Well. Will you look at that.

Well.  Will you look at that.  Actual knitting content.  

I have been knitting on things, it is just that everything I am knitting on is in the long swath of the same thing.  Bridgewater is still in it's center square of garter stitch, getting smaller, by one stitch each and every row.  It takes a long time, 204 rows to be precise to get back to just one stitch.  It's not really photogenic.

There are socks happening.  But they are plain socks in cool fabric.  Stockinette.  Plain knitting.  Good for all purposes but a kind of boring photo. You might see that later this week though.

And the Still Light tunic.  

A couple of weeks ago, I finished the body.  It didn't look like much.  Last week, I kept myself busy knitting small round tubes of stockinette. For pockets. Each of them is only 6 inches long, but oh my what a difference 6 inches of knitting make.  

 The small 6 inch tube that forms each pocket, gives the shape and drape to this amazing tunic.  From a weird thing with these holes at the edge of this oddly wide center, you have this amazing drape and that simple elegant shape that is the essence of this design.

Look at the flow of that pocket.  To me this is simplicity and simplicity is elegance.

It may be hard to see what this will look like in this messy unblocked state, but I have always been good at seeing beyond the reality to see the bones of a thing. It drapes without needing to drape at all. As soon as I completed the first pocket, I knew that I was near understanding it.  After binding off the the second pocket, I felt as if I uncovered the secret of the universe and all I saw was light and air and this magical elegant drape.

The original is designed with 3/4 sleeves, but the owner of this garment has requested longer sleeves.  I have 4 balls and a very little bit of a 5th left of my original 11 balls, so I should be able to knit them longer than either of us wants.    

I am feeling really, really good about my knitting this morning.  Sleeves are hardly any work at all...I might be underplaying the work to knit two sleeves, but still.

In the rest of the world, my house had Christmas yesterday.  Little boys slept as they needed to, puppies slept as they needed to and everybody opened gifts and watched the magic of small, squirmy, noisy, happy, healthy children.  We ate simply and well and aided by a couple of very nice bottles of wine, one from a local wine maker, we toasted what is good in our lives and left our cares at the door.

After the kids left, I tidied up the leftovers, did my dishes and sat down with the remainders of a bottle of wine and a piece of fruitcake to sit and knit.  Today is my day, just to knit and that is a lovely thing.