting a smidge under 4 stitches per inch. If I wanted firmer fabric (closer to 4 stitches per inch), I'd need to [...]

It's swatching time again! ⁠ I don't think this will end up being the one I go with, but I kind of like showing off the swatches that don't work out too. The stitch pattern I want to use is a little big to use with yarn this fat and still be able to offer a lot of sizes (if your stitch pattern is 18 stitches across, and you're working at 4 stitches to the inch, that's more than four inches for each stitch repeat, and that's way too much space between sizes when you're talking about a hat).⁠ There [...]

I love a good sneaky trick.  Anything I can do where I look at it after the fact and go 'huh, how did I even do that?' fills me with unspeakable glee.  And Lucent has that in spades. That little sunburst on the side is just unreasonably delightful. Maybe it shouldn't be.  Maybe I shouldn't be so easily amused.  But wow can I not help myself! And it looks just faintly perplexing (like other knitters will totally stare at it for a second and wonder what you did), but it's actually ridiculously easy to do.  You work a handful of [...]