two knits of ivory

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs who happens to be hanging on the wall? Art. Or as we say in the patois of my adopted homeland , aht. What I do know, and have known, for a long, long while is that I don't know my aht from my elbow. What is aht? No friggin' clue. I only know what I like to look at. And what I like to look at is photos I take of my knitting. Or to be more accurate, photographs of things I have knit at some point this summer. I've since tucked these sleeves, knit in my favorite Jo Shark DK tweed, away in favor of some really mindless knitting: A Shetland triangle in Malabrigo sock, Primavera colorway: But to be perfectly honest I have been sucked into the vortex known as Facebook gaming, specifically Kingdoms of Camelot. Oh woe betide my knitting life.

My mind wants to talk about two different things simultaneously, feminism and my latest FO. My latest FO, the Tea Leaves Cardigan aka It Felt Good to Get Out of the Rain: I think I've finally mastered a good armpit seam: The sweater is hip length with short sleeves. It took about 700 yards of madtosh DK in Terrarium and was knit primarily on size US 6 circular needles. I loved knitting the ruching.

That's seven yarns. Seven iterations to express my joy, my love of my yarn, and my love of my current project (no matter how bad it turns out). I am knitting the Tea Leaves Cardigan (<--- rav link). Oh yes, you read correctly: I am knitting.From.A.Pattern. Moi. (Geesh of all the German I've ingested, I haven't learned how to say me? How can that be? Is it mir?) Mir! But true to form I am hacking my way through it already. My first hack was to replace the garter stitch with seed stitch. I love the way garter stitch feels, but I'm not that into how it looks. Garter stitch is bold, where I prefer seed stitches' coyness. I prefer to project dainty and demure rather than what I am in actuality, loud and brash. 'Tis my prerogative. I tried something new. I cable cast on in ribbing and I absolutely adore the x o x o look of this trim. On the neckline. I'll probably do a basic bind off on the wrists and body. Someday I hope to garner the p...

I definitely view the world differently than other people. Sometimes I view the world differently than myself. For the first time in my life I am able to catch glimpses of the "real" world, as it stands apart from my world. And sometimes my mind and body go off on their own. For at least a week one part of me has been mentally berating myself for not taking an interest in photographing my FOs and wips. Another part of me has been guffawing at miss berator, laughing at her rigidity (I need a better word here...). Knitting and photography are my joys, fuck if I'm gonna do them when I am not going to enjoy them. The pictures herein were taken by Focused me, but edited by Fugue me. (I definitely need to name my different mes. That's a project in and of itself.) As I was saying, Fugue me edited the photos on my laptop. My laptop sucks for photo editing, but I love my laptop. How do I reconcile these things? I dunno. Yet. Sweater, sweater, I knit a ...

When Ted and Sylvia Plath Hughes purchased their first home in North Tawton, Devon, England in the early sixties, Sylvia, the whirling dervish that she was, immediately set about making the house a home. She painted the walls, doors, woodwork, furniture, and probably even some of the floors. This part of her story is always guaranteed to make me feel like a sloth. From the numerous biographical material I've read over the years, the house held a room on the second floor which was hers, and hers alone. A writing study. One of the room's most prominent features was a vivid red floor rug. Or was it walls (or both)? I'm pretty sure it was the carpet, but I'm far too focused on my thoughts to ferret the truth out of my bookcase. Sylvia was invigorated by color, especially red. She believed it actively fed her creativity. As a knitter, I identify with this; color is my primary inspiration. What I realized last month is that the color of my projects can either ...

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 kno...

Sweater pattern knitting is all about Trust and Faith. These are two things of which I am in constant want. Yet I am driven to knit sweaters. Driven, as in obsessively thinking about this and only this when I should be doing any number of things adults need to do to make money and keep a roof over their heads. (Deep breath taken; slowly exhaled.) My first two sweaters were disastrous affairs due to my poor choice of materials. They fit physically, but they weren't fit for public consumption. The third sweater was a success and saw many years of useful service until recent evolutions in color fashion have given it a dated appearance. My fourth sweater, though, is a minor masterpiece to me. No, I had no clue on how to measure yarn gauge, so it does not fit my husband perfectly. And, no, I had no clue how to adjust the cable patterns to account for the shoulder decreases, so the cables on the shoulder look a bit odd in places. But, but, but, I designed the Aran panel myself an...

We all know there was life before Wii. I have knitted proof. I wore said proof to work on Monday with my Digitessa socks . Woot. The kitties wanted to get in on the photo shoot yesterday, too. Right over that bridge is a pathway into the boggy woods behind my house. I take the dogs there almost every weekday. Over the winter our most scarediest of cats, Hunter (background), started coming with me on my walks. I was amazed, and encouraged him. Hunter was hit by something, most probably a car, when he was one. His leg was shattered in three places requiring an orthopedic surgeon to insert three sets of pins at each break. Three months later he had all but one set of pins removed, the poor guy, and he's never been the same. Who would be? Now he spends most of his time out of doors in the woods, or when he's indoors, under the kitchen sink. For several weeks now, since the weather has been less hostile, Hunter comes with the dogs and I every single day. Grissom joined us two days t...

The stress built up considerably last week. The posts I wrote over the course of it seem to be emanating an overwhelming shrillness that is discomforting. To be honest, I can't quite make out if the shrillness is coming from the written words or just the memories of my emotional state as I wrote the posts. Either way I want to rip them out and hide them away. Facing them is facing me in a raw and exposed state. I know I need to do it, so I'll do it by moseying along and getting back to the discussion of sweet yarn and knitting goodness. Here goes: I did finish up the Dalegarn top down raglan baby sweater last week, and it is an acceptable finished garment. It just may be a wee bit (or even two sizes :-/) small. I can't even bring myself to do a wrap up, other than to say I used size US4 needles and Dalegarn's Baby Ull. I assuaged my feelings of considerable inadequacy by delving into a new pattern, which can be, for me, pouring salt on an open wound. But, I did it any...

My Blueberry Moon sweater has only received perfunctory attention these past few weeks. The cold snap early last week ignited my interest again. Yesterday it received almost undivided attention and I was able to knit about 200 yards, as well as redo the shoulder seam. I reduced the number of buttons, expanded the button holes from one stitch to two, and used a 1K2P rib. All day yesterday I mulled over how I could add expanding cables on the bottom half of the sweater using some A-line shaping in the spirit of Vogue's Silver Belle . As soon as I'm done with this ball on the body, I'll start a sleeve to experiment on. If I had knit as many stitches on my socks last night as I did on this sweater I would have had both hubby's earth socks and the regia silk self striping socks done. Well, not exactly. I realize stockinette stitch on a 36" needle goes a heck of a lot faster than mostly stockinette on three size US1 dpns. My inner castigator, she prefers to believe the ...