Mary Thomas & Me

I've been knitting for a pretty long time, and I don't think it'd be too pompous for me to say I'm not a bad knitter. I love lace and as of late have focused most of my knitting on lace shawls. I've also been keeping myself occupied with a number of sweaters, some socks, two vests, a jacket, and some Christmas ornaments. I'm a multi-project knitter. But I'm sure we'll have plenty of chances to talk about that later....
So, I'm a good knitter, but I'm a horrible swatcher. I have always pretty much thought of swatching as a necessary evil. It's a small waste of time--and waste of yarn--that you have to do to make sure that your bigger, more important project turns out right. I don't think I'm alone in that camp. But lately, I've been thinking about swatching as something quite different. It's a compass in a way, letting you visualize what the stitches are going to do and what the properties of the final garment will be. But I think it's also a learning tool. It's a sketchbook. It's a blank canvas, tiny enough just to doodle some ideas out--or someone else's.
I suppose that's why I'm starting this blog. I want to become a better swatcher. And I want to honor the work and the legacy that Mary Thomas left in her book Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns. I've had this book for a long time, and I would occasionally glance through it and I've read bits of it, but, compared to Barbara Walker's Treasury and Elizabeth Zimmerman's library of great knitting advice, Mary Thomas, who wrote Knitting Patterns in 1943, is not quite as accessible. Her chart notation is less familiar to the present-day knitter, and her directions occasionally seem rather inscrutable. And though there are charts and written directions, there are few photographs of the individual patterns, which makes it all the more inaccessible to knitters today who take for granted glossy magazines, Ravelry, YouTube, and so many other awesome uses of technology that allow everything to be scrutinized, zoomed in on, and figured out before we ever pick up the needles.
This adventure is going to be about exploring a lot of stitch patterns that aren't seen so often in patterns being drafted today. Just glancing through Knitting Patterns, there are some interesting and unusual slip stitch patterns, lace medallions and tons of other "Fancy Lace Stitches" as she calls them. There are tons of little patterns and variations tucked in its pages, and I hope to both create a visual compendium of (most of) the book, and improve my own ability to understand pattern construction in hopes of becoming a better and more creative knitwear designer with a greater arsenal of knowledge to draw from.
I do not intend to knit every single pattern in the book--I've already decided to skip most of the first chapter, which includes stockinette, reverse stockinette, garter stitch, and ribbing. Though I will do a few interesting ribs and welts (as MT calls them--patterns with a horizontal or garter rib) found in that chapter.
More on this in the next post!