Category Archives: events

I had a great time at Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat. I taught 4 classes, took 2 classes, and learned a lot from all of it! I was pretty brioche- and pooling- centric for all of it.

Let’s talk stitch mounts!

With conventional western style knitting, the right leg is on the front of the needle. This is true for both English throwing and continental picking methods. Both stitches are worked through the front loop, and the yarn wraps counterclockwise around the needle.

With eastern combined knitting (usually continental, yarn in left hand), the knits are formed conventionally, and the purls are wrapped/caught clockwise, resulting in the purl stitches mounted with the left leg on the front of the needle. For knitting in the round, the purl stitches would need to be purled through the back loop so the bottom of the previous stitch isn’t twisted. If knitting flat, the back of the purl stitch is a knit stitch, and it would need to be knit through the back loop to untwist the stitch.

Amanda in my beginning brioche class is a continental Eastern Uncrossed knitter. This means that she makes her all of her stitches with the yarn going clockwise around the needle (both knits and purls), which results in the left legs of all her stitches mounted on the front of her needle.

It took a little thinking, but we figured it out, and I made a video for 2 color Eastern Uncrossed brioche in the round.

That helps me teach, and that helps knitters not have to change their knitting style when learning brioche. Win-win! Now I’m thinking about eastern combined knitting in the round; there are a couple ways to think about that purl stitch. I’m saving that for another day.

I took 2 classes from Xandy Peters. The first was Color Blocked Brioche. If he had named it Brioche Intarsia, would I have signed up? Probably not! But color blocked intarsia in brioche is fun. Food for design thought.

The other class was Stitch by Color. I didn’t bring the right yarn for this; my yarn just has one pop color, and sprinkles (not enough) of other colors. I’ve been on the pooling train for a year, and that’s the way I was thinking. What I really should have brought is a space dyed yarn that has longer stretches of several colors. Then I could pull out one color to accentuate, or eliminate (by concentrating it on the wrong side of the work). Here’s an example from Xandy.

All of these colors are in the yarn; the pink and red you see on the left edge of the work are emphasized on the wrong side behind the yellow and gray, and vice versa. A great way to accentuate what you like, or hide what you don’t like! We learned some fun pooling stitches, too.

I helped my classmate recreate her dye skein so she could see where the color repeats were made.

That’s the teaching/learning part of the wrap up. There’s still the shopping! I came home with a few treasures. Still trying to catch up from Red Alder AND VKLive NYC!