it’s been a while since we added to the swatch library. since we’ve been hit with a flurry of ideas (and a serious case of starter-itis), now seems as good as a time as ever to resume entries in our little swatch collection. THE LO DOWN the stitch is called the “tilting block pattern” in the walker treasury. garter stitch blocks alternate with simple lace trellis blocks to create a checked pattern at an interested angle. the right and left slants produced by alternating between…
Autumn is over the long leaves that love us, And over the mice in the barley sheaves; Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. – TS Eliot, The Falling of the Leaves
What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring, such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces, like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman hyacinths, scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim anemones, even the sulphur auriculas, flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel cold to the touch, flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost – DH Lawrence, Frost Flowers (written in Cornwall at the end of the bitter winter of 1916-1917)
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near – e.e. cummings
goodness (n. & int.) n. 1. virtue; excellence, esp. moral. 2. kindness, generosity (had the goodness to wait). 3. what is good or beneficial in a thing (vegetables with all the goodness boiled out). int. (as a substitution for ‘God’) expressing surprise, anger, etc. (goodness me!; goodness knows; for goodness’ sake!). [OE godnes (as GOOD, -NESS)] (excerpted from the Oxford English Dictionary)
while fiddling around with a section of our penelope pattern, we ended up making a little swatch that turned out to be a lace version of the miter square. we’ve seen striped miter squares before but haven’t as yet come across a lacy concoction. . . it makes a nice little coaster by itself, and if ya whipped up a whole bunch, you might just end up with a really cool blanket!’
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens; Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens; Brown paper packages tied up with strings; These are a few of my favorite things. – Oscar Hammerstein II & Richard Rodgers, My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music
Don’t throw the pa-ast away You might need it some rainy day Dreams can come true again When everything old is new again – Peter Allen, Everything Old is New Again lyrics THE LO-DOWN indian cross stitch is one of those stitches that we consider a minor miracle. it’s the same on both sides, works up quickly and is quite a bit easier to execute once you get the hang of things than it may seem. we’ve provided a step-by-step tutorial to illustrate the tricky…
The two oaks lean apart for light. They aren’t as strong as lone oaks but in a wind they give each other lee. — William Meredith, A Couple of Trees THE LO-DOWN gauge really matters when it comes to lace stitches. on the left, we knit a lacey leaf pattern with worsted weight camel yarn on US6 needles. the pattern ended up coming out like a really organic cable pattern rather than something full of holes and curves. on the right, we re-knit the…
You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl. – TS Eliot, The Wasteland THE LO-DOWN winter is blasting outside our windows, and we’re dreaming of hyacinths, tulips and daffodils breaking through the ground come spring. until spring really does roll around, we’re keeping warm and knitting up hyacinth stitches on our needles. in our humble opinion, the hyacinth stitch ranks up there with things we put in the “instant gratification” category. it looks tremendously complicated, but it’s actually surprisingly…