On the Needles

Many knitters seem to have certain oddities in common.

One is of course that we are always counting. A friend of mine mentioned this to me -- she was over visiting and I was, of course, knitting and talking. She said there seems to be a lot of counting going on. I laughed and said, you know, you ought to hear it when a group of knitters get together:

Alice: "So, Linda, have you warmed up to your daughter's boyfriend at all?"

Linda (whispering): "sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . . (aloud:) not really."

Another oddity is that so many of us can't seem to knit one thing at a time. I have never heard a satisfactory explanation for this. I don't know if it's a short attention span or a desire to fool ourselves into thinking that we can finish more things in a shorter time if we are working on five things at once.

Despite my fervent desire to finish the Faroe sweater before Thanksgiving and the Anemoi mittens before Christmas, I just started a Christmas stocking for my son's (long-term) girlfriend. It's to match the ones that my grandmother knitted for my siblings and me and my mother knitted for the kids. I don't know how long those Anemoi mittens will take but I really don't see how I can finish all three projects in time. Something's going to have to give. I'll probably let the stocking go until next Christmas, though I hate to do it. We luvvv the girlfriend.

Complexity.

This is what Alice Starmore is telling me it's supposed to look like. So far so good. I might once have thought it was too complicated but it's just following a pattern. As I started knitting I realized that the complexity, if any, was not in knitting it but in designing it. Maybe not even that. Maybe it's just in looking at it.

Normally I prefer simplicity to complexity and the classic to the novel. That's just my personality. I felt that way even when I was in my teens. I really think this sweater is beautiful though.

Seeing in Color

"And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." – The Book of Acts.

Why didn’t somebody tell me. I started adding my second color last night and it was really cool. It’s not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be and it’s going to make a really pretty pattern. And what’s more than that is that I can suddenly see making patterns of my own.

Oh yeah, I know everybody does that, but everybody is creative as hell and I have never ever been. I always wanted to be creative and never have been able to be.

Suddenly I see a world of knitting designs opening up before me. I want to finish this sweater and Eunny’s mittens and then I want to design a million things, and knit them.

"And woe to those who try to stop me!" -- Wicked Witch of the West.

My first

My first:

blog entry,
sweater,
two-color knit.


This is the bottom two inches of a Faroe sweater similar to the one in Alice Starmore's Fishermen's Sweaters. I can't find a photo of it anywhere on the net so until I get my photo and a scanner together I'm going to have to just show my progress here.


The bottom two and a half inches are shown as bicolor in the pattern but I don't think much of the way that looks, so I'm doing a solid k2p2. Yarns are a dark navy Berroco Peruvia (with a hint of lavender giving it an iridescent look) and natural (local) merino/alpaca 50/50. The needles are a US #3 Addi turbo for the bottom and #5 AT for the body.


I'm a little apprehensive about doing something this complicated (for me) in two colors but you have to start somewhere.


When the yarn comes in I'm going to knit my daughter (in college up north) a pair of Eunny Jang's Anemoi mittens in her school colors. Don't tell her -- it's a surprise. (I already have the needles and the pattern). Anemoi is well named -- the ancient Greek word for the four winds, and she's up where it's a lot colder and windier than it is here in North Carolina.