I haven’t knitted much this week but have found lots of eye candy on the web.

I like color.

Last week I popped over to the Interweave website to see when the next issue of Spin Off was coming out. While looking at the blurb about the next issue I noticed a picture of a very colorful felted bag. When I went back to their website a few days later, the photo had been replaced with the cover of the Fall 2006 issue. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see that bag again since it wasn’t on the cover.

Yesterday, my copy of arrived and I found the bag on  page 60 with an article by Nancy Roberts called “Machine Knitting to Dye For”. This morning I got a chance to read through the article and it amazed me. She describes how she knits plain white yarn on a knitting machine creating “blank” fabric, dies this fabric and then unravels the yarn to use it for a totally different object that is knitted by hand.

I did a bit of searching and found a picture of Nancy’s work including that bag. It’s is the one in this picture with wooden handles. The article says that it was knit with two colorways in a stranded pattern (a.k.a. Fair Isle Knitting?). I’ve been thinking about this concept of knitting with two colorways ever since knitting my Fair Isle socks.

Check out this shawl by Anni. Isn’t it amazing. Looks like she used the same multi-colored yarn but started each strand at a different color. Doesn’t the yarn she uses look very similar to the type Nancy dyes?

And if that’s not enough eye candy, look at these socks by Sara Lamb. I found her blog while looking for more information about Nancy’s technique. I’ve seen her work in Spin Off and admired it. It tempts me to take up weaving.