I am crazy about stripes. Indiscriminately so. I wear wide striped sweaters with scarves featuring narrow stripes. I like fair isle patterns that resolve visually into a striped pattern, I like stitch patterns that fool the eye and create vertical, horizontal, and diagonal stripes. I like my eye to be led across and up and down and back. I love striped, hand knit socks. LOVE them.
Yipes Stripes by Ann Weaver
I like stripes in my knitting, and I like them in the world, too. I like painted crosswalks in bustling towns, the orderly vertical stripes of a bike rack, and telephone poles strung out in lines. I like the way a curled shelf fungi can radiate color to the edge. I love the white and yellow and black stripes on monarch butterfly caterpillars, the endless variety of striping in leaves, flowers and stems, and the wonder and grandeur of colorful and textured stripes in stone formations. Driving through Lancaster County's verdant, precious farmland, I am cheered by the contoured fields as the seasons change the colors, heights and textures of the landscape stripe by stripe. Stripes get my attention.
Self striping yarns can be gorgeous--so much variety and color! And stripes made with leftover bits of yarn are just as appealing. Gradients allow us to knit and crochet gently changing stripes of color in any shape or configuration. We'll talk at length about color and strategies for knitting interesting stripes at the Lancaster Knitter's Retreat with Ann Weaver in May. We'll also be knitting stripes in many of our upcoming Free Workshops--including the Frieze Shawl, Leventry, and the Home & Away hat.
Ursula by Kate Davies in Kettle Dyed Sock Yarn
How do you satisfy your knitting obsessions? I wear and knit stripes nearly all the time, in some configuration or another. Meanwhile, I add stripey patterns and knitting ideas to my endless list of favorite patterns, and scheme for more time to knit!