Spelling It Out

In the US, it’s Thanksgiving Day, one of those holidays that imprints strongly on people, for better and for worse. Folks may have a lot of memories attached to this day, and a lot of feelings. Here’s hoping that memories and feelings land softly, and maybe you get to have one of those fantastic cleansing cries at some point, if you enjoy that sort of thing (as I do).

One thing Ann and I have in common is that a large group gathers at each of our tables on this day, leading to madcap moments in the kitchen and complicated folding-chair math. Are Lisa Downstairs’s folding chairs spoken for? What time can she send them up after her brunch crowd departs? Would it be wrong to grab a couple on my way out of that brunch? What is the card table situation?

This year I delegated enough of the cooking to be able to add a new task to the to-do list: knit the place cards. No big deal! Two episodes of Ken Burns’s The American Revolution, a few colors of Atlas, and my copy of Knit Hello, Rüdiger Schlömer’s new typeface made especially for hand knitters.

It’s so cool, and so knittable. I knitted these names using the Knit Hello Specimanual, a 32-page booklet that is available in print or ebook here. It has everything you need to knit the dictionary.

Yes, the dogs get place cards. Yes, we have two Rons this year.

Each letter is only 7 stitches high. Add 4 background stitches, and the cast-on for each name is 11 stitches. Knitted sideways, most letters are three garter ridges in two alternating colors—M and W are 5 garter ridges, and I is only a single garter ridge! I’m clocking 3-5 minutes per letter.

The more letters I knit, the more intuitive and playful the process became. While minimalist, the typeface has so much personality. The letter forms are simple, and their knitting logic is easy and quickly memorized. One color per double row (aka garter ridge), slipped stitches, that’s it. SUCH FUN.

Happy Thanksgiving and/or Thursday!