Knitting's gone mainstream

When the poetry society commissions a knitted poem , midwives and baby cafes use knitted boobs to teach breast feeding (and illustrate how size and shape really doesn't matter, or anyway effect the ability to breast feed your baby) or people knit body parts just for fun (one of my P3 friends tells me she knows a woman who knitted a model of the whole digestive system) we can truly say knitting has left the hearth and joined the mainstream.

And it's even entered academia with this woman researching into knitting history in binary code.

Thanks to Caroline, Sarah and Julia for their comments on my past post and telling me about the unusual knitting projects they have seen and Kathleen (don't yo love the name of her blog??) for the link to Kristen Haring and Josie for the boob blog.

Lots of thank yous and links but isn't that what blogging is all about? - the free interchange of ideas, and the other side of the sharing coin, acknowledging where the ideas come from.

Sometimes there is also a big knitting story that everyone is discussing - like Sarah Lund's sweater.  Sometimes the story is tiny like one in the observer last Sunday that sent me to my stitch dictionary and yarn stash to see what I could make with bobbles.  I found this

Quite a lot of double knitting Sirdar Balmoral left over from my Elizabeth Zimmermann project and some Gedifra Videra bought on impulse (whenever do I not buy on impulse?) from John Lewis sale about a year ago and destined to be a chunky jacket.  No matter, the bobbles will not take up much yarn.  I intend to make a short scarf, in the round with curved ends like giant sock toes with fat bobbles randomly dotted around.  But first a swatch, the two yarns are very different weight (DK and chunky) although I thought it would work, it is safer to check.

One bobble in the middle of a 2" square. Knit to the place you want a bobble

Take a short length of bobble yarn and knit five stitches into the next stitch (k1 p1 k1 p1 k1)

Knit five rows stocking stitch on these five stitches (k5 turn p5 turn k5 turn p5 turn k5)

Slip each of the four following stitches over the first stitch on your needle (the first stitch being the first to fall off if you drew the needle out)

Pull the tow ends of the bobble yarn tightly together and tie in a reef knot at the back, finish knitting the square.  You can of course knit the whole piece in one colour and then there will be no knotting, you just need to pull the yarn quite tight at this point.  But a contrast colour makes explaining the technique easier and in any case this is the effect I want in my scarf.

Voila!

... actually I have a confession, I have no time at all to knit this scarf I have so many more projects to finish for Christmas presents, but I shall store it in my memory for more leisurely post Christmas knitting.

xx

C