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 collaborated with Sweet Paprika Designs for their Skill Building Yarn Club this spring. My design for the yarn box featured…brioche, of course!
Cowl
This is the Staghorn Cowl Hat. I love convertible cowl/hats as teaching pieces, because not everyone loves a cowl…or a hat. So you get to choose!
Hat
You can also choose to knit the whole piece in 2 color brioche rib, without the decorative increases and decreases that make the Staghorn motif. This is a great way to practice brioche knitting before getting into the more challenging parts.
Wider cowl
If you know you don’t want a hat, you can make the cowl a bit wider because it doesn’t need to fit a head. Choices!
Staghorn Cowl Hat is knit with 2 colors of worsted weight yarn. The cowl/hat is knit with 140 yards/128 meters dark color, 66 yards/60 meters light color heavy worsted weight yarn. Shown in Sweet Paprika Andante (100% superwash merino wool, 4oz/110g/195 yards/178m), Jacaranda (LC) and Deep Purple (DC). If you’d like to buy the Sweet Paprika Designs kit, you can do so here.
If you’re a newsletter subscriber, you’ll get a code for 25% off this pattern. I’m a little behind in getting my newsletter written, so it’s not too late to subscribe before the newsletter comes out on Saturday (I hope!). Subscribe here.
This pattern is available through my Ravelry store, link here.
This pattern is also available from my Payhip shop, link here.
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.
I was searching my blog for something else, and this popped up. I’m running it again because it’s helpful!
How many rows has it been since I cabled? See the hole where my finger is coming out? That indicates last cable crossing. The first ladder next to my finger is from the cable row. The three other ladders over my finger are the three rows that followed. My thumb is pointing at the ladders, just to be helpful. This shows that I have worked the cable row and three more rows (actually rounds here). According to my pattern, it’s time for my next cable crossing!
I learned this trick in 2016 from Norah Gaughan at Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival. This was long before we were teachers/cruise buddies on the 2022 Vogue Knitting Cruise to Canada & New England.
Next door neighbors!
Do you enjoy knitting cables? I haven’t knit cables for a while, but I definitely like them. Check out my Tutorials page for more cable fun, including cabling without a cable needle.
What’s been in my new project bag this past week? Something that got too big for the project bag it started in.
Effervescent
This is Effervescent, finished and blocked. It’s two color brioche rib, with a syncopated brioche edging and assigned pooling motifs.
Frogged and reconditioned yarn
This is the yarn from a previous shawl that I frogged and reconditioned. I had a better idea for it, and it came out like a dream. The yarn is a little fuzzy now; it’s a single ply and I’ve effectively knit it through three projects. But it’s soft and lovely.
I was about 70% finished with the second shawl in this yarn’s life, when I decided it needed to have bigger motifs, and be knit on a smaller needle. Ooof. Good thing I like to knit.
Then I was worried that it was going to be too small. But blocking is magic.
I didn’t block it aggressively; I just patted it out as the fabric relaxed after soaking for wet blocking. It’s airy and drapey.
The pattern has been tech edited, and I’m looking for test knitters that love brioche knitting and assigned pooling. Is that you?
I usually knit from a center pull ball. They’re tidy, and if you put a yarn sleeve on the ball, it doesn’t collapse into a messy heap. Yarn sleeves shown above. And you can make your own! See this post.
Some yarns require a little more strategy. I’m currently knitting with Noro Silk Garden, and the high silk content makes it not very elastic. I could see that the ball was going to collapse, yarn bra or not. I decided this was a good candidate for knitting from the outside of the ball. The original put-up was very loosely wound, so my first move was to rewind it on my winder to tighten it up.
I usually knit sitting at a table, so I decided to try the Yarn To Go Carousel from Twice Sheared Sheep. I received this in my teacher’s gift bag at Vogue Knitting Live in 2025, so it’s been waiting for a while! Like I said, I’m usually a center pull knitter.
The wooden carousel comes in 3 pieces. On the left, you can see the spindle and base plate for holding the yarn. There’s a loop at the top for an optional wrist strap, but I’m not one to try to knit while walking. I’m a klutz! Maybe just standing, to take a break from sitting? You can use these 2 pieces by themselves, or add it to the spinning carousel.
The carousel piece on the right has two magnets on top, and revolves (on inner ball bearings?) as I knit. It spins very easily and doesn’t require a big tug to unspool the yarn. The platform itself is a little thick, but not a big deal since it’s sitting on a table and not weighing me down.
The ball is rapidly shrinking, and I am absolutely charmed by the sheep appearing as the yarn ball gets smaller.
I think for brioche or colorwork projects, I’m still happy with my 2 center pull balls with yarn bras. Two spinning carousels seems like it would be quite a production. But for this single ball of Silk Garden, it’s a good choice for me.
If you want to get a Yarn To Go Carousel, they’re available from Twice Sheared Sheep. They also come in a sunflower and mandala design, instead of sheep. The links are affiliate links, so if you purchase through the link, I get a commission. But this review is my honest opinion of this unsolicited gift!
No, my shawl isn’t done yet. But I needed to make this Noro swatch for an upcoming teaching project. Heading back to my brioche now.
Soooo are you Team Center Pull, or Team Outside the Ball? For me, it depends!
Posted onApril 10, 2026|Comments Off on So much knitting, so much better
I’ve finally passed the point where I frogged the whole project, Row 196. I’m on 207 of the re-knit now. Whew! I like the fabric a lot better; it won’t stretch open as much when it hangs on the bias.
This picture is from knit group at the local coffee shop; it’s our table on Friday mornings! I don’t get to go to this very often because Friday is a gym/pool day for me. But my gym buddies were both away, so I played hooky and enjoyed the company.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, so the knitting on this has been a bit slower than I want.
I took some time out to knit a hat band to wear to the No Kings protest on March 28. I love this Typeknitting from Rüdiger Schlömer. You can make it say whatever you want, and it’s so legible.
I met a fellow frog hat knitter on the way to the event.
I love seeing frog hats in the wild!
The hat band works on my sun hat, too. The hat doesn’t have a crown, and is size adjustable, because I have a big head. But not as big as I thought! I was originally planning to knit a headband, but I made it a bit too long. Which made it a perfect fit over a hat!
We participated in this art installation for Mike Schneider (@blcksmth on Instagram) on the Burnside Bridge; it’s created with umbrellas. We’re the 2 white umbrellas on the top line of the second E in the word KEEP.
And we were lucky enough to get tickets to see Bruce Springsteen on the Land of Hope and Dreams tour. It was an excellent show.
I’m 70% through my reclaimed yarn, and I’m having…thoughts. The fabric is a little loose, and the lovely edging stitch pattern is a little floppy. A tighter gauge would make it crisper.
And then I accidentally made one of the motifs bigger than planned (upper left). I like it better than the smallest motif, which gets lost as the shawl gets larger. I could just continue, and add the larger motifs from here on out, because most of the beginning of the shawl is covered when you wear it. But that plus the loose fabric (which will hang on the bias and stretch) means I should at least try a sample on a smaller needle, with larger motifs.
I really like the bigger motifs; they look airier. And the fabric feels firmer, but not tight.
Sigh.
I think there’s another trip to the frog pond, but I haven’t blocked the bigger piece so I won’t have to soak the yarn again.
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!
On Tuesday we took Renfe (a high-speed train) from Madrid to Alicante, which is on the Mediterranean Sea on the southern coast of Spain. It’s about a 2 hour ride, at speeds up to 300 km/hour (190 mph, thanks Siri). Very comfortable. Bev & John’s apartment is a 15 minute walk from the train station, easy!
Their 9th floor apartment is on the top floor of the building on the Calle del Teatro. The apartment’s wraparound deck looks down at the Teatro Principal which dates to 1847.
Teatro Principal, AlicanteThe Castillo viewed from Hotel Gran Sol
Castillo Santa Barbara is on Mt. Benacantil behind the city, right up the street. And I do mean UP!
We went to the Convistas bar in the very tall Hotel Gran Sol for drinks and views.
Looking down from Convistas at Hotel Gran Sol
Such a pretty esplanade, and palm trees in February!
Paella for dinner that night, and then a nice meander back to the apartment.
On Wednesday we hiked to the Castillo/Castell Santa Barbara, 166 meters up. (Castillo is Spanish, Castell is Valencian, and signs use both.) The views of the coastline and the Mediterranean Sea are spectacular. Definitely a great place for a lookout, so you could see your enemies coming. The origins of the castle date to the 9th century.
At the lookout towerThat’s the tower where we’re standing, yikes
Just imagine!
We walked back down through the old town.
Loved the art and poetry on this house. I guessed that it was a Time Flies/Tempus Fugit theme, but needed some help. And may I say that Google Translate with Google Lens is a very handy app? Here’s what the house says:
Pretty sure that’s months, not head of cattle, but the paint was slightly illegible on that line.
Sweet!
We visited a modern art museum, and then walked on the iconic esplanade.
It was very disconcerting to walk on; it looks like it undulates in waves from left to right. Can you see it? DH doesn’t see it in 3D, but it still makes me slightly dizzy!
There are a lot of gelato shops in this town. We only sampled two in our four days here. How virtuous!
Mortazza pizza at Scighera
Pizza at Scighera: Mozzarella flor di latte, chopped pistachios, bologna mortadella, burrata, pistachio sauce. Pistachio is the flavor of the moment in Spain. We had it in croissants, gelato, chocolate, pizza.
On Thursday we took a bus to Altea, a neighboring resort town.
Another pretty walkway
We walked up to the square at the top of the town to see the church up there.
Guernica-inspired sculpture by Antoni Miro, and the church behindVenus de Bronzino by Antoni Miro
So much public art, and such beautiful views of the sea. Look at those blues!
In the Mediterranean
Of course I had to dip my toes in the Mediterranean Sea
And also knit a few stitches there.
Aperol Spritz
A late lunch including the beverage of the week before heading back to Alicante. The weather was so nice the whole time we were there; this was late February and no jackets needed.
Friday was my last full day in Alicante, so we explored the town a bit more.
The Mercado, 2 stories of food, flowers, and more
We visited the Mercado, which is a beautiful 1921 building with 290 stalls of the most beautifully presented wares.
SeafoodFruitOlives!VegetablesMeat and cheese
Oh, jamón! The Spanish love their ham, and it is delicious. Even the Mercadona grocery store had a display like this.
After the Mercado, we wandered through town back down to the waterfront for a walk along the beach.
Sailboats on the MediterraneanNot even high season yet!
So much public art and beautiful architecture.
Even down to the faux needlepoint on this restaurant, where we had a very nice dinner.
Saturday I took the train back to Madrid, because it was time to go home. Brandi Carlile and the Rose City Yarn Crawl were next up on the agenda!
Brandi Carlile at the Moda Center
I’d love to visit Spain again. I think DH would love it. Someday?
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.
PDXKnitterati 