Amanda Schwabe's Page

I'm starting up a knitting group here in my little town since our library was kind enough to build a brand-new building with a community room in it, complete with coffee-making facilities.

Does anyone have any tips for making it a really great group?

I'm thinking of giving it an official-sounding name, like the Upper Canada Knitting Guild, to entice all the knitting ladies in the community to come check it out. But after I draw them in, what should I be doing to keep them coming? Classes? Spea… Continue

Yesterday, I blissfully and somewhat ignorantly began a project that may well take me years to complete. But I already have a vision of the finished project in my head, so the daunting task of knitting enough socks so that I'll have enough scraps to make all these tiny little squares into a queen-size blanket… Continue

I can't stop. My fingers are starting to cramp from the tiny needles, but I keep going. I made two of my sons a pair each (they got to pick their own yarn), and then I made myself a pair, and now I'm working away at making them for the entire extended family as Christmas presents. They're small, they're cozy, they don't take a lot of yarn, and they're new and exciting after years of knitting scarves and mittens and hats and the occasional sweater.
These are my sons':… Continue

I've steeked it and everything. Whew! I didn't think I'd be nervous, but about three inches in to the cutting, I started to panic that my reinforced stitching wouldn't hold.

But, I gave myself a pep talk and I took a deep breath, and before I knew it, after hours of sewing,… Continue

I have always been an impatient knitter.

I think the problem started when I realized that there weren't enough knitting hours in a day to make every pattern that I had circled in each of my new knitting magazines or to knit enough scarves for every person I loved. So, I learned to knit faster. I practiced each stitch in my mind before bed, and I tried different techniques until I'd found the quickest ways to knit up my projects.

It still wasn't fast enough. The bags of free yarn piled up in my… Continue