Comfort Knitting

I'm pretty sure I've found my knitting sweet spot: the Shetland Triangle. I finished my 6th last week:

Febrillious

I finished my 5th a week or so before that:

Eire Shetland

Knitting this pattern smooths out all of life's rough edges.

It kinda bothered me at little that I wanted to knit this pattern again and again. There was a seven month gap between my second and third shawl. Real knitters knit new patterns, real knitters try new, more challenging projects. I felt the capital K in my knitting persona slip to it's lower case cousin, like a kid eating their sandwich in a bathroom stall after a month sitting at the cool kid's table.

Once I realized what I was allowing to happen, I wised up. It felt good facing up to my knitting superego and asking her to kindly shut her high falutin' trap.

1. Febrillious, 2. Eire Shetland, 3. Spruce Baby Llama Shetland, 4. Another Shetland, 5. Pink Granite Shetland Triangle, 6. Shetland Triangle

Viva la Shetland Triangle!

Fangirl, schmangirl...

I have become such a fangirl of Sundara, I'm kinda making myself sick rereading some of these posts. Could I plug her yarns even more?

The answer to that would be yes.

(Surfer's Wave ASM reshot)

If I can't be a slavish fangirl in my own small crevice of cyberspace, then I ought to hang up my blogging shingle now. I'm back blogging with the sole purpose of being honest and open and true, to wax melodic or moronic, as my fancy strikes. So, yes, I love her colors, and her yarn bases. They inspire me to knit nicer things, to be a better photographer.

My husband and sister's family chipped in to buy me a nice camera last Christmas and I still don't know half of what it can do. Everything I've coaxed out of that baby was with the intention of taking better pictures of yarn.

I can't help musing that is pretty darn odd. Not that I didn't know I was odd.

Still, to learn something new about oneself at my age is a blessing. I've entered what I hope to be the longer second half of my life. Knowing I'll never have the blessing of children and grandchildren, nor the comfort of a god, the future can sometimes feel turbid. Having a passion, an ambition to nourish, generates some clarity.

(Western Landscapes ASM reshot)

Comme Ci, Comme Ça

Not my best week, but not my worst either. I had a day off for Veteran's day on Wednesday and my mood didn't cooperate at all. The glory of a day off in the middle of the week escaped my grubby, chubby grasp, like a child digging for sand crabs.

I woke up discombobulated. I promptly became irritated, always being best at making things worse.

Ever since my seventh grade science and home room teacher, Mr. Longo, tried to teach us relaxation techniques in class, I have successfully failed at all types of meditation at least two handfuls of times. I just don't have a happy place and I just don't have the ability to keep the focus needed to relax my body.

In the past year, after attempting and failing once again at finding that mythical happy "place," it dawned on me that I have a happy "thing." Sometimes on Saturday mornings, when I lay in bed luxuriating in the fact I don't have to get up and take a shower and vacuum and do all the other irritating work week activities of daily living, I am happiest when I'm thinking about designing knits, or the visually stimulating colors of my stash, or the soft touch of one of my completed projects.

So now when I get into a bad place, I think about my stash, particularly my recently acquired Sundara stash, and specifically this poorly captured skein:

This yarn can scare away all save the most pernicious stress arousal. I really need to take a few more shots to better capture the colors, and do this glorious yarn the justice it deserves.

Getting back to my whine, here I am Wednesday morning, faced with a free day stretched before me like a wanderer's open road, I wallowed, and then I considered a little fiber therapy would do me good.

I got up, vacuumed the spare bedroom floor, took out my three cubes of Sundara stash, and did a little ogling and a little fondling.

I took out my camera too, thinking I'd take a picture. But "it" didn't work. I felt better, but still not aright. Bleh.

So I cleared out my knitting basket and decided a fresh start would be a better place to start. Clean basket, clear mind. And wouldn't you know it, it kinda worked. Last night I cast on my umpteenth Shetland Triangle in this effulgent colorway of Sundara's sport merino:

And once again, all seems right in the world.

All about the gifts...

It's been a roller coaster week. The good news is that it seems to be ending on a sweeter note than it began.

I'm working on gift knitting, mostly. I expect to knit at least three pair of socks and one dishcloth for Christmas gifts. I would prefer if I could up the sock ante by two and the dishcloth ante by three, but I refuse to set myself up to fail. As long as I get the former amount done, any part of the latter finished will be gray-vay.

So far I have one pair done:

And a second pair on the needles (progress is from the weekend):

Both are knit in heavyweight STR and knit up faster than one could say supercalifragilisticispyalidocious. Seriously, in the time it took you to read that word, I nearly completed one sock.

The past two weeks have been spent working on a hat and mitt set for the deserving husbeast. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary a little over a month ago and I thought I'd knit him a hat and mitt set in heavenly Sundara ASM to show my appreciation for all his support this year.

I picked up two awesomesauce skeins of the ASM in the colorway "Between Dusk and Dawn" in September. I wasn't too thrilled with the color for myself, but as soon as I visualized using it for the husbeast, the color became an instant fave.

So, I promptly knit my first Koolhaas, or as I like to call it, a Cool Haas Luke.

I began the mitts with the second skein on the way up to the Vermont Sheep and Wool festival. Somewhere between a diner in Quechee, VT and home in Massachusetts, the project bag went missing. I spent about 4 hours obsessing about what had become of it and how to get it back. All roads seemed like too much work, with little chance of success, so I decided to quit while I was ahead and just move on.

And really, surprisingly, I did move on, and with much more ease than I expected. As if the universe wanted to reinforce the notion the project had bad juju, the hat, once washed and blocked, fit neither my husband nor me.

The only sting the loss of the project left is the missing pair of US5 Knit Picks 16" circular needles. I really miss them. After playing foot loose and fancy free with the moolah in August and September, resulting in me having to rearange my stash closet, and co-opt the guest bed closet, because I ran out of room to house my zillion skeins of yarn, I decided to impose a spending diet. Sadly this has to include needles because buying one pair of needles from Knitpicks is not cost effective. I would pay as much in shipping as the needles cost and they would take 10 days to get to me.

A few weeks later I'm was impelled to begin the project anew. One sunny Sunday I head down to my favorite LYS, Butterfly Yarns, and picked up a few skeins of some more durable, more husbeast friendly, Cascade 220. Stealing inspiration from Anne Hanson's Hot Waffles I made one hubby very very happy.

My husband has the most beautiful nose.

Stealing inspiration and other heresies...

Most of the time I don't like using patterns. With larger items, like sweaters, it's a crap shoot on sizing. Even worse, I usually take long breaks with sweaters, so I am guaranteed to lose my place. I am meticulous about many, many things. Medical professionals might even add obsessive compulsive, but tracking my knitting progress is not one of these things.

When I put a sweater down for a few weeks, I'm not going to remember where I was. I'm just not. And to be honest, I don't want to track my progress so minutely, so carefully that I'll be able to pick up the project a week or two after having last worked on it and be able to pinpoint exactly where I am. That's just not my way of knitting.

If you couple this with a nature that thinks backtracking is the root of at least one or two evils, and a general preference for winging it, it makes absolutely no sense for me to knit from patterns.

Now this means it took me a lot longer to ramp up to the knowledge I have today than some knitters, or even most knitters. But knitting isn't a contest for me. Yes, I feel a little competitive with other knitters who have stunning project pages, but it's just a feeling and it passes. Competition doesn't drive me to knit; color and texture and a sense of being useful do.

I had a bit of a crises of the mind this year and the only tether to society that I maintained throughout was reading the Ravelry forums. Hindsight will inform if this hindered or assisted my recovery, but I just couldn't help myself. On some days I was just downright addicted to the drama. Watching others crack under the Oceanic boot of the thought police was a great escape.

Is that a horrible thing to say? Yes, it is. And no, it isn't.

Many many moons ago, my dog died and I was devastated. Not being a drinker or a user of other mind altering substances, and not having the capacity to read, or the money for decent cable, the only escape I found was in computer games and cavorting with like minded gamers online. I became a high profile member of one game site, practically living my life online. I became very friendly, and very emotionally, but platonically, attached to another poster. Then one day that world imploded.

I lost what felt like a family. I lost a great deal of confidence in myself. Doubt surrounded me at every turn, and stayed with me for a long, long time.

So when I watch the implosions on ravelry, I am seeing all of my own mistakes over and over again. I am watching the attacks and feeling them personally over and over again. I read on rapturously as some posters make fun of the human foibles on display. Inhaling the snark, I tell myself, is a restorative for my dilapidated sense of self.

Seriously, who knows if this is true. I certainly won't claim to and it's my mind I'm talking about. It could have been a much-needed diversion. But what I took away from this pastime is a hypersensitivity to things I pleasantly ignored previously. Such as looking at for-sale patterns, getting inspired by designs, and then using that inspiration to knit my own thing.

Case in point: Wicked. I had the perfect yarn:

I love top down/raglan sweater construction. But...but...but I don't like the clingy fit, nor do I need a pouch to accentuate my own ample paunch. I just like the faux cable trimming. So the question that I have, the drama inducing dilemma I am concerned with, is when I knit my own version

and desire to give kudos to the artist who inspired me, I dutifully purchase the pattern, but become muddled when determining the correct etiquette in attributing my inspiration on Ravelry.

There are two strong viewpoints on this. Some designers have pointed out their irritation when people reference their pattern, but knit their own design, and have that FO appear alongside true-to-pattern FO's. Other designers bask in the glow of the sentiment that imitation is essentially flattery and encourage it. I understand both points of view. I agree with both points of view. And so, I remain conflicted.

But conflicted is better than jobless, or hungry, or homeless, or mentally ill.

Things I learned While Not Blogging

I've learned a lot of things while not blogging.

1) I've been spelling won't wrong for 42 years. I really didn't know it was a contraction. How did I not know that?

2) I must accept that I am not a blogger. I am not a social creature and blogging is about sharing, which is a social behavior. As callous as this sounds, I do not want to open a dialogue with other knitters on a consistent basis. I don't want friends, I'd really rather be alone. With Ravelry I can weigh in when I want and then ignore when I want. There is no sense of obligation to be social, and this blog has become dead weight with obligation.

3) I don't really like knitting with lace weight yarn. My foray into needle arts began with crocheting lace. In college I would buy cheap mercerized cotton thread from the Coolidge Corner Woolworth's and try to make lace, and add lace onto whatever I could. I still have a bambooesque drink coaster that I added some Estonian lace work to.

And although I love fine lace, I don't want to wear it. It's far too dainty for my rough and tumble ways. I've been expanding my lace knitting with heavier yarn. Here is the last lace project I finished, the all-lace version of Ysolda's Ishbel.

The yarn is the Tulip colorway of Sundara's ASM (aran silky merino), a gorgeous single ply aran weight yarn that is so wonderful to work with, it is really yarn crack. No disrespect to the winning ways of Malabrigo, but their glorious worsted yarn is just a gateway drug compared to the ASM. Yum yum yummity yum.

And one skein of 200 yards made the perfect size neck shawlette.

4) I am not sure if I like knitting with Wollmeise. Blasphemy I know. More test knitting is needed.

The Deep End...

This spring I fell off the deep end. I'm still making my way out. I hope to be back when I get there. In the meantime...

Zombeh Kitteh Is In Yer Bed:



Sleep iz hard



Sleep iz really, really hard



Rawr!

My Kingdom for Some Socks...

My ability to ignore the obvious is monumental sometimes. The irony in my last post about keeping things in moderation, while showcasing two large gift projects cast on in the same week, took days to grasp. Not the brightest bulb on the tree, I am.

But moving right along, harnessing the willpower to clean out my knitting basket last month has finally borne its fruit. One of the projects I completed as part of this undertaking is a pair of cable rib socks in one of my most coveted colorways, Lorna Lace's Gold Hill (details ravelled).

Started as an easy Xmas travel project, on December 22, they lingered and lingered and then lingered some more on their needles. Almost two months passed before they were complete and when they were done, I questioned if I hadn't seen the last of any sock knitting for the forseable future.

(I was pretty disappointed by this yarn. In more than one location I found what I believe are clumps of white nylon.)

The ennui surrounding the project was the result of some free range dissatisfaction. It wasn't the projects fault, but it was over a week before I cast on another sock. Not a long stretch for many, probably, but for me it seemed like eons, but I think it felt like that because I knit very little on it for a week.

Well, this second pair of socks, my Woodland Embossed Leaves (details ravelled), were completed last night, and I can say with some authority that my sock mojo is back.

Within the hour I had decided on my next sock, the third pattern from Favorite Socks to find its way onto my needles, Nancy Bush's Waving Lace Socks (rav link).

I cast these on this morning and have made it through the first half of the second chart. The picture below was taken earlier today.

I adore this edging. Its delicate femininity caught my fancy the moment I first set eyes on the book.

Selfish knitting? Not what it's cracked up to be...

My mind's been laid up for a few weeks. Two days after my last post I succumbed to a full week with the flu (again!). This time it ended with a nasty mental diversion à la The Yellow Wallpaper.

The idea of conversing with the world, even in the one-way medium of a blog, was anathema. Knitting was rare. Yet, my return to knitting was hindered not just by depression, I think, but a lack of motivation. It wasn't until I realized I should get cracking on some baby knits for a little bun in the oven of my husband's best friend's wife, that I was inspired to cast on and cast on with a vengeance. And so the daily knitting routine reasserted itself to much personal glee.

In retrospect, my exclamation a few weeks back about streamlining my gift knitting was short-sighted. The bad choices I made in allowing the gift knitting to take over last fall was reinterpreted falsely. I am propelled, as a knitter, by gift knitting. Giving it up dried up my motivation to knit for myself. I just need to keep things in moderation. Moderation is always where I fail. But knowing the accurate source of the problem means I can combat it better when it crops up again.

Which it might because my new projects are three. But before starting in on them, I want to note that I still have one pre 2009 project left, my Log Cabin Afghan:

It's getting there slowly but surely, but there's only so much garter stitch this knitter can take. I had a good run with it in February, but then I hit a saturation point. Afghan's have never been do or die knitting for me, whereas a sock or a sweater on the needles for seven months would be eating away at me. It's best this project remains in time out for a while.

So, when I finally allowed myself to cast on something new, something for myself, I was at a dead end. After failing to get something cast on with my Wollmeise stash, it took very little to be inspired by one of the gorgeous sock yarns I picked at the end of my January yarn binge. This is Woolen Rabbit's Harmony Sock in the Waterloo colorway.

I think it makes the perfect Embossed Leaf Sock!

At two weeks I only had 3/4 of sock to show for myself. Contrast that yardage to the past week and a half. I finished the first sock, knit 1/3 of the second leg, and made inroads on two new projects.

Using the excessive leftover Dalegarn Baby Ull I've had in my stash from the Yellow Toot project last year, I'm attempting my second EZ EPS inspired raglan bottom up sweater. I'm reusing the fair isle ribbon motifs from Yellow Toot, but taking inspiration from the color blocking of the Dream in Color Tulip Sweater.

I have high hopes for this project. But if it fails, I have a fallback with my second project, the Serenity baby blanket (rav link) which I am knitting in DIC Classy in the Chinatown Apple colorway.

This colorway is a lovely dusty brick red with olive and tan overtones. It is surprisingly similar to Gold Hill colorway of the cable rib socks I finished up last month.

Well, I think it is time for me to move on for the day. The unblogged FOs are piling up. I think I'll touch on those next.

Willpower 2, Failure 0

I cannot count how many times in the past two months I thought I finally was going to get ahead of the curve only to find myself behind a seemingly insurmountable mountain of work and life obligations.

I'm in government finance and its budget season, so the forces in my world have been excessively engaging, at their best, and infuriatingly obtuse, at their worst. Ugh. But, you know there is an amazing silver lining, and one that I keep coming back to time and again.

It's already February. That's right, February. I have been far too busy to even notice winter passing me by. Now, that is something to celebrate at chez yarn. Usually by the winter solstice, which is December 21st or 22nd, I am miserably counting down the hours and days and weeks and months left of the dark days of winter. This misery wallowing begins the moment we turn the clocks back.

I'm in awe of how busy I've been to really, and I mean really, acknowledge the time of year. It's like I've been in a dream state and upon waking I learn I hibernated through (hopefully!) the worst of winter. This is totally a cause for celebration in my world.

Yet the excitement, hmmm...., the excitement is messing with my resolution to finish up what's on my needles. A couple of days ago, when I thought I had reached a milestone on my second Gold Hill Cable Rib sock, I realized I was a repeat and half away from where I thought I was.

I thought I was ready to begin the heel on the second sock, but I was about 10 rows out. That minor snafu generated a whole cloud of bad knitting mojo. And somewhere right below mental consciousness it festered for about 20 or so hours where it bore fruit, resolution bending fruit.

No! I do not want, under any circumstance, to start a new project. I am definitely feeling the power of my will in keeping this stance. So even when I was at my weak point last night, I kept to the spirit of it. I needed a little sumthin' sumthin' and so I came up with a way to keep to my word and to satisfy the wanderlust.

First, I caked up one of these fantabulous dark Paul skeins of Wollmeise:

And I let it sit there on the coffee table in front of me while I swatched a gorgeous lace panel that has captured my imagination. The panel is from Barbara Walker's Second Treasure of Knitting Patterns.

This is the second time I sat down to knit the panel. The first time was with a worsted weight yarn when I was trying to come up with scarf pattern for Claudia. The swatch came out okay, but I determined the pattern itself didn't jibe with what I was looking for in designing her scarf.

This time around, though, my goal was to satisfy the constant, and primal, urge I've been fighting to knit with laceweight yarn. I have yet to really work with this type of yarn and my inner knitter has been fixated on it for some time.

I picked up a cone of silk laceweight yarn I sorta accidentally inherited from my Dad's wife, Chris, and had a go at the panel. After two or three times of knitting four or five rows and then frogging, I decided to chart Barbara Walker's written instructions.

I have some kind of reading disability that was never diagnosed in school. It rears its ugly head when I try to knit from written patterns. This is why I usually design most of what I knit. It wasn't until I happened upon the wonderful world of charted instructions that I realized I wasn't shut out of the wide world of lace. Charts just work for my brain. After the initial hump of learning a particular designers key, I am good to go.

So after I spent some time charting the panel, I gave the swatch another go and a miraculous thing happened. I lost all interest in it. I realized I actually was in the mood for the double stranded garter stitch goodness of my Log Cabin Afghan.

Willpower: 2
Failure: 0

Happy Friday!