MKG Cable Gram — Volume 22, Number 4

So here comes Christmas! And what presents are you knitting? I'm only knitting one (so far). Our families are scaling back this year and one of the things my husband and I decided to do was anonymously donate gifts to someone in need who's all alone this Christmas. I got some info about our person from the county agency that runs the program, and one very clear detail is that our lady loves purple. So I'm knitting her a very purple scarf, using some nice acrylic worsted weight and a couple of novelty yarns that are also machine washable. And I just made up a simple design, alternating between stockinette and moss stitch, slipping the first and purling the last stitch of every row. I'm hoping that will keep the edges from rolling too much, because I don't feel like I know what I'm doing when I have to block something. Blocking just feels too, umm, sewy. And sewing is one of my issues that I'm working on, trying not to be frightened of it after traumatic childhood experiences. I got a C in Home Economics and have a dutiful mother who hated sewing but did it anyway because she thought it was required of a Mom, and thus was a scary, crabby lady when the blue Singer came out of the closet--that was always our cue to go play outside. But the scarf doesn't have to be perfect, so there. Just made with loving care. And this is supposed to be fun, yeah?

MKG Cable Gram——Volume 22, Number 4

If you love to knit socks, or just love the idea of hand-knitted socks, then you'll want to check out one of the "books" the MKG library acquired this summer. It's a looseleaf notebook filled with every issue of a now-defunct publication, the Heels and Toes Gazette. This short (but densely packed) newsletter was published by Dawn Brocco, a knitwear designer in Saugerties, N.Y., four times a year from 2000 to 2004: 17 issues in all. Enough Guild members recommended it to me that I spent $68 of our book-buying budget to acquire the whole run, then found an extra-sturdy binder to store it in.

In the last issue of Cable Gram, I interviewed several local knitters about their knitblogs. I had one last question to ask them: Why blog?  What is the value of having a knit blog? The responses were heartfelt and enthusiastic. “Being part of the blog community is the best benefit,” says Renee of A Good Yarn. “I have met and/or communicated with many other knitters through my blog. I enjoy the opportunity to express myself and start conversations with others about things I care about.”

You won’t find a whole lot of people who get excited about book classification. But when it comes to numbers stuck to the spine of a library book, Kathy Erickson’s face positively lights up.

“This is so cool!” she says of the Bauerliches Stricken series, a three-volume set whose components, until recently, were in two  different places on the Textile Center library shelves. These three unassuming-looking books by Lisl Fanderl, who has been called “the  Barbara Walker of Bavaria,” contain a wealth of German knitting- stitch patterns, all with charts. Now that they are all under the same classification number, they’re lined up together on the shelf.  Furthermore, a note in the library-catalog record means that all  three books will turn up under a keyword search for “patterns for knitting.”