Galleries

This is week 14 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Adenydd is worked in Galler Yarn Prime Alpaca Heather, a sportweight 100% alpaca yarn.

As I did with my last book, I’m ending this book with a “magnum opus” — a large, complicated and gorgeous pattern that will (hopefully) get people’s hearts racing and minds expanding.

It had been more than a year since Spring Willow came out as a pattern, and I hadn’t done any other double-knit lace. Not one to rest on my laurels, and of course with a book coming up, I felt I had to do one more thing in double-knit lace to really show off the possibilities. And what better than a shawl? There are so many shawls out there — it’s a popular garment to really show off a pattern or a yarn. I had designed one before, but it was a simple triangle worked from the point up. I wanted to branch out, so I took advantage of my local guild’s speaker series and took a workshop with Anna Dalvi. I learned about various shawl shapes and how to break them down into manageable chunks. I had chosen a lace pattern I wanted to use (again, from one of the Walker treasuries), but then I decided I wanted to use Faroese construction — from the center of the longest side of the triangle outward, ending with the two other sides of the triangle. In this direction, the lace pattern I had chosen would have ended up upside down — and since it was supposed to evoke feathers (or perhaps scales) on wings, the orientation was important. I began playing with the chart — first just flipping it upside down, then tweaking what didn’t work. Eventually, I asked for help from more experienced lace designer MMario while at the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat, and he made some suggestions that pointed me in a different direction. I ended up scrapping the original pattern altogether and building a new one from scratch, which finally gave me a more significant understanding of lace design than I had previously.

For years I have been going to local sheep and wool festivals; here in New England there are plenty. Years ago I came across a few vendors that sold giant hanks of sportweight alpaca for very reasonable prices. They had different names but all seemed to be more or less interchangeable; I assume that this was because the fiber was all processed at the same mill. These hanks were all in natural alpaca colors — any color you like, as long as it’s white, cream, brown, charcoal or black. Much later, I was in a yarn shop in Brooklyn and found a dyed version of the same yarn: same giant hanks, good price, but a variety of amazing colors which I hadn’t seen before in this context. I was excited to try it, and bought a couple of colors that, in retrospect, were perhaps not the best. But I loved working with the yarn and contacted the company, Galler Yarns, for more in better colors. They were happy to help, in exchange for assistance in plugging their yarn on social media. Well, that’s no problem — I would have done that anyway.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a shawl meant to evoke the image of wings. Whether bird wings or dragon wings I’m not sure — the feathers could just as easily be scales. Perhaps it depends on the colors you pick. Anyway, given the Celtic knotwork motif around the wings, I figured a Gaelic word would be ideal. However, the word for wing (sgiath) in Gaelic isn’t terribly friendly to the English palate, so I looked into surrounding cultures. In Welsh, the word for wing is adain and the word for wings is adenydd. I know a little Welsh pronunciation so I amended that to “Adenyth” to make it easier to say. My Welsh step-stepmother (long story) told me that’s not right — evidently, I don’t know enough Welsh pronunciation after all. The -dd is pronounced as a hard -th, as in “the” or “there”, and replacing it with a soft -th could make it a different word. In fact, it’s not — Adenyth is just a proper name and has no other meaning that I could find — but I decided it’d be better to have a unique name for this pattern and a teaching moment, and save Adenyth for a derivative pattern I have in mind for later.

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 13 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Spring Willow is worked in Anzula Squishy, a superwash merino, cashmere and nylon fingering weight yarn.

Double-knit lace is something that I dabbled with briefly while I was working on my first book, but never developed into a full pattern. It was relegated to the appendix along with a bunch of other techniques with similar histories. Several of these were pulled out of retirement later but lace spent a little longer on the bench while I was focusing on other things. Similar to Heartbound, which came out later, I needed a pattern to illustrate techniques I was beginning to offer in workshops, so that people would have a chance to try some double-knit lace in an actual pattern. To be honest, it had not gone unnoticed that there were some other innovators who had, whether with my book’s help or not, begun to play with double-knit lace and publish patterns using it. I was excited to see this, but also galvanized to release my own pattern to capitalize on the apparent interest of the knitting community. Besides, my design sense and style are uniquely my own and often recognizable to others — and the same goes for my double-knit lace when compared to others’ designs. Not only do I have a method to do it, I have 5 variations that all have unique properties. Of course, I do have a preferred method which is the one I’m using here. This lace pattern is subtly modified from something in a Barbara Walker treasury, then further modified to work in the round.

Superwash merino, cashmere and silk — it’s become such a common luxury blend that it even has its own acronym: MCS. I met the folks behind Anzula, a luxury yarn company from California, at a trade show where direct sales aren’t allowed — but where yarn companies and designers network on the side. Anzula came to the show with suitcases full of yarn to entice designers, and I got to sit and fondle the skeins for quite some time before I settled on the MCS base they called “Dreamy” in a particularly unlikely pairing of colors. This was well before I had a plan on what to do with them. When I began casting about for yarn for this pattern, I started in my stash and decided to try this yarn. Because the pattern takes advantage of larger color areas and single columns of stitches, I was able to get away with a slightly lower-contrast color combo. When I showed Anzula this pattern, they decided they wanted one for their trunk show but were out of Dreamy; instead, they asked me to substitute “Squishy” which mostly just replaces the silk with nylon. I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. I’m not even sure which one I have and which one travels with Anzula now.

Normally, I shy away from naming my pieces after the colors I choose — I don’t want to lock others’ minds into that particular groove. I want people to feel free to experiment with colorways, and sometimes referring to a pattern as “Red Sweater #45” is going to unfairly bias people against knitting the pattern in blue yarn. But in this case the temptation was too great; I thought of the pattern as “Spring Willow” due to the new-growth tan and green colors it’s done in, and the name stuck. It fits because of the hanging ripply columns and the openwork between, and the colorways just sort of help the image, if you want them to.

This pattern is already available but will also be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 12 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Heartbound Again is worked in Jagger Spun Maine Line/Green Line, a sportweight wool yarn.

Shortly after I put out my previous book, in which I postulated that there was no elegant solution to true double-knit cables, I discovered an elegant solution for true double-knit cables. Go figure. As a matter of fact, I found two — with and without a cable needle. This method opens up a whole new vista in reversible cabled colorwork. Not long after that, I began teaching a new class on double-knit cables. And yet, for quite some time, I didn’t have a standalone pattern that incorporated the technique. After some experimentation, I released a pattern called Heartbound which was a cabled headband using a reversed-color and reversed-texture background. It was a work in progress, and I informed people of that. Now that the book is on the horizon, it’s time to pull back the curtain for the full version: Heartbound Again. There is a headband version as well as a full hat. The cables are seamless due to some slip-stitch trickery, and the cast-on (and bind-off for the headband) is adapted from an i-cord cast-on so that it mimics the cables. There’s also some interesting cable/color/stitch manipulation borrowed from textured double-knitting (see the Eureka hat from earlier).

The yarn I used for this is actually something I acquired in a different way than normal. Jagger Spun has been around for quite a while but has recently changed their marketing and packaging efforts in order to appeal more to handknitters (they’ve been selling yarn on the cone primarily for weavers and machine knitters). One of their reps got in touch with me, asking if I’d like to try out some of their yarn. Never being one to pass up a new fiber-related experience, I agreed. The yarn they sent me was a perfect fit — lots of colors, my favorite weights, and great stitch definition. And, in the sportweight, they even have a 100% organic wool line.

The name “Heartbound” just came to me as I was looking at the cable pattern, thinking it looked a little like hearts all linked together. The word has two meanings, one more archaic than the other, but I’ll choose the positive and more poetic meaning of “having the heart entirely devoted to someone or something”.

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 11 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Twice As Sexy is worked in Buffalo Wool Co Sexy, a laceweight bison and mulberry silk yarn.

Ever since I designed my first two ties (for my first book, Extreme Double-Knitting) I’ve had people thanking me for breaking the stereotype of the ugly knit tie. Let’s face it, most knitted ties are pretty awful-looking. In order to keep them from curling, you have to work them in garter, or seed stitch, or sew on some backing, or something. Most of them stop looking like neckties after they’ve passed into the suit-button range, which means that wearing one without a suit looks terrible. I mean no serious offense to anyone else who’s designed one, but I thought I could do better. For one thing, double-knitting doesn’t curl. The two sides cancel that effect out in both directions. For another, shaping is totally worth the trouble. You can make a nice point at the beginning and end, and slowly taper the middle. You just have to do some basic math at the beginning to match your gauge to the size and shape, and you can fill in the inside with almost anything. Where I went a little off the rails with the first two ties was when I decided what to fill them with. These are power ties — complex, bold, exciting. But what if you want something more subdued, genteel, dignified? A classic double diagonal stripe is a good bet. But no simple colorwork stripes for me — these are true double-knit cabled traveling stitches. There are no rest rows. By the time you’re done with this tie, you’ll be an expert at these 1×1 cables.

This is another case of working with a yarn partially because the company has done me a favor. In this case, as with the others, the Buffalo Wool Company has regularly hosted my books and patterns at their booths at various shows I’ve been teaching at. I wanted to thank them for their help by designing a pattern in their yarn. Fortunately, I don’t work with vendors whose yarn I don’t already love, so it’s a win-win situation. A couple years before I ever cast on for this pattern, I got the yarn; every time I saw them after that I had to apologize that I hadn’t gotten to the pattern yet. Finally, with the book on the horizon, I decided it was time to redouble (pun intended) my efforts and make sure the pattern came out. As you can probably tell from the company’s name, they sell buffalo/bison yarn (it’s the same animal, just a different name). It’s not quite qiviut, but it’s up there in luxury and, of course, price. This yarn, called Sexy, is 50/50 bison and mulberry silk, so I thought it’d be a great pick for a tie. It is, however, a laceweight, which means it’s going to take some time to do the pattern (not to mention tinier needles than I normally work with). Fortunately, it’s a tie which means it’s not all that many stitches to begin with — 30 pairs at its widest.

The name is no big mystery here. The yarn’s name is “Sexy”; it’s double-knitted, so “Twice as Sexy”. Voila!

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 10 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Atyria II is worked in Seven Sisters Arts Helix, a fingering weight BFL.

My original idea for a Craftsy class involved teaching the basics in one pattern, then cramming as many techniques into a second pattern as physically possible. I wanted to try to get a whole book’s worth of techniques into that class. In retrospect, I’m lucky that Craftsy talked me down from that ridiculous goal. Whatever I made would have been hideous, and probably wouldn’t have sold the class as well as the two patterns I ended up using instead. Atyria was a pattern that used my off-the-grid style of decorative increases and decreases, combined with some basic 1×1 double-knit cables. This was the first place my new double-knit cable techniques were taught on a grand scale. However, the pattern was a bit of a rush job and I knew it. It was a great way to teach the techniques but a poor execution of a pattern. It relied on an obscure technique I called “ghost pairs” which confused some people greatly, and in the end the hat was too short and there was no good way to lengthen it. When I realized that the class was past its second birthday, I checked my contract and realized that the patterns were my property again, so I redesigned Atyria, lengthened the pattern and removed the ghost pairs. If you’re already in my Craftsy class, this pattern will be separated from the book and offered as a free download for my Craftsy students, around the same time as the book comes out.

I also took the opportunity to change the yarn I was working in. While I enjoyed working in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport for Craftsy, it was a superwash yarn and I wanted to steer away from that when possible. I stumbled across a sportweight BFL in a New York City shop and figured I’d use that instead. The dyer (who shall remain nameless) was excited that I was going to be working in her yarn for one of my book’s projects, but when I reached out to her for yarn support (the colors I had bought weren’t quite what I needed), she never answered. I poked her again a little while later but my time was getting short so I had to choose another yarn. I heard from some other designers that the same thing had happened to them — I hope she’s OK. Her blog seems to indicate she is, but there’s a month-long gap in the posts right around when this happened. Anyway, I ended up finding Seven Sisters Arts, a company from Maine, at Stitches West of all places — and they not only had a heavy fingering BFL, they had it in almost exactly the same colors I originally used for Atyria. It turns out the owner is a big fan and was flattered that I’d be working with her yarn. I finished the hat in record time and was able to show her the final version at Stitches South later that year.

Atyria, if you google it, is a genus of moth. While that’s a dirty word to knitters, the vast majority of moths are not likely to eat your yarn stash and many of them are quite pretty. The spiral motifs in this hat, while clearly meant to represent some kind of fern-like plant, reminded me of moth antennae or probosces, so I looked for a moth-related name. Atyria is a pretty name and more easily pronounceable than something that ends in -ae, even if moths in that genus don’t actually seem to have any particular relationship to the spiral shape.

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 9 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Ferronnerie is worked in Quince & Co Finch, a fingering weight wool.

This is one of those patterns that will probably require an entire chapter of techniques to support it. Like many colorworkers before me, I played a bit with entrelac to better understand this fascinating basketweave-like fabric, but honestly never liked the messy “wrong side” of the work with all its exposed seams. It seemed to me that it was ripe for the double-knit treatment, but there was a lot of problem-solving that needed to be done before I could proceed. After experimenting with a few swatches, I began to understand something critical: double-knitting and entrelac are made for each other! There are all kinds of ways that the two techniques just fall naturally together. I’d go into more detail here but I don’t want to give everything away. I do want to point out one thing here, though. If you’ve ever done entrelac in the round in multiple colors, you know that you do a round of diamonds in each color so you get concentric rounds of diamonds. But if you look at this pattern, you’ll notice that the color changes are radial, not concentric. The hat is still worked concentrically, though. This is a trick that I can achieve because I’m doing it in double-knitting — and I’ll explain it in the book for those who haven’t yet figured it out.

The yarn I’m using here is from Quince & Co, which is super popular lately; when I first stumbled across them at a shop in Maine, the patterns they had were, by and large, done in a single colorway. This seemed a shame to me since they have so many colors and good weights of yarn for colorwork. Since then, their colorwork patterns have perhaps not exploded, but many other designers have seen the possibilities and there are now plenty of colorwork patterns available — not to mention all the patterns originally worked in something else that people have decided to use Quince for instead. Still, I love their yarn and particularly the stitch definition in Finch; I wanted to showcase it with something really stunning, so it was a shoo-in for double-knit entrelac.

The term “entrelac” is derived from a French word for “interlacing” which describes what the fabric looks like when finished, especially in single-sided versions. Double-knitting it sort of flattens the fabric out a bit but the interlaced look is not diminished completely. Because the technique is named in French, I looked for a French word for the pattern’s name. The chart I’d chosen for the colorwork parts is based on a common wrought-iron shape, so I found a term “ferronnerie d’art” which refers to wrought-ironwork. “Ferronnerie” evidently just means “ironwork” — which, since it’s worked in wool, calls to mind another play on words: irony.

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 8 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Eureka is worked in A Hundred Ravens Aesir, an 8-ply sport/DK superwash merino yarn.

To put a cap (pun intended) on the textured double-knitting in this book, I decided to cram all the techniques I still wanted to teach into one pattern. As is typical for me, I loaded all the techniques into a very small space and designed a hat with them. I love hats — they’re a great way to try out and learn a technique (or techniques) without resigning yourself to a massive project. You don’t need to knit a sweater in order to learn RDK decreases or quilted DK. Sure, both techniques could come in handy in a sweater, but why not just do a hat? The sweater can come later. This hat is made up of triangles; all of the inverted triangles are done in purls. However, you may remember from elementary double-knitting that the fabric may only be held together by color changes within a row. When two large triangle bases meet horizontally, as happens frequently in this hat, what you really get is a big hollow diamond. In order to stabilize the fabric, I had to use a horizontal linking method. Lucy Neatby and I independently developed our own methods of doing this technique, so we talked and decided to be consistent with the name: quilted double-knitting.

I first encountered A Hundred Ravens at a local sheep & wool show; a good friend and sample knitter of mine was staffing the booth and lured me in with soft yarn and vibrant colorways (as you probably understand). While I have lately been trying to avoid superwash merino, the base is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to avoid it completely. And sometimes it’s worth it. AHR is another local yarn company, like Dirty Water Dyeworks back in the first post, that I’ve had the pleasure of watching grow from a local to a regional and perhaps even national brand. They’re still small, but they’ve got great colorways and are well worth checking out. The yarn I chose for this hat, Aesir, may be a superwash merino, but it’s an 8-ply sport/DK which has an unusual look and great stitch definition.

The original name for this hat was going to be “Achtung” but when I showed it to my local guild (while Kate from AHR was presenting, no less!), someone noticed the exclamation point on the front and called it a “thinking cap” — so the name “Eureka” was born. There is a second version called “Eureka?” that has question marks instead of exclamation points (worked in two-pattern DK, of course) for those who are less confident about their discoveries.

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 7 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Hexworth is worked in Bijou Basin Ranch Tibetan Dream, a yak and nylon fingering weight yarn. Thanks to Mari Weideman for knitting this one for me!

If the last pattern was a good example of the beginnings of double-knit texture, this pattern shows the next steps. Instead of creating a garter-stitch fabric that can be worked alongside double-knitting but isn’t actually double-knit at all, true textured double-knitting creates purls on the outside of the work where there normally are only knits. If a fabric is worked entirely using this method, you get reverse double-stockinette; I call the technique used to do this “reverse double-knitting” or “RDK” for short. The honeycomb pattern is adapted almost verbatim from a standard single-color or two-color stranded pattern — but because I want the two sides to remain together, I needed to adjust things a little bit. While working, the pattern looks like slightly distorted bricks; it’s only when you block it that the hexagons really take shape.

When I work with a yarn company at one of the big shows, it means that they’ve agreed to sell my books and patterns for me so that I don’t have to be there when I can’t be (during my classes). It’s also a boon for them — they get to show off some eye-catching pieces that hopefully draw people into their booth. With any luck, once they’re in there and perusing my patterns, they might also see some of the luxurious yarn that’s also there. What’s always a little awkward, however, is when I don’t have a single pattern done in that yarn. I’ve been working with Bijou Basin Ranch for a long time, and they have a policy. If I’m sitting in their booth, waiting for people to come by for a book signing, and I want to knit to pass the time, I can only use their yarn. Lucky for me, it’s awesome yarn. As a result of their policy, I’ve designed a couple of pieces in their yak-fiber blends and Hexworth is the most recent. Sometimes when I choose colors, I like to go with a solid and a variegated, just to keep up the intrigue. With bold patterns like this one, where each yarn has a chance to shine, that works really well. Sometimes, when the pattern is too intricate, the solid gets lost among the variegated stitches. With this pattern, the end result is excellent — but the process was a little fiddly. There are places where the variegated gets a little close to the natural brown, but it’s not like Kauni — another color will be coming along very shortly and will reduce the confusion. The end result is well worth it, I think.

Like the last pattern, the name here is fairly straightforward. I wanted a sort of refined, masculine name that also referred to the shape of the motif, so the name “Hexworth” popped into my head and I haven’t been able to think of it as anything else since. I toyed briefly with the name “Graphene”, referring to the hexagonal carbon nano-structure, but I figured that would be a little too inaccessible of a name. But you know, the book’s not done yet, so it’s possible I’ll settle on Graphene instead. Which do you like better?

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 6 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Rustle Of Leaves is worked in Miss Babs Yowza!, a light worsted superwash merino yarn.

This is a pattern that was bouncing around in my mind, looking for a way out, when Craftsy rang me up to see about doing a kit to support one of the new yarn lines they were beginning to stock. This was back in 2013, not too long after my first Craftsy class came out. I was delighted to see that Miss Babs was one of the yarn lines they wanted patterns for, since I’d been seeing them at Rhinebeck and other shows for some time but their booth was always so mobbed that I had barely been able to set foot inside, let alone become familiar with their yarns. The idea behind this scarf was to have a maple leaf motif that tumbles down the center column, and the outer edges would ripple and ruffle around it, mimicking the movement of a leaf on the wind. I chose colors that evoked “autumn maple leaf” and “clear blue sky”, knowing that the other side would be somewhat surreal — blue leaves against a Martian sky, perhaps. I made it a keyhole scarf, because I was short on time and because it was an interesting twist — and because, if the hole was the same width as the center section, the ruffles would flip out on either side and lock the scarf in place. I finished it and sent it off to Craftsy, where they took a lovely set of photos which only showed the Martian sky side. Oh well. The piece is relatively simple but intriguing, and shows the beginnings of double-knit texture very well: the combination of double-knitting and doubled-yarn knitting.

As I mentioned above, Miss Babs yarn had intrigued me due to its popularity at the shows I went to, but I’d never really been able or willing to wade into the throngs of admirers to understand why it was so popular. One of the reasons, it turns out, is that they don’t wholesale to shops. The only place you ever get to fondle the giant, luscious skeins is at places like Rhinebeck. Otherwise you can order it online but that really only works if you’ve already been to a place where you can fondle it — or you’re willing to take a chance on reviews alone. Since it was offered, I took it, sight unseen (or unfelt, anyway), and, like many before me, I am a convert. Miss Babs, who I have had the pleasure of meeting in person since, has an incredible range of colors and fiber contents, not merely the standard stuff. OK, I ended up working with a 100% SW merino because it was what was offered — but I look forward to playing with more interesting fibers from them in the future.

The name of this pattern, “Rustle of Leaves” is straightforward. “Rustle” sounds like “ruffle” and the leaves are right out where you can see them. I like wordplay, but sometimes simple is best.

This pattern is already available but will also be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!

This is week 5 of the pattern highlights from my upcoming book. If you like what you’re reading about, please join my preorder mailing list. To read more about why I’m doing this (and why you should join the list), you can visit the Month 5 blog post.

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Kontinuum is worked in Yarn Carnival Goat Roper, a superwash merino, cashmere and nylon fingering weight yarn.

I mentioned in the last pattern that I haven’t done many designs in multi-color double-knitting, but this pattern is worked in 6 colors. However, you’re only working with 2 at a time, with some small areas where you’re holding 4 colors at once — so it doesn’t really qualify as the same technique. This pattern is where I really start introducing new concepts, not just subtle adjustments and refinements to existing techniques. As with any of these pieces, the term “new” is not meant to imply that something has never been done before, just that it’s very uncommon and poorly, if at all, documented. In the case of double-knit intarsia, I am aware of a couple of other people using the technique, and I can’t even claim to have done it before them. This is one of those techniques that I put off for a while and finally began work on it as I decided on the patterns for the new book. But not being one to leave well enough alone, I wasn’t content to just teach one technique — I wanted to teach several. So not only will you get to learn how to do double-knit intarsia, you’ll learn how to move the color change to the right or left from the previous row and still hide the yarns — and you’ll also learn how to do it in the round. This hat is remarkably stretchy; it fits my big head as well as my models’ smaller heads. The colorwork is really interesting as well — the intarsia color changes run in one direction and the double-knitting color changes run in the other. This is one piece where the opposite side is not particularly different, but where double-knitting is nevertheless useful because we can hide all the ugly twists and do neat things with colorwork that would be much harder to do in standard intarsia.

I struggled quite a bit with the yarn for this. I had to find a good mini-skein set, and tried several from yarns I really wanted to use — but the colors had to be just right and all the other stuff I wanted to use was either variegated or semi-solid in such a way that it made it harder to see what the pattern was doing. I wanted to avoid using a gradient set, although that may have been a better idea in the end. I was at the first Stitches Texas and got to visit the Hill Country Weavers booth, where I fell in love with these amazing mini-skein sets made by Yarn Carnival. They’re just a superwash merino blend, but the color saturation and combinations were just so interesting — not quite gradient, but related colors. I could see so many good combinations, so I bought 3 different ones, figuring I’d decide later. I later found out that these seemed to be one-offs, which under normal circumstances would preclude my using them — but the fact is that there are hundreds of independent dyers doing mini-skein gradient kits, and as long as the weight of yarn is correct I think you’ll have no problem.

The original name of this pattern was going to be “42 Skidoo” which is a play on the early 20th century slang phrase “23 skidoo” and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the number 42 has universal importance, to say the least. But it was named such because the original repeat was 42 pairs across, and when I redesigned the piece for new yarn, the repeat had to change. As the closure came together in this dramatic spiral, I thought of more sci-fi names related to black holes and the like. The word “continuum” resonated with me, but there are already lots of patterns with this name so I changed it to “Kontinuum” for a little distinctive flavor.

This pattern will be available in my upcoming book “Double Or Nothing”. To be informed when the preorder period begins, please join my preorder mailing list. Thanks!