Knitty Friday

Issue Design: Maryjane

In a post on her blog, designer Merri Fromm tells us about her Maryjane pullover design, from the current issue of Knitty. It’s a terrific summer knit: suitable for warm-weather wear, and warm-weather knitting. This would also make an excellent first top-down seamless sweater project – quick and easy to knit, and an excellent demonstration of the virtues of this sort of garment construction. Seamless knitting isn’t suitable for all garments, but it’s perfect for this type of relaxed t-shirt. She provides a ton of great tips for working the project, and some extra detailed photos to entice you!

2016: Well, that was something, eh?

Challenging in ways many of us didn’t expect, 2016 has been a hell of a year. We’re starting to lose our cultural heroes, often unexpectedly, and we’re a bit raw with the changing political climate in the US, and crazy people with weapons worldwide. Yeah, 2016 has sucked. But it’s also been joyous, surprising and a wonderful year for knitting and knitters. Here are some things that happened: Knitty didn’t close in Spring 2016. We would have had to without the financial support of our Patrons. We launched this new funding model in September 2015, and by March of 2016, Knitty Patrons had ...

Early Winter Issue WIPs: The Frantic Gift Knitting Edition

It’s always fun to check in on an issue’s patterns, particularly so soon after launch. It tells me which patterns are catching on – and indeed, at this time of year, which ones are gifting-appropriate. Love this Werewolf of Westport Hat, by EmmaE. And ChaoticK’s is equally amazing, in a totally different way! This would be ideal for the dreariest days of winter! PelicanGoddess’s Snowberry scarf is a winner. A statement in coziness! HilaryO’s Obliqua cowl is coming along very nicely. And Zsazsazsu is making excellent progress on her Duvet mittens. Are you doing any gift knitting ...

Deep Fall Surprise: The Tuplet Shawl

Our SURPRISE for this most recent issue had two VERY different patterns. Very. The Anyadell thigh-high cabled socks are a once-in-a-lifetime jaw-dropping statement-making eye-popping sort of design. The Boss of Sock Knitting, as someone dubbed them. They’re amazing, no doubt. But I have to say I am enormously fond of other pattern, the Tuplet Shawl, too. It’s gentle. It’s understated. It’s subtle. And it absolutely shouldn’t be missed. Tuplet is an excellent way to use a gradient set, or use up partial skeins of yarn. Rather than resort to leftovers-socks (don’t get me wrong, I ...

Deep Fall WIPs and FOs

We’ve been project-peeping on Ravelry again! Sellakka‘s Wings for Nightbird shawl is simply beautiful.   EternalKnitter’s Uberib slippers are fab! And such a quick knit, clearly!   Knitbritches‘ Viatori vest is looking great… an excellent color choice. Dublin16’s Rain Rain Go Away hat, made for a baby in rainy Seattle, is just perfect. Artohline‘s Crystalline scarf looks very promising indeed. And we love it when Knitty designers knit other patterns from the issue… Julia Farwell Clay, the designer of Viatori, is making her own ...

Talking to a friend makes work feel like not-work!

I’m lucky enough to have made many friends in the knitting world since starting this magazine almost 15 years ago. One of the first people I met was the delightful Vickie Howell. She is one of the most skilled interviewers I’ve had the pleasure of talking to over the years, whether on podcasts or on her legendary TV show, Knitty Gritty. Vickie and I sat down together (so to speak) over Skype earlier this week, and you can hear the result in her latest Craft•ish Podcast. Some of the topics we discussed might surprise you…but then again, if you know me, you won’t be surprised at all.  

In Gord We Trust: The costumes, the hat and the color inspiration

I hope by now you’ve read the story about the In Gord We Trust Sock Scarf. I wanted to share some background on Gord’s stage costumes, the clothes that inspired our color choice, and the precious hat that we were able to borrow for the photoshoot from designer Karyn Gingras of Lilliput Hats. The suits, in bright metallic leather, were created by Izzy Camilleri, who has designed for other performers and musicians over the years. A slideshow of all the outfits, on the Fashion Magazine website. (In most of these shots, you can see his sock scarves. He clearly has a whole wardrobe of them, which may or may ...

First Fall Issue WIPs and FOs

I know that many of us seem to be living in a heatwave at the moment – at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere – but it hasn’t stopped the knitting. Battie is thinking about fall, having turned the Prettified Thrash socks in a pair of very cool fingerless mitts:   The original Pyropa was worked in a gradient yarn, and it’s an excellent use of these fun yarns, but NotKnittingKnots took the project another way, and used two solids. It’s just as effective, in a totally different way. The Ennui shawl is also inspiring some terrific color combinations: Heno’s red-hot one ...

Knitty Friday: A refreshing design!

Or, rather, refreshing our design! One of our first stated goals with our Patreon campaign was to pay our staff and contributors better. Thanks to our Patrons’ enthusiasm, we were able to do that almost immediately. And so we moved on to the second goal: bringing our website up to date. We launched our first ever responsive issue last week. What’s responsive? That means the site is coded to automatically resize to fit every screen from cellphones to huge monitors. It’s about as fresh from the code monkey as is possible…and we’re releasing it in Beta. That means there might be bugs to ...

TNNA: the knitting industry’s trade show…UPDATE!

Jillian and I have just returned from our annual trek to TNNA’s trade show, this time in Washington, DC. Jillian used to live there a very long time ago, and I’ve never been, so it was an interesting venue for us to explore. Every year, we gauge what’s out, what’s in and what’s growing in popularity. This time, without question, the most popular trend was gradients. Gradients in every form, from sets of single-color skeins that make up the gradient to super-long-color-change skeins (first popularized, I believe, by Tina Whitmore of Freia Fibers). Here’s a sampling of the new ...
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