You've Reached Uncle Stashley's Knitting (and rarely but sometimes Crochet) Blog

Double Knitting. Like how airplanes fly, or the appeal of Sean Hannity, it's one of life's mysteries. Lucky for us, we don't have to know why it works, we only have to know how it works. And Uncle Stashley definitely knows how it works, and in his first 100% fully useful post, he's going to spill the tea*. In case you're not sure what double knitting is, it's basically a method of creating two fabrics at the same time. The advantage to this is you can do fun stuff with colour changes, and create basically reversible mirror-image scarves, hats, etc., that are super-squishy and warm. If you get good at it, you can go even more complicated, but as a wise woman once said (in my last musical

Uncle Stashley likes to knit almost as much as he likes to read (I haven't, for instance, begun to knit in the bathtub yet, although now that I've written that down I'm itching to give it a try, once I have a scarf long enough that it can dangle off to the left and through the curtain). Unlike Sam-I-Am's difficult friend, who refused to try Green Eggs and Ham under any reasonable circumstance, I definitely would and could knit them in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, in a car, train, in the dark (I'm not great at it, but I keep trying). But I prefer to knit while being entertained. You can too! Consider these options: you can Watch TV (whether live, streamed, recorded, or down

You know the feeling ... you pick up your knitting (enter the woods), happily knit a few rounds (gather flowers for Grandma), and before you know it you've done something horribly wrong (get eaten by a wolf). Maybe you lost track of your stitch count and fumbled your pattern, or you knit the wrong strand when double knitting, or what could be more natural than decreasing properly on the back of the sweater vest, but improperly on the front of the sweater vest, leaving you having to join at the shoulder two pieces of fabric, one 13 stitches wide, one 25 stitches wide (eat candy from house, meet the owner, get shoved in oven). Have fun with that, foolish knitter! This isn't just for beginning

When Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and I were discussing her book Knitting Rules!, she mentioned she considered it her only truly useful book. Quick digression: she also, in astonishing Sherlock Holmes fashion, deduced I was a gay Canadian within one second of having met me. A knitting luminary next to her (it was a book signing at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival, it's not like all fiber arts bloggers are friends (which will never happen, not until Kate Davies apologies for her outrageous behaviour at Franklin Habit's Halloween bash in 2015)) had admired my coat, and I said "Oh, I picked it up at a Boxing Week* sale at Guess for only $89." And somehow, from that, Ms. Pearl-McPhee managed to corre

I started writing about knitting with colour, and before I knew it I was creating a graduate-level thesis on colour theory ... riveting to me, but perhaps to no one else. So I started writing about mistakes knitters make, and soon digressed to writing a compelling essay about my early reading behaviour, which isn't why you're here. So I've scrapped all that, and I'm just going to share with you my current PIPs (projects in progress). Welcome to my knitting lair! Here's an unfinished sock. I'm using the Church Mouse pattern, it's pretty classic, and I prefer the standard heel to the afterthought heel. (I only know 2 ways to knit socks, Toe-Up via a Craftsy* lesson, and Church Mouse method

So I've foolishly decided to try crochet. Not instead of knitting--no chance, no way--but as a useful adjunct to knitting. Sometimes patterns say "just crochet a chain/stitch/double-half treble triple stitch" as if we all learned crochet in Brownies and turned to knitting later when we became s'phisticated adults, but that's not the case for me (I was in Cub Scouts, one year only, and I learned left from right and how to play Capture the Flag and that's about it). Therefore, any sensible knitter would have a few crochet stitches in their arsenal. But, as any reader of my blog is probably already aware, Uncle Stashley is not a "sensible" knitter. Nope. I decided to take up crochet becaus

Where do you mostly knit? Let's explore the possibilities, in the internet's time-honoured tradition of "Which Seinfeld character are you?" You rarely have time to knit, you're so busy--so you drag it with you on the bus and knit when you manage to land a seat, and you take it to work so you can eschew work and knit in your office as much as possible. You're an Elaine. You're an enthusiastic overdoer, so two months after beginning knitting you transformed your home into a knitter's paradise. Your family calls the dining table "the blocking table," the pantry is organized with fingering weight on top, worsted in the middle, bulky on the bottom shelves, and your collection of Lykke driftwoo

As a genuinely happy person, I have few regrets in life. It's so convenient! Whenever anyone suggests you should have made different life choices, which include (these are all real choices I've made, unfortunately): bleaching your hair blond, then dying it temporarily black again, which made it dark green, washing it out, achieving lighter green, dying it temporarily brown again, which made it medium-dark green, washing it out, achieving a pale grey-green sage, then shaving most of it off your head with a shaver with no guard attachment, yielding a head composed of some completely bald bits, some areas of dark regrowth, and tufts of grey-green sage bits going to accept the award for best r

There are many great debates among knitters, including Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up, K2tog* vs. SSK*, English* vs. Continental*, tying knots vs. oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-you-tied-your-yarn-ends-together, and many, many more. But the great debate I'll tackle for today is Straight vs. Circular needles (or, for that matter, Double-Pointed vs. Circular needles). In case you're very much a beginner knitter, I will describe them for you in confusing terms: A Straight needle is shaped like a T where the trunk of the T is extremely long and has a point at the end, and the top of the T is larger than the trunk, to prevent stitches from slipping off the other end. They normally come in pairs, like hipster

So, the stash. Beginning knitters, beware ... like beginning dragons (who start with a ring or bracelet here or there, maybe a doubloon, but eventually hollow out entire mountains so they can rest on 3,000 cubic tons of gold) you too will acquire more of a stash than you planned. I am a relatively new knitter (I wish I could claim to be a relatively young knitter, but it doesn't work like that) in that I have been knitting for about 4 years, so I have accumulated 4 years worth of stash. Nope, I don't mean the amount one would expect a knitter to accumulate over 4 years, I mean I've accumulated enough to keep me permanently knitting for the next 4 years without acquiring any extra. You see,

Now that I've introduced myself, I thought I'd talk about how I began knitting. Everyone, to the best of my understanding, began in one of four ways. Take the quiz! In the time-honoured tradition of online quizzes everywhere, I have organized the choices by which Sex and the City character you are. 1. You learned to knit at age 3, when your vaguely-ethnic Nana showed you what to do. By 6 you were knitting Aran sweaters regularly and kept your family in socks. Now you teach at knitting events internationally and have a line of books through InterWeave Press. You're a Charlotte. 2. You learned to knit at age 18, when you discovered your roommate, a woman's studies major, secretly knitting.

Let's start with me, Uncle Stashley. That's a nom-de-plume, by the way, which is a French expression that means one is jealous of Stephanie Pearl McPhee's success as the "Yarn Harlot." Nom-de-plumes are tricky, because unlike nicknames, which tend to be cool like "Truck," "Badger," or "The Whopper," they aren't given to you by friends: you have to choose one for yourself. If you choose a particularly cool name you are clearly trying too hard and no one will read your blog. So, I figured Stashley rhymes with Ashley (my actual name), and I'm a proud uncle to three reasonably good kids, hence "Uncle Stashley." And it's way better than my second third and fourth choices, "Stefan Knit Purl M