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Knitting Resources
http://www.anacrossstitch.com
Anacross Stitch is a needlework shop located in the town which holds the ferry terminal that sends boats out to the San Juan Islands and Sidney, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The front two thirds of this wonderful shop is for knitters, and they stock a generous and varied array of yarns, along with one of the best book and button collections in the Puget Sound area. It's a friendly place, with a long table in the back for sitting and knitting and talking, and you're welcome to bring your lunch. Check with them to see if I am doing a workshop; I often teach for them.http://www.waldorfbooks.com
This link will take you to the on-line Waldorf Bookshop. You may know that Waldorf schools teach their students to knit beginning in first grade, carrying it through all twelve grades as a means of facilitating math, reading, hand-eye coordination, and of nourishing the children's creativity and artistic spirits. As you might expect, the Waldorf community embraces many other wonderful crafts and family and child-centered activities, as well as the enchantment of stories from all cultures and all ages. This is a wonderful web site for knitting books as well as other books to warm the hearts and souls of your loved ones. Just browsing through the pages will give you a good feeling. I have had the privilege of spending several hours browsing the real live shelves of the shop, and I have never been surrounded by so many books that resonated so well in my heart.
http://www.cascadeyarns.com
This is the origin of the wonderful Cascade 220 yarn which comes in 185 colors (probably more by the time you read this) and gives you a veritable artist's palette for knitting or felting. They also offer many other wonderful yarns. If your local yarn shop doesn't carry the Cascade 220, I suggest you suggest they do! This is not a retail business, but wholesale.http://www.knitdenise.com
Denise Needles are a well-organized set of snap-together needles in sizes 5-15 (3.75 10 mm), that comes with a variety of cable lengths as well as connectors (to make longer cables and to perform some nifty tricks to make certain knitting maneuvers easier) and end caps, to make stitch holders. You can also buy extra long cables suitable for knitting Moebius projects or large shawls, etc. Everything comes in a nice blue box with molded shapes to hold each piece, and can go with you everywhere on airplanes, to meetings, or on a picnic. I keep my right beside my knitting chair, because I use it daily.Here are some of the Denise knitting tricks I've discovered:
Tight knitters suddenly knit with ease when they replace the left tip with a smaller size. If you have to work to push those tight stitches up your left needle, just replace that tip with a smaller size, going down as many sizes as you like. This works like a charm because your gauge is determined entirely by the right hand needle, where the new stitch is formed. The left tip is simply the delivery end.
If you’d just like to speed up your circular knitting, try putting a needle several times smaller on the left side. The stitches will slide easily, giving your hands a break and your needles room to fly. See above for why this won’t change your gauge. If you are knitting a Moebius (see my Treasuries) use a much smaller tip on the left side and your Moebius will move along its dual track very nicely.
To knit with a matched pair of circular needles, you actually need only one Denise Kit. Just use the correct size tip on the ends held by your right hand. Use a smaller size tip on the left ends. See above for an explanation of why this will not change your gauge. (Try using a pink cable for one needle and a blue cable for the other, and you’ll always know which needle is which.)
To try on a garment in process to be sure it's working out as planned, just add a connecter and an extra-long cable (40" or 52") to your needle and spread out the stitches.
Start over in a flash! If you need to unravel, just remove one tip and your stitches will slide off the cable in seconds so you can start fresh.
If your stockinette is uneven when knitting in rows, you probably purl more loosely than you knit, as I do. But with Denise needles, you can adjust for this by using a smaller tip on the purl end of the needle. Do some experimenting, and find out if you need to go down 1, 2, or even 3 sizes. It will vary depending on the yarn and gauge. Now your back-and-forth stockinette can be as even as it is when you knit in the round.
Would you like to add shaping to a garment with intricate texture or color work, but not have to insert increases and decreases? It may be gradually shaped by changing tip sizes (which can be done in seconds). For instance, to knit a shaped sweater in the round from the bottom up, begin with a larger tip, shift to the next smaller size to begin shaping, to the next smaller size after another several inches, and so on, then reverse the shaping above the waistline. Sleeves may be shaped in the same way. Row/round count will change a little, but probably not enough to make a significant difference.
Picking up stitches is easiest with a smaller needle, so use a very small tip to first pick up all stitches, then change to the correct size to begin knitting.
Turn needles into stitch holders in seconds by replacing tips with end buttons. When it’s time for the holder to become a needle again, just trade tips for end buttons and you are ready to knit!
Change cable length without moving your knitting stitch by stitch. If after lots of increasing or decreasing, you need a longer or shorter cable to fit your stitches comfortably, just remove a tip, add a connector and the new cable, slide all stitches to the new cable, remove the connector and old cable, and add the tip to the new cable.
Applied I-cord can be worked easily with a short straight needle, and your Denise kit has a nice assortment of very short straight needles, that is, all the tips. Just push a soft rubber tip protector over the base of the tip so it feels comfortable in your hand. You may also use this method for casting off with a larger size tip.
http://mountaincolors.com
About the only thing wrong with Mountain Colors yarns is that they are sometimes hard to find, on account of the huge demand. Diana and Leslie, two nature-smitten women in rural Montana, paint their delicious yarns with colorways from the ever-changing sky, water, and landscapes that surround them, and give the colorways such enchanting names that just whispering them will give you a thrill. If you love textured yarns, don't miss their Moguls or Bouclé. They're more delicious than the best chocolate! This is not a retail business, but wholesale.http://www.philosopherswool.com
Ann and Eugene Bourgeois are the stewards of a sheep farm in Inverhuron, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Huron, where they live among their children, grandchildren, chickens, timber-framed buildings, and scads of beautifully colored skeins of yarn spun from local flocks. You may one day be lucky enough to step into their booth at Stitches or another knitting show, where you'll feel immediately transported into an inviting world of elaborately patterned and colored sweaters, shawls, vests, hats, and socks. Ask Ann or Eugene to show you how to knit with two colors and two hands, weaving the yarns in behind every other stitch, because their method is simply the best in the world. If you can't get an in-person lesson, go to their website, where there's a free video to teach you, or buy their book to learn how and get their sweater patterns. And if you want to knit the Fair Isle Cat Nest that appears on the cover of A Second Treasury Of Magical Knitting, it's made of Philosopher's Wool, and they will kit it up for you.
www.siviaharding.com
Sivia Harding is a gifted designer from British Columbia, who is constantly coming up with new lace shawls, scarves, and beaded knitted jewelry. She is well known among lace knitters and has designed some beautiful Moebius scarves. You can also buy jeweled stitch holders from her, which seem to have a magical affect and make your knitting simply radiant.http://www.straw.com
This wonderfully simple-to-type website opens the doorway to Crystal Palace Yarns, former proprietors of Straw Into Gold (in Berkeley, California), which was one of the best-known, most-loved, and oldest fiber emporiums in the world, until a high-rent situation made it impossible to maintain, and the business turned completely wholesale. It is still run by the original founder, Susan Druding. Their website is a veritable smorgasbord of free patterns, and they have such a huge array and inventory of yarns that they recently had to move into a warehouse so vast that reminds me of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose (some of you will know what that is, others, check it out if you are ever in the area). This is not a retail business, but wholesale.www.skacelknitting.com
Ingrid and Hans Skacel brought the Addi Turbo Needles to this country in the late 80's and these needles, which they bill as the fastest needles, truly are. Their smooth joins and slinky cables (avoid the occasional needles that show up with a plastic tube instead of the cables) make these needles a luxurious knitting experience. They also make bamboo circular needles, if the nickel-plated brass tips are too fast (or slippery) for you. This is not a retail business, but wholesale. Update: Now Skacel offers the Addi Lace Needles - marvelous for both socks and lace as well as many other types of knitting. The longer, sharper tips are "just right" - long and sharp enough to get into places that were formerly hard to access (like some decreases, for instance) yet not so sharp that they hurt your finger. In othe words, just right.
Other Resources
http://www.vanessaroseament.com
Vanessa Rose Ament is the model you see in the Treasuries of Magical Knitting. The presence, radiance, and beauty you see in her photos can be both heard and seen if you are lucky enough to attend one of her performances, for she is actually a singer, specializing in opera. She also acts and sings in Broadway-style shows and is a sought after singer for weddings, funerals, and other transformative events.