A New Knitting Friend

I haven't done a lot of knitting - yet - this winter. (I'm trying to finish a quilt I started a few years back.) But I've been buying - and borrowing - books on knitting. And I feel as if I've met a new knitting "friend."

Elizabeth Zimmermann was a knitter of my father's generation. From her rural home in Wisconsin, she started a mail-order yarn business in the mid-1950s. She also designed sweaters and wrote knitting books.

She loved to knit - even when riding on the back of her husband's motor cycle! But she hated abbreviated knitting instructions  - k.1, p. 2, and so on! (Personally, I don't mind them... Abbreviations make it possible for me to follow patterns in 4 languages.) Her instructions are a funny, informative conversation. Reading her books is like sitting with a wise knitting friend.

Some of her books, like her collection of newsletters
(called The Opinionated Knitter) are not available on Amazon.ca, where I often buy books, so I thought it was so longer in print. But I notice copies are available through the yarn shop she started. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a copy from the library.

But I have managed to find - and purchase - two of her books online.

The Knitter's Almanac has patterns for every month of the year. After reading the January chapter, I had the urge to rush out and buy yarn for a cabled sweater! (Wisely, I realized that I simply didn't have time for such a large project!)

Initially, I was looking for her pattern for her well-known "surprise jacket" - a sweater knit in one piece, sleeves and all.

A very popular design, here are versions pictured inside the cover of the Opinionated Knitter, where I also found instructions for an interesting afghan, which I was tempted to begin...

A fan of sheep wool, Elizabeth would not approve of my choice of acrylic yarn!

Here is the beginning of the first L-shape in the middle of the afghan. I'm using yarn I have on hand. Unlike her, I rarely buy anything that I can't toss into the washing machine and dryer.