I’m on a flight to Portland, typing on my iPhone, so this won’t be my most tightly edited post, but I want to tell you about Tunisian crochet. Ragga Eiriksdottir‘s Sunday morning class was easily the most fun I had at Stitches West, in part because she’s delightful and in part because this is such a breeze to do and I was really ready for something breezy by then. And having a new skill, of course, means a new creative outlet. So: big fun.

If you haven’t seen Tunisian before, the basic stitch, called Tunisian simple stitch, creates a really interesting fabric somewhere between knitting and weaving. And it’s fast. The washcloth-sized swatch above was done, with no previous experience, in a little over an hour. (The spots that might look like mistakes are where we were learning increases and decreases. And the edging is Tunisian purl stitch.) I was working with the Shibui yarn seen in yesterday’s post and it turned out to be a great combination of yarn and stitch pattern.

Anyway, I am really in love with this technique. I’ve already done a prototype of (you guessed it) a fingerless mitt, working out a pattern. And if I have time later between my meeting and my return flight, I’m going to Knit Purl to look for some really luscious yarn for a cowl. There are basically two methods for working Tunisian in the round, one of which Ragga taught us and the other of which will allow me to use that giant double-ended hook in the previous photos. So you’ll be hearing more about all of this.