two knits of ivory

I blog on impulse. And today's impulse is courtesy of my morning reverie, a near perfect recall of the words uttered by the world's most cinematically perfect Henry Crawford, actor Alessandro Nivolo (what a swoon worthy name! "Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"): The story is Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. The movie is the much maligned 1999 remake. The line comes at the perch of the movie's climax. Henry informs Sir Thomas Bertram, alongside the family assembled in the airy drawing room, he is "all aglow with a new scheme." He wants to move to the Mansfield Park neighborhood so that he may exert all his energies wooing the ostensible heroine of Jane's final novel, Miss Fanny Price. It is just one of many deliciously delivered lines in the movie. To be fair to those ardent admirers of the textual Fanny Price, Patricia Roczema's screenplay does hack her up considerably. I find my ability to stomach the movie ebbs ...

Yes. I have designed a shawl. Fer realz. Last weekend I worked out the kinks in the final chart of The Sheltering Bough and knit 'er on up. The end product is satisfactory, all the stitches in the right place. Not bad for a freshman effort. Now I have to get off my guff and do the really hard work: generate a pattern. More conventional pics may be found on my rav project page . *She, as in my first instinct is to not use a first person pronoun.

I'm working on a hybrid shawl pattern that has the shape of Ysolda 's Ishbel (which grows wider at a faster pace than it grows deep) and the easy, soothing fir cone motif that makes Evelyn Clark 's Shetland Triangle such a fun knit. The pattern has been appropriately named The Sheltering Bough. I'm using Madelinetosh's madtosh DK yarn in Badlands: I tried first using some of that new DIC cashmere smooshy I recently picked up but once I got to the lace section the fabric's touch didn't feel right. (Now that'll be a lot of knitting to frog, but) I'm glad I found the guts to abandon it and go with the madtosh DK. This is a colorway I never would have purchased online. It's charms only became apparent to me when I looked at the skein in person, up close. The color is very reminiscent of her Cove colorway. The blues in the Cove are still there but of a much deeper hue. As well, the blue is a foil for the numerous shades of umber. ...

The past week my life has been consumed by two passions, a new shawl pattern and Katniss Everdeen . I'm not ready to explore these obsessions here, though. I'm just looking to do a little housekeeping. Saturday, I finally polished off the thumb gussets for these pretty fingerless mitts: Any Yarnissima fans might recognize the lovely coiny cable from her Firestarter sock pattern. Visually speaking, there is nothing more striking than twisted cable knit stitches, especially when they are tiny. These are not tiny, but still extremely striking to this knitter's eye. This project was a quick, fun gift knit. I used about 80% of one ball of Quince & Co's Lark yarn (colorway above is Peak's Ferry). I forgot to weigh the leftovers, so an approximate yardage isn't at my fingertips. One ball has 134 yards (the ubiquitous 50 grams). As per usual my kung fu grip when knitting small items in the round meant that my gauge was conspicuously tight, even ...

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson One of my biggest pet peeves is inconsistency. Although there is little to compare the roar of a stormy ocean when bored you are, in daily life I crave the waters of a calm crick buffered by woods. Ralphie boy belittles foolish consistency, but I can't stop myself from taking offense as if he snubs all forms. Case in point, I've really been proud of my recent FO record. I attribute my productivity to a slavish single WIP policy. Since my proclamation of pride yesterday my resolve has lost all shape, like a sandcastle that has met it's first wave. This inability to remain consistent pisses me off. Luckily looking at yarn helps. madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in Faded Chinos I'm rounding the bend on a pair of fingerless mitts and my mind just wants to cast on five zillion things before I finish them off. So n...

The question is do I really have something to say? The answer? Questionable. Is it worth saying? The answer? Questionable. But there is yarn. Madtosh DK in Badlands But then there's always yarn, amirite? (We have a new kitty who actually likes hanging out with us humans. His name is Isaak. He loves yarn, too.) I think the problem is I have too much to say. So my best bet when I'm overwhelmed is to break things down. So what's interesting about my knitting lately? 1) I found two new yarns I just love to death; 2) I've been extremely FO successful now that I've put down the law on having only one project on the needles at any given time; and 3) I've been struggling with making my knit design ideas flesh. So the new yarns? OMG! I finally found a solid yarn that I want to knit. It's a fairly new regional yarn company called Quince & Co . The line I've knit with is their worsted line called Lark. Here's a prototype sock ...