BNK

BNK? Bink? Is that some new acronym for ripping out one’s knitting? Yes, it does sound a lot like “tink,” but you’re not even close. BNK is Brave New Knits , the title of my knitting book due out next year from inestimable publisher Rodale, Inc. The last few posts, I’ve mentioned my recent trip to New York, during which I had the unparalleled experience of trying to keep out from underfoot  making myself useful during the photo shoot of the knitted projects.

Although I am actually frogging part of a sweater that I knit up in the early days of my optimistic ambitions for the National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecahedron, there’s nothing very photogenic about the way that sweater (a boyfriend-ish V-neck in Noro Silk Garden and Cash Iroha, two rows of each to create narrow stripes – I posted photos of it several months ago) looks right now.

Although I’ve been able to salvage the sleeves, I’m having to frog and reknit the sweater’s back and front from the shoulder bind-off down to the beginning of the armhole shaping. And with my hand still recuperating from surgery, frogging has proven much easier than the reknitting is likely to be. In fact, frogging – in a perverse way – has turned out to be a reasonably pleasurable fix as long as knitting remains verboten. I still get to fondle the yarn, even though it is for the express purpose of ripping back something I’d already labored over for many hours. But never mind. At the moment, frogging is the closest I can get to knitting. How ironic.

Instead of sharing images of that pile of crinkled Noro yarn, allow me to offer up a couple of teeny-tiny details from BNK projects, details that merely hint at the knitterly loveliness within the pages of this book (not that I’m biased or anything)  just to whet your appetite.