Lovely surprise

What a lovely surprise to get not one, but two knitting related emails last week which had my work in them! The first was Needlework Traditions email, a service of Interweave Press. In it was highlighted the new Jan/Feb 2015 "Historical Knitting" Piecework magazine.

Jan/Feb "Historical Knitting" Piecework magazine, put out by Interweave Press / F + W

I clearly remember traveling somewhere and seeing the cover for the historical knitting edition for the first time. It must have been 6 or so years ago. It had an Alice Starmore baby bonnet with beautiful, blue-based, fairisle patterning. I stopped in my tracks and bought it! I think this cover is just gorgeous as well. My friend, Carol Huebscher Rhoades wrote the pattern for these eye-catching Finnish delft blue wrist warmers and the accompanying article about the sweater tradition in Finland.

What an honor to be included in this edition! My article is the one with the large red-lettered headline: "A 3-Year-Old Crown Prince & His Knitted Sweater (and His Harrowing Escape from the Nazis)." Certainly sounds like a knitting action movie! I'm horribly embarrassed that it is over Nancy Bush's article headline. Nancy Bush is an incredible knitter historian I was privileged to meet when she lectured at the Nordic Knitting conference in 2010. Her work was my inspiration as I set into trying to research and understand a distant culture's knitting tradition. 

In fact, she will be teaching at the Trading Post in Pendleton, Indiana the weekend of March 27, 28 and 29. She will be teaching both spinning and knitting a specialized Estonian item, both of which she and Kate Larson, spinner extraordinaire, excel at. Call Susan at (765)778-3331 or email tradingpostfiber@aol.com for more information.

The second email was from Patternfish, a knitwear pattern sales company in Canada. They started carrying my patterns just over a month ago, and they featured one of my patterns on their email blast. What fun! To find my patterns there, go to the main page, click "browse our…patterns," and type "Laura Ricketts," or "Laura Ricketts Designs" into the search engine.

I'll close with the second photo from the Needlework Traditions email, which had my project photo in it. Toodles, all!

Three projects from the Jan/Feb 2015 Piecework. My sweater is the red one on the right.