I’ve taught on cruises before. It’s an enjoyable way to travel; you get to visit interesting ports and your hotel room comes along with you! No daily packing and unpacking. We’ll have classes and dinners together, as well as knitting opportunities. Bring a friend, or make new ones!
I’m looking forward to VKLive in New York in January! This is the biggest event I teach at; it’s a whirlwind of fun.
Helix knitting is one of my new classes. I’m looking forward to teaching it there, and also at For Yarn’s Sake this Sunday, a little closer to home. Jogless stripes are so tidy!
There are so many classes with so many wonderful teachers; there’s something for everyone. The market at VKL is huge, and there are fashion shows and interviews happening on the stage all day long. VKLive is a great place to see old friends and make new friends.
This is Gator. He’s just here to look good. (Kid1’s cat)
This is a Yarn Gator. It was a gift from Twice Sheared Sheep in my VKLive NYC teacher’s bag last January. When I first saw it, I thought I’d never need it.
When I knit stranded colorwork, brioche, or slip stitch knitting, it’s usually just two colors at a time. If the knitting is in the round, they never tangle. The two yarns behave themselves sitting in my project bag.
When I knit brioche or slip stitch flat, I automatically turn the work one direction, then the other. It’s easy to tell which way to turn: the direction where the yarns won’t twist.
My current projects are helix knitting. Jogless stripes, knit in the round. When it’s just jogless garter stitch or two color color stripes, I don’t have a problem.
When I knit this three color helix cowl, I set the yarn balls on the table in front of me, and moved each ball to the end of the line when I finished its section. Easy peasy. But what if I don’t have a table in front of me?
I’m working on this three color helix hat while I finish writing a pattern. I want to knit on the go, and don’t always have a table in front of me.
Enter the Yarn Gator. It clips across my project bag. It can fully open so the yarns can be removed without cutting them. And it keeps my yarn balls in order. When I’m knitting with the first or third yarn, it’s easy to tell which way to turn my work to keep them from tangling. (Somehow the middle yarn is always fine.) Without the gator, it’s hard to tell when I’m twisting my yarns until I have a frustrating tangle.
So I guess this was a good idea after all. Never say never!
If you want a Yarn Gator, you can find it here. This is an affiliate link; if you make a purchase I get a small commission. But I only tell you about products that I find useful!
Are you intrigued by helix knitting/jogless stripes? I’m teaching an in-person class at For Yarn’s Sake on June 20. We’ll cover garter stitch, single row stripes, blending dye lots…all in the round. You can sign up here. You don’t need a yarn gator for class; we’ll use the tabletop method to start you off.
Posted onMay 22, 2026|Comments Off on Learn entrelac with me!
And Modern Daily Knitting! I’m teaching online for them on Friday, June 26, noon to 2:30 pm Eastern. The class is recorded for rewatching, or watching for the first time if you can’t make it in person.
Entrelac looks woven, but it’s actually knit modularly, unit by unit, each one picking up on the previous blocks. We’ll learn how to make each of those units in class, including picking up stitches, and simple decreases.
We’ll be using Noro Silk Garden for its beautiful color changing properties. You can purchase this yarn with class registration, or on your own. You can use this or any other Aran to bulky weight yarn with a slow color change. I’ve also used Berroco Wizard for this project with excellent results.
The scarf above was knit with two 50g balls of Noro Silk Garden. It’s knit end to end, so you can stop when you want, if you’d rather seam it for a shorter round cowl. (Photos above are from the Modern Daily Knitting site.)
This is the only picture of my Noro sample that I have! I knit most of it on the plane to Nash Yarn Fest, and left it there for photography. I love how vibrant Noro colors are.
Flower Power Entrelac
These samples are knit with one 100g skein of Berroco Wizard. Actually it’s just one long sample, pinned up to show you how shorter versions would work as a cowl.
And here’s an entrelac sample (Minerva pattern) knit with a gradient yarn. It takes longer to see the color change, but it’s spectacular.
I’ve got my teacher hat on. Last week I was trying to come up with a new class or two. I’ve been thinking about colorwork, but only one strand at a time. Strandless colorwork? The easiest of which is stripes.
The easiest of which is stripes. Garter stitch or stockinette stitch, I love them both. Then we get into textured and fancy stripes. And slip stitch knitting, which are just interrupted stripes. And even brioche rib is a kind of slip stitch stripe, right?
But if you’re working in the round, you might want jogless stripes.
And you might want more than two colors. I really went down the rabbit hole with helix knitting this past week.
This striped hat has no jogs in the stripes or the garter stitch edge.
And this cowl’s three color stripes have no jogs, either. Magic!
I think these are actually two classes, one in unstranded colorwork with a touch of helix knitting, and one specifically in helix knitting. I’m teaching the helix knitting class at For Yarn’s Sake on Saturday June 20, 11:30 to 1:30. It’s not on the website yet, but should be up soon.
It’s been really strange for me to have three projects on the needles at the same time, but now I’ve finished the hat and cowl. They’ll have a pattern to go with them; it’s not quite done yet.
The third project is now the only project! This is a single skein bias triangle shawlette. The yarn is from A Chick That Knitz; it’s her Singles Fingering in From Paris with Love.
I love this sweet little assigned pooling stitch. It’s easy! Pattern coming soon.
Still catching up! I came home from Spain because I had a trunk show at For Yarn’s Sake for Rose City Yarn Crawl. It’s an honor to kick off the crawl there.
Trunk show!
This year I featured brioche, assigned pooling, and brioche plus assigned pooling. That pretty much sums up what I’ve been working on this past year. Also, those are the classes I’m teaching at For Yarn’s Sake, so it was a great chance to promote them.
Dawn Barker of Barker Wool was there with a trunk show of yarns and designs. She’s done so much pioneering work with assigned pooling, and dyeing her own yarns to make her vision come to life. She has also done pooling yarn collaborations with MadelineTosh (and I have used several of those), but this year’s focus was on her own brand.
It’s always fun to see knitters wearing my designs! The Portland Frog Hat (free pattern!) was a big hit this last year. Alison’s hat looks great.
Margaret’s Starstruck is perfect! She took my brioche + pooling class last year, and this is the FO that came out of it.
Not my pattern, but Lisa took my steeking class last year, and then steeked this sweater that she designed. She had been waiting to cut until she took a class.
And Sam came by wearing the hat featuring the pooling stitch that I used on the Scattered Petals cowl I’m wearing. Rhyming!
The day was super busy, so I don’t have any more photos from the crawl. I taught a pooling class last weekend, and I’m scheduled to teach beginning brioche on Sunday April 26 at For Yarn’s Sake.
I taught the same class at Hook and Needle last weekend; we had fun! Come knit with me!
I’m in Spain, Madrid and Alicante. Coming home soon. But I wanted to share this:
I happened upon El Gato Negro near Plaza Mayor in Madrid.
It’s a cute shop, and they had some fun speckle and space dyed yarn, too.
It matched my flower power jacket. I had to buy some! It’s cotton, sport weight, 2 100g skeins. I wonder if I can get the pink to pool a bit. It’s a pretty short color pop. We shall see, later.
Rosaria shawls, my 2014 RCYC MKAL design
I’m coming home soon. Rose City Yarn Crawl starts Thursday, and I’ll be at For Yarn’s Sake on Thursday with a trunk show! See my latest designs, and get my book, Brioche Knit Love, if you haven’t already.
Also, I’m teaching Brioche Pastiche, beginning brioche, on Sunday April 26 at For Yarn’s Sake. Come learn brioche in person with me, me, me!
I had a fabulous time at Red Alder Fiber Arts Festival last weekend. I taught 4 classes: Brioche Pastiche, Brioche Doctor, Embellished Brioche (brioche + assigned pooling), and Fun Stitches for Assigned Pooling. I was in my technique heaven!
Andrea
Andrea wore her Whale Conga Line to Assigned Pooling class. I love seeing finished projects from previous classes!
Katherine wore hers, too! And I loved wearing my Seagull Flight shawl from Brioche Knit Love. (Seagull Flight pattern is still on sale for 15% off with code FLOCK through February 24.)
It was fun to have Lily Chin teaching on this coast! I usually see her in NYC.
The marketplace was full of goodies, as usual. And I feel like an influencer: Last year I asked several dyers if they had assigned pooling yarns, and I only found one.
Tara from Stranded by the Sea gave me the yarn that turned into Fired Up last year (see it over her shoulder?), and had lots more pooling yarn this year in both fingering and worsted weight.
I picked up some Starry Night to demo in my assigned pooling class, and also picked up sparkly yarn…and chocolate.
Phat Girlz Fibre also had pooling yarn, and Ashley took my pooling class to make the most of it.
Dragonfly Fibers/Canon Hand Dyes had gradient and rainbow assigned pooling minis (very cool).
And Northwest Yarns had assigned pooling yarn AND my books, which we sold out. Woohoo!
Greta showed me her Portland Frog Hat. I’m getting to ya!
I also loved Susan’s little frog hat in the Runway Rubber Duck contest. He took 3rd place, yay!
Debbie’s duck took Top Duck and Fan Favorite. The small scale lace and bead shawl plus the red hat were well done.
Anna-Lisa’s group won the Top Flock award with this Olympic themed team.
And Mr. New Beginnings at the train station modeled my Fired Up Cowl.
I had a great time teaching, socializing, shopping, and knitting.
But perhaps brioche plus pooling isn’t the best choice for knitting by the fire during a late night game of Cards Against Humanity. I taught Brioche Doctor the day before, so I was definitely prepared to frog and get this back on the needles!
This morning I gave a presentation on Design Process and taught an assigned pooling class for the Greater Boston Knitting Guild; we had a fun 3 hours together! Let me know if your guild would like a presentation or class, too. Tomorrow I’m off to Spain to visit friends. DH is staying home with the cats. Hasta luego!
Remember I said I thought the dark purple was too contrasty with the pooling yarn? Before I went to New York, I popped in the LYS to pick a green, figuring that Mother Nature knows what she’s doing. But I didn’t love this so I ended up going with the dark purple again.
I was really glad I wound 3 of my 4 hanks on my swift, because the dark purple that I wound on my 2 yard niddy-noddy was too wide for my swift when I was ready to re-wind it after soaking. I had to wait for DH to come home from a trip so he could be my human swift, the night before I left for VKLive.
The initial bit of knitting looks pretty good. Using the dark purple as background and a small featured accent helps tone it down. I’m not sure about my pooling motifs, though. And then I had another idea while I was at my aqua-fit class. I do a lot of mind knitting in the pool.
I’m realizing that the orange color pop is shorter than I’m used to, but it works fine for the motif I’m using. Part of the fun of assigned pooling is that every yarn is different, and you can choose what you want to do or not do, to adapt or let it be.
So this is my “mindless” knitting project to take with me to Red Alder Fiber Festival on Wednesday. I’ll be gone for the weekend, teaching classes and hanging out with other fiber loving creators. For now I have to set it aside and prep my teaching things, and pack!
I’m back! I had a fabulous time teaching and playing at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC. I taught 5 classes and we had a lot of fun!
I think the one with the highest risk/reward ratio was my Log Cabin Love Coasters class, which involved reinforcing and cutting steeks, and then adding log cabin edges. These knitters are no longer afraid to cut their knitting!
I was thrilled to be a featured designer with GoSadi, a new platform for designers and makers.
My Whale Conga Line cowl was featured in the designer display (upper group).
What is GoSadi? According to their site, “GoSadi is your central hub for discovering, saving, and organizing your favorite knit and crochet patterns from across the web. Follow your favorite designers, keep track of your projects, and find endless inspiration all in one place—built to make your creative life simpler and more joyful.”
The Makers part of GoSadi just launched last week. You can sign up for a free maker’s account at this link. There are upgrades you can pay for, but the basic membership is free. Decide if you like it, and you can cancel at any time. I’ve been part of the Designers side of things for the last year, but I haven’t spent a lot of time on it. I’m not good about taking time to learn new things that aren’t knitting! I’ll catch up soon.
I was charmed by Sarah Divi‘s interactive art exhibit; she was here last year, too.
Ellie d’Eustachio‘s knitted coral reef was kinetic and tactile, and blacklit!
She said the corals were especially fun to knit, and encouraged me to touch them.
I posted lots more pictures on my Instagram and Facebook accounts, so if you want more you can find them at those links. I’m not quite done posting yet!
I spent all of my time in the venue, the Marriott Marquis at Times Square. It was super cold out and I didn’t get out at all, except for a show on Wednesday night after arriving.
I went to see Maybe Happy Ending at the Belasco Theater, starring Darren Criss (remember him from Glee?) and Helen J. Shen. It was fantastic, very sweet concept and very well done. And the ending? Maybe it was happy; I don’t know! There was a technical issue before the last (?) act. The actors were asked to leave the stage, and it was announced that they were working on a technical issue. Dez Duron (the jazz singer in the show) came out and entertained us with a few songs. And then Darren and Helen came out to chat a bit and say that the issue couldn’t be fixed that night, and we were sent home (getting a refund). So, maybe happy ending? I’d love to see it again and find out!
I’m home getting ready to head to Red Alder Fiber Arts Festival next week. It’s all brioche and assigned pooling for me next week! There’s still room in Brioche Doctor, Embellished Brioche, and Fun Stitches for Assigned Pooling, so come to Tacoma and knit with me!
Find my patterns on Ravelry: Michele Bernstein Designs
Here are some of my favorites, and the newest. Many of my designs are also available through my Payhip store.
