New York Times, 1/22/2026
Joanne Kaufman reports:
Barbara G. Walker, a self-taught knitter whose boredom with basic designs inspired her to catalog stitch patterns from around the world and to invent about 1,000 patterns of her own, making her a revered figure among the kniterati, died on Dec. 21. She was 95.
Her death, at a long-term care facility in Sarasota, Fla., was announced on her website by her son, Alan Walker, who said the cause was metastatic abdominal cancer.
“Barbara came at knitting unlike anyone else,” Trisha Malcolm, the former editorial director of Vogue Knitting, said in an interview, adding, “It was a game changer for all of us.”
Ms. Malcolm continued: “Before, if you wanted to make, say, a striped sweater, the instructions would say, ‘These are the different sizes you can make, and this is how much yarn you’ll need, and this is how many stitches you need to cast on, and this is how to decrease the stitches for the sleeves.’”
Ms. Walker “didn’t really do that,” Ms. Malcolm said. “Her thing was to show you the swatches of stitch patterns, and you’d use those designs to create a unique garment.”
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