Morning has broken and

...it is pretty much the same temperature it has been first thing in the morning for most of the summer.  And yet everything is different.  Morning, instead of it being at it's early summer peak of 4 a.m., is now at 6 a.m. .  Each day morning happens just a little later.  11 or 12 C at 4:30 a.m. is a whole lot different than 11 or 12 C at 6:30.  It's chilly in a very much fall sort of way.  The back of summer is broken and everything will feel just a little bit more fall every day.

And in so many ways this pleases me.  I love fall best of all so this little beginning of fall is when I think of serious knitting.  Not that I am not thinking of knitting all the time, but this is when it really gets interesting.

I spent time yesterday, while not knitting, looking at my Ravelry Sweater bundle.  I keep thinking I should weed it out, but I still like the sweaters in there, even if some of them were my favourites from eons ago.  

For a long time now, I have been thinking that what I need to knit is some simple basic sweaters, a cardigan, a hoodie, a simple pullover, but as I think on it and review my favourites, I am not so sure.  The idea of simple may have arisen over the last few years as I sorted through all life's things that needed sorting.  It may have been my minds way of putting resolution and respite into life when I couldn't have it so immediately.  I am not so sure that I need resolution anymore.  That part is over and things are settled and done. Why stick to simple when I can have divine.  

But then, I have to have to think about what the definition of simple is, what my definition of simple is.  What is the picture that pops in my head when I think simple?  

I want something that is really wearable, that I can wear just as easily washing dishes as I can wear it out and about.  I don't really want a sweaters for home and sweaters for out division in my sweater chest.  What I would rather have is sweaters that are warm, warmer and warmest.  Why can't the warm ones be lacy.  Why can't the warmest ones be elaborate colourwork?  I think I have been defining simple as something plain and that is just silly.

If I go back through my favourites, I can see the slow change to this more modern, less fitted shape.  I love that. I think that the part I love best of many of them is the drape and flow.  As I knit some of  these more relaxed shapes, I am going to have to be careful to keep that.  

I am attempting to in my Granito

It is going to be a little more challenging in a garment where I want to keep the fit at the shoulders where I am a regular large and still have the ease through the lower part of the sweater, where I am most decidedly on the high side of the X's that denote Plus sizes.  Still it is a challenge of shaping that worked really well on my Lipstick cardigan

even if I have to reknit it because my size has changed enough to make the neckline too wide.  The shaping on it turned out really great.

All the things I have learned about my body shape over the last years as I knit sweaters, means that I am no longer as worried about attempting some of the lovely things designers do.  There are ways that I can make the little details I so admire work for me.  

Or so I hope.  Still, as much as I want sweaters with interesting details, that fit well in the shoulders, I want this too.   I want shape and size and drape and flow.  Yes it is plain, but it has elegance and style that I adore. I simply want it all. 

I think that is where my head is at this morning.  Knit where your heart is.  It's good when head and heart meet and it's fall to boot.  Morning has broken in a most grand way.