Tag Archives: modern daily knitting

Steeks, log cabin knitting, and a tidy bind off

Collage of me and my Log Cabin Love steeked coasters

I’m very pleased to be teaching my second class with Modern Daily Knitting in January. It’s a workshop on cutting your first steek! We’ll be using my Log Cabin Love Coasters pattern, which also features a log cabin knitting border. That’s peak MDK. The virtual class is on Friday January 16. It will be on Zoom, and also recorded. You can register here.

While working on my log cabin edges, I’ve been annoyed by the loose stitch at the end of my bind off. It doesn’t matter in the middle of a project, because I’ll be picking up stitches all the way around the edge, but at some point there will be an outside edge that lets that loose stitch show.

I went poking around on the interwebs, and found a great tutorial by Patty Lyons on the Modern Daily Knitting site. She demonstrates five methods; some of them take pre-planning. All of them are shown with stockinette stitch, and they look great.

My favorite is the one that takes the least planning and effort. Yep, that’s me; git ‘er done. It does show a little bit more in garter stitch knitting, but I think I prefer that to having a loose stitch on the outside edge. I made a video for my log cabin knitting classes.

What do you think? Does that little blip bother you, or does the burble in the garter stitch bother you more? Knitter’s choice! I haven’t found a perfect solution, but this is good enough for me. For now. And I’ll definitely be using it for stockinette stitch.

Do you have a better way? I’d love to know that, too!

Log Cabin Knitting winner, classes

samples of log cabin block knitting

And the winner is Helen Brisson! I’m emailing you so you can register for class. Congratulations!

If you didn’t win, you can still come to this online class. Register at the Vogue Knitting Live website; class is Saturday April 26. Edited to add: Flash! Use coupon code APRIL20 for 20% off remaining classes for this event.

Collage of shawlette, detail of shawlette, and the assigned pooling yarn

I’m teaching three classes via three venues that weekend. I’m teaching brioche + pooling in-person at For Yarn’s Sake in Beaverton on Sunday, April 27. Class is for knitters who can knit brioche rib. We’ll cover the increases and decreases, syncopation, and assigned pooling in class. Fun!

A brioche knit hat and cowl in shades of blue

And I’m kicking off that teaching weekend with Brioche Beginnings for Modern Daily Knitting online. Class is on Friday, April 25; you can register here.

Busy busy! These are my last classes for spring. May is…unsettled. Juggling lots of stuff in real life…

brioche knitting with assigned pooling, and a glass of wine

But I’m still knitting! Current project on the needles in Black Orchid and an unnamed green from Yarn Snob. I love this color combo.

Brioche Beginnings with Modern Daily Knitting

I’m extremely pleased to announce that I’ll be teaching an online class for Modern Daily Knitting. I’ll be using my Brioche Pastiche pattern to introduce knitters to 2 color brioche rib, and increases and decreases that create beautiful brioche patterning.

Screenshot from Modern Daily Knitting Website
Screenshot from Modern Daily Knitting website

The live class will be Friday April 25. It also will be recorded, so you’re covered if you can’t make it on that date. You can also just play it again and again after class if you miss hearing my dulcet tones.

A brioche knit hat and cowl in shades of blue

You can sign up for just the class, or include an optional pack of Modern Daily Knitting’s Atlas yarn, which is a lovely and squishable Rambouillet. Register here!

Brioche is my favorite kind of knitting, as you probably know. I love teaching it, designing with it, and playing with it. And I wrote a book about it! Brioche Knit Love: 22 Skill Building Projects from Simple to Sublime. It’s a teaching book, and it has related videos.

Do you knit brioche? Are you brioche-curious?

MDK Summer Camp 2023

Virtual knitting summer camp? Sign me up! Mitered square dishcloth class with Lorilee Beltman via Modern Daily Knitting was too tempting to pass up.

I completely forgot about the Zoom until midnight the night before, so Bisquee supervised my homework this morning. Knitting in bed with cats is the best.

The box came with yarn, needles, yarn needle, pattern, camp patch, and a cool kitchen tool. I knit the first homework i-cord with the enclosed needles (US 7 Clover straights). While I love the needles, I don’t like straight needles for i-cord because you have to keep moving the knitting back to the left needle. That was cumbersome, and the sliding back to the left needle made my knitting much looser and messier than just sliding to the other end of a dpn. I pulled out some Brittany birch dpns for the other three i-cords, and whoa! You know what they say about swatching on the needles you’re planning to use for your project? Check out the difference between the first i-cord and the other three. Seeing is believing! I eventually frogged that first i-cord so it would match the rest.

That patch!

Here are the three mini dishcloths I knit during camp/class this morning. Mitered square, 2 color intarsia, and a slip stitch pattern. All the dishcloths are started by picking up in an i-cord, so we had lots of practice with that. And they all have knit in i-cord edges, like the ones I used on my Thrumbelina slippers.

I really liked the i-cord edges on the 2 color slip stitch pattern. It was hard to see the edge pattern emerging until the 6th row…kind of like brioche! Just keep knitting, trust, and believe. Now that I see it, I may have to try it on my Slip Away Cowl pattern. If I like it better than my garter stitch edges, you may see a pattern update!

I also enjoyed the intarsia dishcloth. Intarsia is fun when it’s geometric shapes. I don’t love picture intarsia that keeps you tied to a chart, but straight lines are my happy place. I knit 2 Vogue Knitting Grumpy Cat sweaters for my kids a very long time ago. I started a third one for me, and I never finished it. That was the end of my intarsia knitting, until now.

Box o’ joy

All in all, this was a very fun way to spend a morning in the company of other knitters. Lorilee Beltman is an excellent teacher, very organized and well prepared.

If you have a hankering to knit mitered dishcloths with hanging loops, you can purchase the Sinkmates Dishcloth pattern (full size dishcloths with lots of skill building variations) on Ravelry. Use code FRIEND for $3 off; I think the coupon is valid through the end of July. And if you want to knit with this dreamy Rowan Handknit Cotton, you can find it on the Modern Daily Knitting site in a ton of beautiful colors. There’s a coupon for 10% off in the pattern, and that one is definitely good through July.

Now it’s back to the neverending bind off on my assigned pooling shawl. Not even halfway there yet…