20 for 2020

There's always a tremendous feeling of a "new start" at the beginning of a new decade, isn't there. A time for new explorations and new challenges. So it was that on 1st Jan 2010, I opened my brand new notebook and wrote:

   "AIM: Find or design knitting stitches that look good on both sides. 
   Question: Can I get to a total of 100 stitches?"

I had made a start on this a few years earlier as I had either collected or designed quite a number of reversible stitches over the previous years. I knitted the samples one after another in a long ribbon of stitches and ended up with something that looked a bit like a Doctor Who scarf!

This had a grand total of 73 stitches and although I used it as a reference for quite a while, it was quite unwieldy and all the labels got quite tangled up after a while.

So I decided to reknit those samples and see if I could add a few more to get to 100 in total. I went through all the books I had on my bookshelves and found another 12 samples, so now I had 85 samples. However, this was still far short of the challenge to find 100 that I had set myself.

It was about this time that Anna saw the increasing numbers of samples piling up everywhere and joined in the hunt. We started with graph paper and knitting needles and designed some new ones to join the gathering collection. Soon we had another 20 or so stitches to get to the 100 stitch mark and just beyond.
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At which point she said to me, "We should gather these into a book!"

So we decided to see just how many reversible stitches we could either find or design. We scoured libraries and on-line sites, we took promising stitches and designed new variations to make them reversible, we played around with stitch charts and sampled, sampled, sampled.

Then suddenly we saw we had 150 different stitches… then 175… then gosh – more than 200 reversible stitches! Amazing!

And that's how our Reversible Knitting Stitches book came into being. First as a challenge for the new decade in 2010, then with a fresh pair of eyes and a second pair of hands knitting away over on the other side of the Atlantic.

However, that was ten years ago and now here we are at the start of yet another new decade! Time to set a new challenge… So can you guess what my new 2020 Notebook has started with? Well here’s the entry:

   "AIM: Find or design more stitches to add to our Reversible Knitting Stitches collection.
   Question: Can I add 20 new stitches in 2020? "
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So that's what I'm going to try to do this year and I'm going to post here with news as I try them out. It might sound a modest number, but I think it will be a fun challenge!

If they look like they'll be good additions to the collection, then we'll add them to the E-book and publish this as a new edition by the end of the year. I've been wanting to get a new version out for a while anyway, as Anna has lots of new patterns which I think would be good as project examples for the book. I love having lots of projects to show how the stitches can be used, so I’d love to incorporate all those new ideas.

Next time, I'll show you the first of the stitches I've been working on. It's a nice easy stitch and I am currently using it for some placemats and coasters. I'm very excited about these but I'll save news of them until next time.

I'll leave you with a photo I took a few days ago at one of our lovely beaches, Caspersen Beach in South Venice, Florida – and yes, the sea really was that gorgeous turquoise colour that day! 

I hope your New Year has started well and that it will be a happy and successful year for you all. 

Until next time – Happy Knitting!

Moira

Last Blogpost: Warm head, warm heart
Next Up: Faded Denim – a timeless colour for some new placemats

Our book: Reversible Knitting Stitches
My Website: www.wyndlestrawdesigns.com

Keywords: Reversible Stitches
knitting stitches, stitches, reversible, reversible stitches

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