It has been another hectic day, it doesn’t help that the temperature is rising, I don’t mean mine, I am talking about the mercury levels, summer has arrived in Australia, we are running around in shorts and t’shirts and the fire bans and water restrictions are in full force – gee can’t even hose the kids to cool them down, oh well beach here we come.

This brought to mind a unique knitting technique to create an open weave effect which is called faggotting I was thinking about the carnage after a bushfire, how branches and sticks where bundled together and stacked for clearing.

Ok you might have your own interpretation for faggot, or faggoting but here it is according to Wikepedia.

Faggot or fagot may refer to:

• Faggot (epithet), a derogatory term for a gay or effeminate man
• Faggot (wood), a bundle of sticks or branches
• Faggots (novel), a novel by Larry Kramer
• Faggot (unit of measurement), an archaic unit of measurement
• Fagot (pronounced with a silent T), the NATO reporting name for the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 airplane
• Faggot (food), a British pork meatball
• Fagot(to), the name in many languages of the musical instrument bassoon

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot"

It is a shame that Wikipedia hasn’t included information on the term faggoting and how it applies to knitting.

Faggotting is a true lacy knitting stitch, in which increases and decreases occur on every row (as opposed to a lacy knitting stitch, in which rows containing increases and decreases alternate with knitted or purled rows). 

Ok I hear you asking what does the faggot stitch look like.


Here is a very lovely but simple pattern to knit a scarf using thefaggot stitch

Abbreviations:
K=knit, YO=Yarn Over, k2tog=knit 2 sts together

Cast on 18 sts
Row 1 and all rows: *K1, YO, k2tog; repeat from * to end.

Continue this same pattern until you have reached your desired length, bind off loosely.

 If you wish to make the scarf wider or narrower, do so in units of 3 sts (i.e. 21, 24 etc)

Why not try it out for yourself.

Writing this newsletter has prompted me to do something else, gee always thinking, there are hundreds of knitting techniques that you can use to make otherwise plain items into works of art, think I will start work on a stitch library, you will have to be patient with me it won't happen overnight, I will keep you up to date in future newsletters.

Knit-easy tip of the month - I love our dog Roxy, but gee I hate all the dog hairs that end up on my knitting yarn, to overcome this I now put my yarn in a plastic shopping bag (any bag will do) leave a long tail hanging out, tie the handles of the bag, and your yarn will stay clean.

Best wishes and Happy Knitting

Anna