1/10/2007 11:33:00 AM Artist's Way creates full-time job for avid knitter
The "Adventures with Needle and Hook, Needle Arts at Your Libraries" series presents a program with knitter Karen Alfke Jan. 10 at the Jefferson County Library. – Photo by Kathie Meyer
Karen Alfke models a shawl-like wrap made from linen stitch. To create a contour to fit the shoulders, she gradually reduced the needle size as she worked. – Photo by Kathie Meyer
Unlike some knitters who amass untold amounts of yarn and never make anything from much of it, Karen Alfke can justify her stash, which last year she calculated to measure a cord in size.
Alfke is an Artist's Way success story who, after taking Judith Alexander's class based on Julia Cameron's book, took her passion for knitting and created her own knitting instruction and pattern design business. She's been working at it full-time for the past five years and figures she's probably taught about 600 people how to knit so far. At 6:30 p.m. tonight, Wednesday, Jan. 10, Alfke demonstrates a variety of unique ways to use the "linen stitch" at the first presentation of the "Adventures with Needle & Hook: Needle Arts at Your Libraries" series, a program coordinated by the Port Townsend Public Library and Jefferson County Library. This week's program is held at the Jefferson County Library at 620 Cedar in Port Hadlock. Subsequent programs will alternate between both libraries.
Linen stitch
The linen stitch is "a simple stitch pattern related to the tweed stitch," says Alfke, who demonstrates the "half-weaving, half-knitting" effect produced as she moves the yarn front to back and then back to front between knit stitches. Alfke has been working on this stitch's potential since 1998, she says, and that has led to some interesting discoveries with regard to color work and texture. In addition, the linen stitch stops hand-painted yarn from pooling, keeps chenille yarn from worming, and blends different gauges easily.
"Part of the fun of linen stitch," she says, "is that you can use the normal recommended needle size for the yarn and it comes out dense. You can knit a bag without felting it."
Alfke shows a shawl-like wrap made from linen stitch that she contoured to her shoulders by using progressively smaller needles. A colorful linen stitch sock pattern Alfke named "Rock & Weave" was a commissioned work featured as the sock of the month for May 2006 in Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Rockin' Sock Club (see www.bluemoonarts.com). When Stephanie Pearl-McPhee wrote about making Alfke's pattern on her popular knitting blog at www.yarnharlot.com, Alfke was especially flattered.
Unpatterns
Alfke wishes she could knit all of the time, but the success of her business limits her to around three hours per day, she says.
She is currently working on self-publishing a book on her linen stitch adventures and has another thriving knitting avenue called "unpatterns."
Alfke learned to knit from her aunt in Germany a year after graduating from high school. In Germany, knitters don't rely on patterns to create knitted garments but instead are taught to use math and a gauge square to create patterns of their own. Doing it this way "liberates knitters" to use yarn that doesn't necessarily fit with set patterns, since many knitters fall in love with a yarn before a pattern - hence all of those yarn stashes out there that continue to grow exponentially.
The unpattern "bridges the gap between knitters and designers," she says. "There is a huge sector of knitters that like to 'geek out.' It's fun to see people really start to groove with it.
"A lot of what the design process is for me is taking something that I love and putting it into something else," says Alfke.
Tonight's adventure
Tonight's library program seats about 50 people, so interested parties should arrive early. Alfke will demonstrate the linen stitch on "big, fat needles" and show samples. She'll distribute a handout with a discussion of the stitch pattern along with a bibliography of works related to the linen stitch. For industrious knitters, she'll issue a design challenge that, if successful, will be included in her book.
The "Adventures with Needle & Hook: Needle Arts at Your Libraries" series is free and open to the public. It is cosponsored by The Twisted Ewe, Dinah's Yarn Shop and the Friends of the libraries.
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