Hello Friends,

With the Knitting Pilgrim performance at the APCE conference in St. Louis in the rearview, and my work on the Knitting as a Spiritual Practice workshop tucked away, I’ve had some time open up to work on a knitting project of my choice. What to do? My most downloaded pattern on Ravelry has been the Twilight Forest Fingerless Gloves, and a number of people have told me that they would like to see the same design in a full mitten.  Rather than work out the mitten version on the same pattern, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and knit up the next iteration of the “Little Town of Bethlehem” wristers I created for Christmas of 2021 when COVID gave me the opportunity to go on a knitting kick around the holidays. Here’s a photo of that original prototype before I sewed it up. Soon thereafter the wristers were sold at FACTS (Fashion Arts & Creative Textiles Studio) in Blyth, ON, many thanks to Jennifer Triemstra-Johnston who runs things there.

It’s another version of the starry night theme which allows me to play with the gradations of all those hues of blue, which I love.  Hopefully you can also see silhouettes of some low buildings which give the idea of a small Middle Eastern town.  And then of course, there’s the star of Bethlehem – but it occurs to me that could easily be omitted if you didn’t want these mittens to be exclusively associated with Christmas.  Perhaps even replace it with a crescent moon?

Because of the asymmetrical images on the design, the mitt is worked with the intarsia technique of leaving colours dangling off the back, which means that it is much easier to knit flat than in the round.  This was ideal for the fingerless glove:  after knitting the flat design, I just needed to fold it in half, and sew up the seam, leaving a hole for the thumb which I knit into the piece via picked-up stitches later. Here’s how it looked in process, front and back:

This time around, things are a little more complicated.  I still knitted the design flat, but then I needed to add a top to the mitten. I decided to follow the same process I did with the fingerless glove, but instead of casting off at the top, I slipped the live stitches onto some double-pointed needles, sewed up the seam, and then finished the top as I would a regular mitten knit in the round. 

Things were a bit fiddly there at the end, but that may have been because I had five double-pointed needles going, which got pretty crowded. I’ll try it with three double-pointed needles on the next one and see if that makes things easier. Nonetheless, it seems to have worked out.  Now, it’s time to go back and pick up the thumb. 

I’ll let you know how it all turns out...

In the meantime, just a friendly reminder that I was obliged to change my Instagram account, and I can now be found at @kirkdunnknits on that platform if you want to follow me as I go.

the Knitting Pilgrim talks

We continue to release new episodes of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, which explore the imagery of the Stitched Glass tapestries in conversation with faith leaders and academics.

episode 120: holy days

Holy Days

In episode 120 of The Knitting Pilgrim Talks, I speak with Rabbi David Seed of the Adath Israel Congregation in Toronto about importance of Holidays—or ‘Holy Days’—in Judaism. We discuss a section of the Stitched Glass Judaic tapestry depicting a shofar, a menorah, and a lulav—ritual items central to Jewish holidays, which are days set apart as being separate, unique, and which give us an opportunity to reflect on the gifts we have been given in this life…particularly, the gift of time.

"What Judaism is saying is that we have to mark certain days as being separate, apart, unique…so that we pause, and we have an opportunity to reflect on what we have been given." — Rabbi David See

Episode 120 is available on YouTube here: KPT 120: Holy Days

Or, all of the podcast places, like KPT on Spotify, if you’d rather listen than watch.

If you have any questions about any of my projects, would like to book a talk, workshop, The Knitting Pilgrim or Spycraft, please reach out to me at kirkdunn.com.