Wednesday 22 April 2009

Photographs are amazing things

I'm always surprised the way things look in photos. It locks in on a moment of time and records it forever.

I love the way photos can reveal the heart of a knit in progress. The photo might show something that your eye misses up close, something that your mind isn't willing to see and sometimes a photo will show you an aspect of your work, a dimension that isn't standing out to you but that is there none the less. In the moment of capture, a photo sees more clearly than we are sometimes willing to admit.

Its like that with this little shawl I am working on. Its to offset the Lehe shawl, to give me my shawl quota when I know that my brain is too tired to work its way to patterns, too tired to read the charts with logic and clarity.

I'm knitting Shawl that Jazz but you know me, I have to change it and mess with it a bit. I'd like a few more shawls to wear to work and shawls for work mean something smaller than an average shawl, something with ends that are not going to get caught while you are looking for yarns, and running to find patterns, getting the phone, all those little workday things.

I think what I want to knit is really more of a Scarf that Jazz (begging your pardon, Sam). I am knitting the pattern with Silk Garden Sock yarn for no other reason than that a particular colour way spoke to me the other day.

I wasn't certain till today when I took some pictures if I liked the yarn in this simple garter stitch. I do. I am liking the colour of this section and this section, and I'm liking it so much that I'm quite sure this is the right yarn.

What I am not sure about is needles. I'm knitting it on fairly large needles, 5 mm and this may yet prove to be a mistake. I'm doing it for the silliest reason of all. When I started it, I could not find any smaller mm circulars, and I could not locate the 3.5 mm tips I wanted to use. I think I was so blinded my the urge to knit with the yarn and decided it would be prefectly fine to knit this on big needles. It may yet be, but it could also end up being something that loses badly knit so large.

I keep telling myself that it'll be fine, it will look lacy, it will be more of an openwork peice. Riiiiiiiiight.

There is a strong possibility that I am beguiled by the yarn and the simple knitting so much that I am blinded to the scale of each stitch,willing myself to think it will all be just fine. Right now it seems I am perfectly willing to let myself be led down the garden path.

It occurs to me that there may be something else at play. Its spring. Maybe I want to see flowers.

Here is something I am very pleased with, the Lehe shawls centre section. Even laying casually over a chair, unblocked, just stretched a little, this looks wonderful. I can't wait to see it complete. This one is a very satisfying sort of knit.

One good, one bad. I'm about even.

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