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December 02, 2004
If you've got a bandwagon, I wanna be on it
After creeping into the school gallery early to take the Day Without Art drapery from yesterday down off the artwork, I took the whole day off from thinking about art and dug a little into my stash of unfinished knitting.
finish us!
These here are my top priorities. Clockwise from top left:
1) a long cotton skirt with a cable up the front. I stopped working on it around July.
2) a sassy red cotton skirt with a deep crochet openwork hem and a plain jane stockinette top. This has already been finished and ripped out once, and was abandoned when almost done. Typical of me.
3) the Must Have cardigan in orange lambswool. Started on summer vacation then dropped like a hot potato when I got an exciting design project in my head, it doesn't even have a full back yet.
4) Rogue, in mystery wool, which really shouldn't be included here since I only started it yesterday, but right now Rogue and I are in the giddy flush of new romance, and I can't bring myself to prioritize any of these others above her. Give us time, all new wool relationships sour eventually (usually around the seaming stage, if the rocky second sleeve period doesn't do you in). But for now, I love Rogue so much that last night I forced Peter to admire all three inches of her and tell me how lovely her pocket was (it was all I could do not to invite him to stroke it).
5) a cotton top down raglan cap-sleeve t-shirt, a la Glampyre. This is cotton recycled from a sweater that I dyed before unraveling so it would be uneven like that. It took me three dyebaths to get this boring olive colour. I think I'm going to duplicate stitch a black star on the front, like my star tattoo.
6) Jenna's funnel top, also started on vacation, didn't get very far (I think I worked on it for about two hours). I really want it for wearing under stuff before spring, though. When I get to the armhole bind-off I'm switching to black; I love me some lime green, but not too close to my face, please.
The funnel top is Stahl Portofino, all the rest are recycled yarn, meaning it is torture to work on the cotton ones because cotton from commercial sweaters isn't spun and splits like crazy. I won't be recycling anything but wool from now on but I still have a big stash of cotton to get through.
There's also a blue openwork dress that's kind of a high priority, but I finished the whole thing already then decided to use a different stitch and knit it sideways instead, so I don't want to show a picture because someone will say it looks fine the way it is and that I am too obsessive, I should just leave it. I just think it could be better, that's all.
I won't be showing too many progress photos of Rogue or the Must Have cardigan, because although they're both beautiful sweaters, most of the cool bloggers have already made them ages ago, so everyone's sick of seeing them. I promise I won't show Rogue until she's at least to the armholes, and the Must Have not until at least the knitting part is done.
So: after getting all this stuff out, do you think I worked on any of it? Did I even spend any quality time with my newest love, Rogue? Hell, no!
Since I haven't been allowing myself any knitting in the last 3 months while getting ready for my grad show (a wire dress doesn't count, I mean knitting I can actually WEAR, that doesn't shred my hands up), I've been living vicariously through the knitting of others. It seems there's some obsessive behaviour regarding mittens going on, and it made me realize that I am currently mitten-less and it's cold here; I want mittens like Stephanie's. I don't have any of those great mitten books (or a desire to haul my lazy arse to the library right now, thanks anyway) so I dug out my copy of Nancy Bush's Folk Socks instead. Although I love this book, I've only ever made one pair of socks from it: the Mamluke socks. So rather than branch out at all I decided to make mittens with all of the pattern elements of the Mamluke socks, plus Estonian braids (a disgraceful mixing of cultural traditions you say? Oh well. I'm a bit of a slut that way).
Here's my cuff, with braids (I learned that technique today!) and the "Allah" pattern from the socks. Oh, those tiny, tiny dpns, they've been languishing in the needle jar for too long. My hands get too hot in mittens, but too cold without them, so I need mittens that are sort of thin. The black yarn here is a Value Village score that I think is a mohair/wool blend, and the red is an angora blend unravelled from a secondhand sweater (did I mention what a cheapskate I am?). The yarns are both really fuzzy; I hope they don't felt into a ball the first time I wear the mittens out. Because then they will be too warm.
I think these patterns will work well in red and black, though. I'm just trying to ignore the fact that my jacket is green.
I'm such a fickle lover though, I don't know how long I'll be able to stay with these mittens. I had a little browse through the winter Knitty patterns (apparently designers get to have an early peek! a perk I hadn't anticipated) and there are a lot of great things in there; I already want to start Stefanie Japel's design before the issue even comes out. Only the lack of good enough yarn in the stash stops me.
Posted by jodi at December 2, 2004 04:39 PM | categories: sticks and string