Knitting is Peculiar

The longer I knit, the more I am aware that knitting is filled with all kinds of weird peculiarities.  Things like counting and how even reasonably bright people can't hold the count of two all the time.  Things like how even washed gauge swatches will lie like a son of a gun.  Things like how memories rise unbidden that just tickle your fancy.

As I was knitting sleeve two, still completely utterly filled with goofy silly joy, it struck me how familiar this feeling was.  I'm often filled with goofy silly joy when I am knitting but this feeling was so strong and so complete. I started to think about things that have given me such complete pleasure as these sleeves.

Like knitting and completing my first big project.  

Like the hat I knit for my neighbour.

Or like this particular pair of socks.

Bahahahahaha

When I remembered these socks, knit way back in 2014 I got it.  I understood it all.  That was an incidental colour thing that just happened as I knit.  I had only one ball of a Kroy yarn and had purchased black to go with it.  I decided the striping would happen at the colour changes and there you have it.   Perfect fun socks.

When I started my version of the Laekur pattern, I didn't know how I would start.   I started with the black and red because it felt like the right way to stretch my slightly short metres.  I did not know that I was going to put a narrow band of black and red between colour changes.  It just felt right.  Even before that, by choosing the black and the red as I looked for what else I could use to stretch the yarn I had to make a sweater, it just felt right.

When I realized that  I had been on this colour adventure before, I knew that it was just another of knittings great peculiarities, come home to roost.  

My knitting today is going to be the yoke.  Traditional Icelandic is to knit the body from the bottom to the underarms , and then join sleeves and body and knit the yoke.  I have yarn issues.  To keep the natural looking gradient going as I did in the sleeves, and to use as much of each colour as I possibly can, I need to knit down not up.  I know that I have plenty of the lightest colour for my yoke and some for down the body of the sweater, so knitting the yoke now and then picking up and knitting down to the end of each colour makes good sense to me.  

All kinds of challenges in today's knitting.  With a little bit of luck, the peculiarities of knitting are going to only be the good kind.