Tag Archives: process

1…2…3 in 1.

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‘multiple knitwear designer personality’.

i became distinctly aware that i have this ‘disorder’

working feverishly away at my notes for a new design last week.

the idealist in me started with a blank white page

neatly drawing schematics and writing evenly spaced lines of numbers,

absolutely sure that perfection was just within her grasp.

then the realist takes over.

she is less patient because she knows that no process is going to be perfect.

she erases often and isn’t so careful about things being neat and pretty.

deeply impatient, the mad creative type abruptly cuts in.

she is just trying to get the numbers, and more importantly the ideas, down

before her brain veers left

onto the next unexpected branch of its tangential thinking.

she scribbles her thoughts wherever there is open space,

drawing arrows

to make up for her lack

of clear linear thinking.

she can’t be bothered

to slow down long enough

to erase well,

so she leaves smudges.

she is a bit of a mess

still,

she’s the one

that gets the majority

of the work done

leaving the other two

cleaning things up.

and whether

they like it or not,

it does take all 3 of them

to get the complete job finished.

i admit it’s a bit crazy but it works, so i’m not going to be the one to try and fix it.

‘evenly’ taken from 6:35 of first kings.

post script

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i would

like to maintain

that i am not the one

who actually put scissors

into the mailer.

this is very

possible, as

3 pair of willing

hands could easily

have done the deed

(and been happy to do so).

but, i usually do things involving

sharp objects and important things

after all those curious fingers

are done for the day.

not sure which would be worse:

that i fumbled them in there myself,

or being a mama who would have left scissors of that magnitude within reach.

given the choices, i’m gonna shoulder the blame myself this time,

but the kids sure were giggly when i questioned them.

‘possible’ taken from 12:18 in romans.

ask for directions?

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my friend w. has this great idea.

what i need, she says, is a knitting gps.

one built to respond specifically to situations like:

when i’m 3/4 of the way

through any given project,

have lost all motivation and still

refuse to even consider turning around;

when i’m blindly speeding ahead,

already 12 rows past missed increases, with no intention

of checking the directions in the foreseeable future;

when, yet again,

i ‘don’t have time’ to swatch

and will ultimately be so far off the

recommended gauge that abandoning

the project completely will be the only turn left to take;

when i am sure

that my memory will

retain the exact details of

the new pattern that i am brewing up

without my having to actually write it down…

such a device does not yet exist,

but i sure would get a lot of use out of it

if it did.  think of all the wrong turn knitting mileage

that could be avoided.  bet i could cast on 2 or 3 more projects

with all that extra time suddenly on my hands…

‘exist’ taken from 7:23-25 in ecclesiastes.

pics from top to bottom: beautiful, moses, merciful and shines.

 

the opposite of being undecided

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today knitcircus released their winter 2011 issue.

sold as part of that collection is my ‘duplicity’.

inspired by the stark branches of winter as

they set against the cool midday sky,

i wanted it to be a clutch

but it balked

and became a reversible buttoned cowl instead.

it’s double knit so that there are no strands to be carried across

the long stretches of color.

this also allows the mc and cc

 to swap places on opposite sides.

i was thrilled for the opportunity

to try classic elite yarn’s

eco-friendly yarn

‘woodland’.

it’s softness

was a surprise

since it’s partly made

of nettles, but soft and fairly silky it is.

the wool takes dye differently

than the nettle fibers do,

so the yarn has a way of looking solid & heathery at the very same time

…already my mind is racing to work out the details

of the next project i will knit in this fiber

whose nettles belie it’s smoothness.

now, there’s some duplicity for you.

‘duplicity’ taken from 11:3 in proverbs.

influential

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to be fair,

wendy didn’t really

taunt me with sock yarn.

i might even

have asked her

if she had any of this

particular yarn

after seeing suzanne‘s

project pics on ravelry.

so,

i guess,

in all honesty that my own short attention span is to blame

and not wendy’s generosity in being willing to part with

this amazing sock yarn.

…um, now that i’ve told ‘the rest of the story’,

will some kind knitter please come over and frog the skew sock that i already started?

please.

i’m sure i don’t want to finish it,

but not so sure i can rip all those many rows of tiny, precise stitches out.

where is super grover when you really do need him anyways?

 ‘need’ taken from 16:21 of exodus.

rationalizability

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apparently contrast is my achilles heel. remember this?


i do love shibui sock yarn.

it’s soft and i have a

well known weak spot

for semi solid colorways.

still, it doesn’t give my skew socks

the pop!

that i envisioned.

my fingers keep knitting, but all the while my head is saying,

“why are you doing all this work to knit on the bias

when the greens transition so smoothly that the angles hardly show at all?”

then my so called ‘friend’ wendy

offered up this ‘opal hunderwasser‘

(but would a true friend

really dangle

boldly colored sock yarn

in front of a friend

who was halfway thru her first sock of a pair

in a much more subdued,

or dare i say

even boring by comparison, colorway?)

i am not so sure…

‘comparison’ taken from 3:10 of 2nd corinthians.

for what it’s worth

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improbable

as it may seem,

a size 11 double pointed needle

when fumbled

clumsily onto my front porch

(while waiting with my daughter for

my son’s bus to bring him home to us)

will fall silently and in seemingly slow motion,

teeter on the edge of the wide space

between the nicely weathered boards,

then just when you’re sure that all is well,

(and it is too late to act anyway

even if you move dangerously quickly)

drop into the dark unknown –

the far reaches –

a territory that we call,

with a slight shudder, ‘down there’.

now,

this may delay

progress being made

on this snuggly toy owl’s ears,

but it will not

– and i repeat ‘not’ –

stop things completely.

i am making it work on just 4 dpn’s

because 3 of my kids

(and even the baby asked with his big brown eyes)

already requested exactly which yarns they would like to have theirs knit up in.

(note to self: letting the kids play in my stash might be best avoided in the future…)

‘worth’ taken from 23:15 in genesis.

ear to ink to fiber

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i am, admittedly, a process knitter.

i am also a recovering perfectionist, so there it is.

in that vein of things,

here is the beginning to now of the ‘rib and button scarf‘.

it is a far from flaw-free process,

but since i aim to ‘recover’ from my perfectionistic bent,

i think i must accept the process, blemishes and all…

so this (radio city music hall):

inspired these:

which in the early stages of

becoming real looked like this:

(note how very unblocked and quite wrinkled it is

from me carrying it all about

to knit it here and there as i went along)

*

*

*

*

*

and

in the end,

all semi-solid

and buttoned up cozy,

wound up in

Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2011

looking like this:

and it sure did

come a long way, baby.

‘carried’ taken from 10:5 in jeremiah.

bottom photo courtesy of interweave knits.

‘rios’ in teal feather courtesy of malabrigo yarn.

conditionally

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like i had said that i would, i had every intention of

posting up a pic of my first sock so far

two full days ago.

it’s true.

but,

i kept thinking,

‘i’ll just finish up this one last repeat and then take the photo’

along with, ‘this will look so much more complete once i do this row…’

so you can see how the knitting happened

but the photo taking did not.

finally sat myself down right in the middle of the kitchen island last night

(as the light is better here than nearly anywhere else)

and snapped these couple of shots.

progress is definitely being made

(do you remember this pic?)

in an ‘i am the turtle,

not at all the hare’

kind of way.

slow, but

sure.

‘slow’ taken from 86:15 in the psalms.