Author: Alasdair Post-Quinn

Well here it is, folks, the surprise I meant to tell you about. I was hoping to have this out sooner but not everything fell together exactly on time. However, enough has come together at this point that I can extend the offer.

I’ve already posted this to my mailing lists, and now I’m going to reach further. In January of this year, I released the pattern for 52 Pickup, my first true “magnum opus” double-knitting piece. At the time, I didn’t think it would be practical to print it as well, but I realize that many people value having a nicely-printed and bound version of certain patterns. Binding it poses certain difficulties — for example, if the charts are stuck always in the same order, how is it practical to “shuffle” the charts so that the cards are in a random order?

But I decided to go for it anyway, after Shannon at Cooperative Press gave me a lead on a printer that could print them cheaply and cleanly and in any number I required with a very short lead time. I printed a very small number — 50 — to start with and see how they sell. 10 of those are set aside for use as kits.

To solve the issue of the un-shufflable (is that a word? It is now) pages, I’m offering a free PDF copy of the pattern from Ravelry to anyone who buys the print copy of the pattern book. The book also includes a reprint of my article on the mathematics and design behind this scarf, originally printed in Issue Zero of Knit Edge Magazine.

The book alone is $19.95 plus shipping, and the kit (which includes the book, the free PDF download, 10 balls of Regia 4-ply in the proper colors, and a deck of cards) is $109.95, plus shipping. The kit is currently only on preorder — I am still waiting for the yarn to arrive but I’ve been assured that it’s Not Going To Be Long Now. I’m under the impression that I’ll be able to ship kits at least to US addresses before Christmas. If it turns out I need to eat my words, I’ll be happy to send the book alone to those who preordered, and the rest of the kit when it arrives.

I was planning on selling them on Etsy, but I decided instead to simply sell them directly on my website with a WePay widget, so that I only owe fees to one company rather than two. So if you’re interested, go visit my website’s patterns page!

Stay tuned for more announcements here soon (or sooner than usual, anyway)!

Unbeknownst to most of you, I was on a cruise ship last weekend, going up the coast to St John and Halifax and back. I had a great time, won a little at craps, got some knitting done, but primarily just had a nice vacation with my wife. The cruise was ostensibly knitting-related — although there were only 58 knitters on a ship holding over 3000 people — and while I partook in some of the knitting activities, taught a short workshop, sold some of my books and visited knitting shops in our ports of call, I really meant the cruise to be a pleasant time away for myself and my wife.

So as not to make this post altogether too long, I’ll highlight only one exceptional experience which was completely unexpected.

As we approached Halifax, there was a rumor circulating that, in addition to the yarn shop we already knew about, there was a fiber festival going on at the Marriott. We resolved to check that out once we got some more info at the yarn shop. However, we found out that the “festival” was more of a private retreat — but that there was a vendor room that was open to the public.

I had already been witness to large amounts of Kauni in the yarn shops we had visited, which made for an obvious conversation starter when talking with folks in those shops. They were already familiar with the designs of Lucy Neatby, who has also been using Kauni heavily in her recent design work. So it was no surprise to find, when we entered the vendor room, a large basket of Kauni in addition to most of the line of Hand Maiden/Fleece Artist yarns. I browsed for a while and eventually struck up a conversation with the woman running the vendor room — a designer named Ilga Leja. It turned out that she had heard of me and my book, and was overjoyed that I had randomly shown up. After talking to her co-organizer Jane Thornley, it turned out that they were coming to the end of their retreat, and they asked me to do an impromptu presentation of my work to the assembled attendees. Needless to say, I opened a few more eyes there, even if my heavily-engineered work was a radical departure from the freeform openwork they had come to learn.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Yarns on York, our LYS host at Fredericton, a bus-tour away from our port of call at St John, NB. They organized a knit-in (or knit-out) in our honor and we got to meet up with a whole bunch of knitters from that area. Thanks to that experience it’s entirely possible I’ll be extending my workshops to a new country in the not-too-far future!

Now, the part you’re probably itching to see. A couple of months ago I finished knitting Parallax v2.0 — the Parallax scarf I’ve been knitting in Kauni on the bias. I was hoping to get around to blocking it before taking photos but my studio is a little too chaotic right now to deal with that. So here it is, unblocked but still glorious. You can probably tell why I couldn’t stop working on it. One really neat side-effect of working this in the bias is that the really clean selvedge runs around all four edges, not just the sides. So I have only 3 more Parallaxes to finish before the eBook has enough content to be published. However, given my other design contracts for this year, I don’t think that’s likely to happen in 2012.

Anyway, I’ve regained my landlegs just in time for a classic New England August heat/humiditywave, and while my condo is cool enough, the general unpleasantness of the environment is not particularly conducive to knitting. Still, I have my to-do list to look at and there will be some knitting in the near future. But for now, I’m reminiscing about the cool night breeze on the cruise ship. Good night, all.

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, perhaps you remember back in February when I posted about a chart I appropriated (with permission) from the sweater of a passing acquaintance. For a time, I obsessed about finding the source of the pattern, and I infected at least a couple of people with the same obsession. I helped one friend with an immense knitting library go through her magazines dating back to the 1980s (to try to catch patterns that Ravelry might not have due to age). I went through every single Dale of Norway pattern. I inquired in the Stranded group and the Xtreme Fair Isle group on Ravelry. I asked everyone at all of my knitting groups. Nobody ever found a chart that was the same or even similar.

So I decided it was time to assume that the pattern was not published, and knit up a swatch of it. Perhaps in its knitted form, the pattern would jog someone’s memory. I decided to dig back into my stash and retrieve that large amount of Artyarns Ultramerino 4 that Iris so graciously bestowed upon me nearly a year ago. I laid them all out and started to match them up into two-skein color combinations that resonated with me on some plane. The one I liked the least I decided to swatch with. I chose a repeat and started working. About halfway through, I decided to change the pattern a bit. In stranded knitting, the single-pixel “blips” of color are often used to keep long strands anchored. However, in double-knitting, these aren’t necessary. So I removed them and finished the swatch. You can check out the back here.

While working on this pattern, I was struck by this curvy colorwork’s resemblance to cables, and sat down to convert the entire pattern to cables. In fact, because the pattern centers on a single column, cables weren’t the only answer — it’s a combination of increasing/decreasing colorwork and cables, all done in double-knitting. There are some utterly ridiculous techniques in this swatch, such as a 5-to-3 double-decrease and its inverse, a 3-to-5 double-increase. There’s also a place where a double-decrease is immediately followed by a double-increase in the next row, which creates the illusion that two individual chains are passing through each other. There are a couple of glitches in the chart resulting in some odd positioning, but I’ve fixed those and the next swatch will be better. It’s a gorgeous rendering of the original pattern, but I have no clue what I’m going to do with it. Perhaps I’ll need to swatch it again a little larger and something will come to me.

The original pattern, however, I do know what I’m going to do with. Of course, I’ll remove the “blips” for a cleaner look (and to protect me from the original author who will no doubt surface as soon as I’ve published it). Because I’ve got a limited amount of each color and because I want to give the community something a little smaller and more manageable than my last couple of patterns, I decided on a fitting application. I feel a little conflicted about using this pattern on something as mundane as a gadget sleeve, but that’s what I’m planning on doing — a customizable gadget sleeve for any gadget. I’ve been taking gadget measurements and I think I’ve got enough to start with. I need to do a little more swatching, then I can work out the pattern. This will also probably require that I finally work out double-knit kitchener stitch.

I did finally settle on a name. I was hoping to identify the actual culture the pattern comes from, but in the end I decided it looks Arabic or North African, and gave it an Arabic name. The name “Mounqaliba” sprang unbidden into my head — it’s the name of Natacha Atlas‘ recent album — and when I looked it up, it translates to “in a state of reversal”. Could it get more perfect? Here’s hoping I don’t get sued by Natacha Atlas — although I don’t think she owns the word itself.

In other news, I’ve been tapped by a friend of mine who’s a yarn-company rep to design 6 patterns over the next year for a colorwork club for a new line of their yarns. I can’t go into details because I’m not under contract yet (and I don’t know the level of disclosure allowed), but it’s nice to spend some time — for the first time in a very long while — designing something that’s not in double-knitting. I knit a really nice stranded colorwork hat in 3 days and now I’m going to knit another one to refine the pattern! I’ve got some neat ideas for the upcoming patterns …

My Spring workshop season is over now, and while I have one workshop weekend at WEBS in July, I’m basically on workshop hiatus for the summer. If your shop wants to get me in for the Fall workshop season, I’m starting to think about scheduling. Email me — or tell your shop to seek me out at TNNA in Columbus.

 

This pattern has been an abnormally long time coming, considering how little time it takes me to knit. As we went into the winter, I was expecting a long, cold season with plenty of time to release a scarf pattern while it was still cold. With the spring and even summer-like temperatures we got in February, I started to worry that we wouldn’t have a proper winter, so I dropped some of the other stuff I was working on and finished cranking this out. It’s now out, fittingly, on April 1st. But this is no joke, just a bit of irony. Still, if you start now, it’ll be ready well in time for next Winter.

The yarn I worked with is Lhasa Wilderness, a gorgeous yak and bamboo blend yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch. These folks have been so helpful to me at the various shows I’ve been to that I decided I should really return the favor by designing something to promote their yarns. Little did I know this would be one of the most enjoyable knits I’ve done in recent memory, and the hand of the yarn definitely had something to do with that.

It’s out now, available on Ravelry for purchase — and much cheaper, I should say, than the last pattern I released.

In other news, my publisher Cooperative Press is putting out the inaugural issue of their new magazine later this year — and I have an article on the creation of my 52 Pickup pattern. Also, I’m now allowed to tell you that I’m going to be teaching ALL of my double-knitting workshops at BOTH Interweave Knitting Labs in Fall 2012 — one in Manchester, NH and one in San Mateo, CA (my first west-coast appearance)!

Also in other news, I’m planning to release an ebook of more Parallax patterns later this year — v0.5 was so much fun to do, and v1.0 and v2.0 are already on the needles. v3.0 and v4.0 are in the works, design-wise, and crazy things are afoot. If you like Parallax v0.5, you’ll love what’s next.

Last weekend was FiberCamp Boston, the third incarnation of that illustrious event. Actually, we really need to figure out how to get it to grow larger. But much fun was had by all. Last year I learned a bit about how to knit and purl backwards, but never put it into practice. It got me thinking — how about double-knit entrelac? If all the techniques are already possible, why not put them together? But I got sidetracked by the Parallax scarves and eventually the 52 Pickup scarf — and the backwards knitting skill was lost.

Now I know there’s always Youtube, but I decided it could wait. This year I took a class on knitting and purling backwards, then a class on entrelac. I’ve done entrelac before but only a little bit, so I just refreshed my memory on the technique, then ripped it out and cast on to try it in double-knitting. This weekend, it’s done. Just a little swatch, nothing more than a test to see if the various techniques translate well. It’s not perfect — I was testing open and closed edge pickups, and of course my tension is not perfect since this is the first time I’ve tackled double-knitting backwards, but it’s a good proof of concept.

When I finish the hat this technique is going toward, I think I am going to be lynched. It requires so many new techniques it might as well be the last pattern in my next book. But I’m sure I’ll release it before then. Anyway, without further ado, here’s a photo of my test swatch, just to prove it can be done. Click for facing and opposite side photos as well.

In workshop news, I’m going to be running one last set of workshops here in Cambridge, then traveling in April and May to Acton and the Village Knitter on Long Island. Check my calendar for those dates. Over the summer I’m sure I’ll be at TNNA, and in the fall I’ll be at Rhinebeck and Stitches East — but I’m not teaching at any of them this year, largely because I am instead teaching at Interweave Knitting Labs — both the east coast one in Manchester, NH as well as the west coast one in San Mateo, CA. I’m psyched to teach and honored that Interweave is hosting the first big event to truly reach out to me as a teacher. I hope this will be the catalyst for bigger things in the future.

Next on the chopping block — asymmetric double-knit lace (lace on one side, plain on the other).