Mmmmmm. Marmalade! Now is the Season for Making Marmalade — Canning Across America. Not only is this a great idea, but it’s also got a link to a truly useful article on how things like weather and elevation affect food prep. I’ve found myself frustrated by the difference in baking between New York and Arizona, so this was something of a culinary life-saver. (The articles are also written by an old friend of mine.) Enjoy this...

Welcome to part one of A Christmas Carol. One of the many hats I wear in life is as host to the podcast CraftLit: A Podcast for Crafters Who Love Books. The idea behind the podcast is that folks who are busy with their hands—knitting, quilting, gardening, taking care of small children, vacuuming—aren’t able to hold a book and read while they’re doing all the other things they like (or have) to do. The podcast expands their literary...

Bob Cratchit is famous for a few things—being father of Tiny Tim, being cold, being basically cheerful, and having fingerless mitts in most representations of him. While it would be nice to knit some fine-gauge fingerless mitts as Christmas presents, my reality is that I have far too much knitting to do in far too little time. Instead, I worked up this little pattern for our Holiday Hop. For your knitting pleasure, I would like to...

Ever needed to add a few stitches—like to make up for thumb gusset stitches you just eliminated from the palm of your mitten. Well, here’s an easy and quick way to accomplish that. The standard half-hitch manoeuver always left me with saggy cast-on stitches. A friend showed me this ages ago and I’ve never looked back.

Sometimes you just want a scarf that won’t roll—EVER. Or sometimes you need the back of an item to look just like the front. The easiest way to do that is to double knit—and mirror your pattern in reverse. On this sample, you’ll see the red side facing you with white “flea” stitches. The reverse side of the fabric is EXACTLY the same, but white with red “flea” stitches. How do you do that? Double...