"Here's the thing. We craft first and knit foremost. We are creatrices out of aesthetic necessity, not whim. This issue, our first issue, is all about taking a mess of string and coercing it into tidy stitches in neat rows. That this mirrors society's demand for complete conformity is not lost on us. We'd fight to recover our individuality, but we're too tired. It's easier to craft about it instead.

We began with knitting because the recent revolution has both invigorated and infuriated us. We are the target demographic, but the marketers forgot something when they made the decision from on high to present us with cheery representations of feminine wiles. They forgot to ask who we were. Where are the sweaters to enshroud our dark hearts? Where are the afghans to blanket our angst? Where is the macabre? The dark sensuality? We've brandished our needles in defiance."

The Curse Your Boyfriend sweater (made with Wool-Ease) offers two charts: runes or an anatomical heart: "To remove boyfriend: Mix one handknit sweater with a generous dash of the appropriate runes. Serve cold. To keep boyfriend: Wrap in plastic or place in airtight container. Store in a cool, dry place. Or just use the anatomical heart motif provided instead."

My scarf is the same length as the one pictured in the pattern, but it's much wider. Wrapped around my neck, it's got sort of an Elizabethan ruff thing going on.

Karen worked on one of these spiral scarves.

I'm almost finished with the top. Karen, have you finished the scarf?

We didn't buy too much yarn on our road trip, but definitely enough to keep us knitting for months.

This pattern is pretty straight-forward, although Stacy noticed that if you follow it, as the pattern is written, then the fringe is on the back of the ruana, as opposed to on the front tails as in the picture.

If you wanted the fringe to be in the front, you would skip the "1 row F" row. And when you're casting on new sts, before
"Next Row With A, knit all stitches, then cast on 75 stitches (135 stitches)", you'd need to work 1 row A first.

Stacy is happy with the fringe in the back, and I think it looks quite nice too. Next she is tackling a long sweater coat. At our knit-out, we also had people working on a yoga mat bag, some fabulous Fair Isle, a cardigan, a short-sleeve tee, and socks.

Click here for a close-up. It is gorgeous!

Allison was working on a prayer shawl using two colors of Homespun:

What a sweet thing to do for a friend!

Laurie just began a top-down raglan sweater, using Wool-ease Chunky:

It's similar to these sweaters, but it's knit from the top down, meaning her cast on stitches are at the neck. After an inch or so of ribbing, she started increasing every other row at the same places where this pattern would have decreases (at the beginning and end of the front, sleeves, and back). It will look wonderful on her as the color matches her eyes beautifully. Last year she knit this sweater for her husband for Christmas. I was impressed with her ability to keep it a secret the whole time she was knitting it, and the time between when she finished it and when he opened the present!

Rabbit

The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.

The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit's body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.

Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.

Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.

I love the rabbit; the rabbit loves me.

Now she just needs to make a hat, which she's working on now.

Claire finished her Wool-ease shrug, but she forgot to bring it to show us. She did bring a new shrug she's starting in black Wool-ease for a teenage relative. It will have a black Fun Fur trim, which she started last night.

We talked about a variety of topics including the weather. It's late September and I'm still wearing shorts and t-shirts! When do we get to start wearing the sweaters we've knit all year?

Bryna had just finished knitting a garter stitch baby pullover with a little placket on the neck (the pattern can be found in the book Weekend Knitting). She was sewing a striped ribbon to the placket:

Then she was going to sew buttons onto the ribbon.

It is such a cute sweater and though her knitting is great, the finishing touches really make the sweater.

We talked about all sorts of things last night including different types of yoga and sushi, the education system, and quilting.

It is similar to this scarf.

They are both crocheted length-wise, meaning you are crocheting across a LOT of stitches each row. But it doesn't take many rows before you have a fantastic scarf. The nice thing about striped scarfs worked this way is that at the end of each row, you can simply cut the yarn and attach new yarn and voila, you have fringe!

Jen's scarf has a little twist to the plain striped scarf. It is done in a rippled, or chevron, pattern like these scarves.

The mittens Jen's working on are knit in the round, using double-pointed needles, so there is no seam. Jen just taught herself how to do this from googling for instructions. I find double-pointed needles a little awkward to use so I usually knit things in the round with one very long needle using the "magic loop" method. To each her own! Hopefully she'll bring them back when they're finished and I can take a picture of the whole set.

Elizabeth Zimmerman has said, "Knit on, through all crises." And knit on we did.

In the foreground, you can see Nancy's wild scarf. This is a cute use for leftover scraps of yarn you may have from other projects. She's holding 3 strands of different yarns together, and mixing the yarns up throughout the scarf. At the moment, she's using 2 strands of Wool-ease and 1 of Magic Stripes. I can't wait to see it finished.

In the background is the beginning of a baby hat knit by expecting mom Stephanie, using Jiffy. She's knitting a large rectangle and then it will be folded in half, seamed across the top, and sewn down the side, much like this hat knit with BIG.

She finished the first half of her shrug, unpicked the provisional cast on, and put the live stitches on a needle. Then she started knitting in the opposite direction. Above is a crochet hook in the spot where her cast on was. It's nearly impossible to spot the cast on!

The crochet hook was borrowed for illustrative purposes from Ellie, who was working on a hat out of Homespun. She started with a circle (at the top of the hat) and crocheted out towards the brim of the hat.

Jennifer, who has posted before about her status as a new mom, knit a baby hat with Landscapes, and she felt that it needed a pom-pom top. Here's her pom-pom template and yarn.

Isn't it adorable?!

Tonight we welcomed four new women (and one sweet 10-year-old!). A male friend of mine happened to stop by the bakery where we meet. He couldn't believe how many people I know knit or crochet. He said, "It's like a giant length of yarn connecting you to all of these people you might never have met." It sounds a little cheesy, but it's so true!

I think Wool-ease is great, especially for kids, because it is so easy to take care of. When all the blogging rage was making Harry Potter sweaters last year, one of our other regulars substituted using regular wool for Wool-Ease and got fabulous results, as you can see here:

It just so happens that the goldenrod shade (Gold 171) is the PERFECT Griffyndor gold. She used Denim 114 for the girl's sweater and Chestnut Heather 179 for the boy's (which makes a great Griffyndor burgundy, as you can see).

The pattern used is from Knit It!'s 2004 issue. She took the Animal Pullover pattern and just didn't do the charts, subbing a chart she made for the letters...and voila!

Newcomer Jenn was working on The Tiles Throw in Continental Blue and Fisherman. The book in the picture is Debbie Macomber's The Shop on Blossom Street, a novel about a knitting group that Karen mentioned previously.

Go Jenn Go!

She learned to knit rather recently and is already tackling an afghan! To make the pattern as simple to follow as possible, she typed up the pattern in a way that suited her best.

As you can see from the pattern, some squares are made by using color "C" for 15 rows, "W" for 12, and "C" for 15. The pattern repeat is 8 rows.

Jenn wrote out the pattern for every row in each square: what color and what row of the Square Pattern was being used that row. This idea can be used in any pattern. Read through the pattern, then jot down some notes or re-type the whole pattern so that it makes sense to you.

Jenn mainly learned how to knit and purl and bind off, etc from various internet sources.

Besides welcoming Jenn (who was new to our knit nights and is new to the Elm City), we also talked about Robyn's 1-week-old puppies, running out of gas on the interstate, Indonesia, and the man staring at us through the window.

The Shop on Blossom Street is a "relationship novel" (to quote the publisher, Mira Books) about a 30-year-old virgin/two-time brain cancer survivor, Lydia, who opens a yarn shop on Blossom Street in Seattle, Washington, called A Good Yarn (also the name of the book's sequel). She teaches a beginners' baby blanket class to three women: Jacqueline, a haughty, celibate fiftysomething society matron; Carol, an infertile woman in her thirties; and Alix, a surly twentysomething drug offender with black & purple hair. Each chapter focuses on a different woman; Lydia's chapters are first-person & begin with a knitting-related epigraph:

The yarn forms the stitches, the knitting forges the friendships, the craft links the generations. (Karen Alfke, "Unpattern" designer)

If you can knit, purl, and follow instructions, you can make anything. (Linda Johnson, Linda's Knit 'n' Stitch, Silverdale Washington)

We are all knitted together. Knitting keeps me connected to all the women who have made my life so rich. (Ann Norling, designer)

Knitting -- my Amazing Grace. (Nancie M. Wiseman, editor, Cast On magazine)

With a little practice and patience, our hands learn to knit, then our minds are free to enjoy the process. (Bev Galeskas, Fiber Trends)

Handknitting is a soothing and comforting means of creative expression that can result in a warm, useful and lovingly knitted garment...what a bonus. (Meg Swanson, Schoolhouse Press)

In the hands of a knitter, yarn becomes the medium that binds the heart and soul. (Robin Villiers-Furze, The Needleworks Company of Port Orchard, Washington)

People who say they don't have enough patience to knit are precisely those who could most improve their lives by learning how! (Sally Melville, author)

If you can count the number of projects you have going, you need to begin another, so you have a varied range of complexity from the very simple 'mindless' ones to those that demand undivided attention. (Laura Early, knitter)

Knitting goes with us, it calms us. (Morgan Hicks, Sweaters by Design)

In knitting, as in everything else, you learn as much from your mistakes as you do from your successes. (Pam Allen, editor, Interweave Press)

Whether I am knitting for myself or someone else, my passion for knitting enables me to express my creativity and produces feeling of accomplishment. (Rita E. Greenfeder, editor, Knit 'n Style magazine)

Knitting is a haven, a safe place where one can touch history, dance with art, and create a peaceful life. (Nancy Bush, author of Knitting on the Road and Folk Socks)

To learn to knit, you need a beginner's hands and a beginner's mind. Knitting is a hobby. Breathe, relax, and have fun. (Donna Druchunas, SheepToShawl.com)

Here's my favorite passage from the book. Lydia is explaining to Brad, the hunky UPS guy, why her ideal day would include knitting:

"One of the things I love most about being a knitter is the community of other knitters. Any time I run into another person (usually a woman, but not always) who knits, it's like finding a long-lost friend. The two of us instantly connect. It doesn't matter that only seconds earlier we were strangers, because we immediately share a common bond. I've talked to other knitters in doctors' offices, in line at the grocery store -- anywhere at all. We've exchanged horror stories of misprinted patterns and uncompleted projects. And we all love to brag about fabulous yarn buys and, of course, discuss our current efforts.
I want to help people discover the same sense of satisfaction and pride that I feel when I finish a project for someone I love."