I watched a bit of news today.  I don't do that much.  It usually makes me angry.    Today though, I am just filled with sorrow.  And the first question I ask myself is how did we fail this family?  How many times did we fail this young person? How much more could we have done to help the young person who did such a terrible thing.  Because of how we as a society failed that young person, so many more are lost. 

We, as a society failed and now so many innocents will bear the cost of that failure.  

Cool

I strayed from the plan.  

And it was wonderful.  

I cast on for the Hiraeth sweater by Hanna/Herbgarden Knitwear.  It's not fancy colourwork and elaborate patterns.  It's simpler looking but no less challenging and just as much fun.  

It's exactly what I needed.  The colour is the perfect mid winter knit.  This time I hope it ends in a full sweater.  I want to wear this brilliant colour this year.  

It's also the first day of testing for the F1 2026 season and I am pumped.  

I gotta go now.  Make coffee.  Watch cool stuff.  Knit cool stuff.  Cool.

Winter Doldrums

I meant to knit on the blue sweater yesterday.  Being so close to finishing the body, you would think that I'd be committed to working on it.  But no.  Not me.   I really don't feel like working on it.  I am giving myself permission to go walkabout and explore something different.  Not too different but out of my routine of late.  

I am going to work on my London Fog sweater today.  If that doesn't get me past this winter doldrums, I may have to bring out the big guns and cast on something new.  

I mentioned last week that I got a gift from one of my nieces.  I debated for many days about what to treat myself with.  My stash does not contain much acrylic yarn.  I have a strong blanket feeling this year.  There are some many neat blanket patterns out there and I feel the need.  I prefer to knit blankets in acrylic, so that's what I decided on.  But not just ordinary acrylic.  I bought a huge pile of neon acrylic with a strong navy contrast.  I am so excited even if, in one fell swoop, I added a half a giant tub of yarn to my stash.  Oh well.  It should arrive next week.  

Good times.

Sometimes when your heart wants to start something new, but your head says wait, it can be hard to settle.  I tried switching projects.  I tried tidying the WIPs bin.  I tried searching through some beautiful yarn and project photos for inspiration.  Don't try this last one if you are looking to get back to focusing on what you have in hand.  

I struggled to settle.  Friday afternoon ought to have been sock time.  I did a few rows.  

Six to be precise.

I tried the blue sweater.

A few rows happened.  4 to be precise.

That was it for Friday and Saturday.  

Sunday I settled a bit and knit on my London Fog sweater.  

That went much better.  I finally found the focus I was looking for and I spent a good part of the day just knitting.

I have made a wee bit of a decision too.  This gorgeous yarn was purchased to be a sweater where the yarn did the talking.  I am going to add one small detail.  I am going to add a double row of garter stitch every 10 or 12 rows.  I'm not sure yet what the scale ought to be.  10 is what my inspiration (the Willard sweater) uses.  12 may be more appropriate for this yarn weight.  The ridges are not meant to show off anything but to highlight, to bring attention to the yarn with the smallest bit of texture.  Ridges also help make the knitting feel faster.  It's like stripes.  There is always something to look forward to.  It will help make a simple sweater in gorgeous yarn be a stand out in my wardrobe. 

As long as it's warm.  That is always my principal goal.  

   

Sticking with the plans

It was an odd sort of day.  I found myself wanting to wind more yarn.  But no.  This is not the time to do that.  I made myself go to do some knitting.  And I did.

A Hem.  The front is complete and I am so happy with it.  It looks exactly how I saw it in my head.  On to the back.  

The split hem is not as long as my original plan.  When I was talking about Vests the other day, I was wearing my purple vest.  I love the way the split is on it but I realized the front and back were a little longer than I needed this sweater to be.  I was going to make this sweaters split front 7 inches long but ended up with about 5 and a half inches.  I did a try on and it ends right where I wanted.  The original intent was to go to 9 inches from the split on the back but I am going to shorten it a bit as well.  

And then sleeves and this sweater will be done and I can cast on one of my many new planned things.  It's going to be a bit of a challenge to keep my focus on what I have on the needles, but I will have to do it.  It is also going to be a real challenge to keep my focus on my planned next up Kauni sweater or my Staffin planned sweater rather than spending my days dreaming about other future sweaters.  Like Flea.  

Grandeur

I love winding yarn.

Look at those layers.  This is Briggs and Little Sport in Sheep's Grey.  I spent way too long simply looking at the way the layers of yarn built up in the cake and the broad range of colours within it.  

It is almost as if you can see past those individual strands down into the heart of the cake.  I want to look deep into the caverns behind and within the strands.  I could get lost in there.  Lost in the looking.  Sigh.  This is grandeur on a small scale.  

It's a Vest sort of day.

It's a vest sort of day.  

It isn't cold enough that I need to snuggle down in my sweater, drink hot cocoa and layer myself in blankets but cold enough that I want to wear a heavier wooly fabric on my back.  My arms are okay free of warm wooly layers.  I am of course wearing a long sleeve turtlenecks as an underlayer.  It's a cotton bamboo fabric so it is only marginally warm but it does the job.  

I have a few vests now and enjoy wearing them but it is one  thing I could use more of in my wardrobe.  My favourite is my Linger vest, where it became a vest only because my hands were very done with the weight of the yarns.  It is so wonderfully warm though and I adore the fisherman's rib.  It take a long time to knit but it's a great fabric.  

The other vest getting heavy wear is the rust vest which I knit so I could understand the European shoulder construction.  I like the shape of it on me.  The back neck stays high on my back neck and fits comfortably across my back.  I also needed to knit it so I could understand my problems with the Ysolda Teague's Anyday Sweatshirt and what I needed to do to make it fit my body the way I wanted it to fit.  

The last heavy weight vest getting lots of wear is my purple vest made from Briggs and Little Regal that I picked up at the mill store in New Brunswick on my Epic Adventure a few years ago.  I wear this self drafted vest a lot.  I love the texture of its mistake rib gradient colours.  Evertime I wear it I think about knitting this stitch on another garment.  The other vests are usually warmer weather wear.  

I would like a vest with a nice deep shawl collar.  What I want will be a bit like the Redhook vest from the cover of Jared Flood's book from the long gone Classic Elite days.  Simple shape, deep shawl collar.  I am also thinking a lot about making a vest with a deep turtleneck like the Vestover or Vilda.  But what yarn to use?  I have tons of yarn in my stash but until I can see a yarn or yarn combination as a vest, it just stays quiet...waiting...lurking in the corners of my mind.  

I knit only a little yesterday but the day was all about yarn.  I wound up a lot the hanks that were pulled from the last stash dive.  Everything is ready for knitting the sweaters I want from each.  I also turned the balls from the spring like yellow Arcane Fibre Works yarn from a frogged project into cakes so I don't need to deal with rolling yarn balls.  

I have two more sweater quantities to wind today.  Along with knitting that will be enough.  Lots of interesting things to do and to think about today.   

Nice Mail

I had good mail yesterday.  

First up, one of my lovely nieces sent me a Christmas gift.  Yes.  It took a month for a Christmas letter to clear the post office.   It's a gift certificate for one of my favourite yarn stores.  What a sweet woman and a lovely gift.

And the yarn I ordered last week was also in the mail.  And oh my goodness did I pick the colours right.  

The navy Cascade 220 is from my stash but the 5 colours are new.  These are going to be  Flea sweater for me.  This time I am going to watch my gauge more carefully and I am going to check closely as I knit that I am keeping that gauge.  It may not look glorious yet, but it will.

And the sock yarn.  

Again it may not feel like much, but it fills my soul with pleasure.  A green farmer sock is on the way for me.  I started on with existing yarns but the Kroy sock yarn was too heavy for some old but very nice Confetti sock yarn.  They were distinctly different weights even though they were both fingering weights.  

They don't look that different here but they sure are when you work with them.  The Kroy would be a reasonable mate to the Fiesta.  

Now I have to figure out what I want to get with my gift certificate.  Right now I am leaning to something a little special.  Noro Kureyon?  Maybe some Cascade to make a gorgeous cabled something?  Hmmmm.

Interesting.

It was a lovely quiet weekend.  Lots of time to knit and lots of time to do tasks that have long been put off.  

I cleaned and tidied my sewing room yesterday and it was really nice to have that mostly done.  I.  Can.  See.  Floor!  And tabletop.  The tabletop is the most amazing part of it.  There were boxes of mini things from November piled there as well as spare blankets and pillows that had been washed after the holidays.  Plus all of the usual fabric I was working with when last I sewed.  It was a bit of a nightmare.  There were all sorts of things that didn't belong taking up floor space.  There still is a bit so work will continue this week.  That poor room has been neglected too long.  

Today's play is going to be going through all the miniature tools and putting them into the lovely little tool box I got at Christmas.  

It's the perfect size for mini tools and will be a real help keeping ordered.  Is time to pull out the things I need to get a start on the garden.  There are a few things I want to do for inside too.  Like real houses, there are always things to do. They are never really complete.

It was a good knitting weekend too.  

I did a good bit of knitting on socks.

 One sock completed in January.  And a start on a toe for February.  I must say though that this is the very last time I do this sort of toe.  It's just too fiddly for my shaking fingers.  I love garter stitch square toes for the fit and comfort and now for the ease in making it too.  

There was other knitting too.  The socks seemed to be enough of a change that I charged ahead and kept working on the Blue sweater.  

What you see is the front of a side split knitting up nicely.  

I might set this sweater aside this week.  I feel like something else today.  It might be socks.  It might be my Musselbourgh hat.  It might be something new.  Maybe.  It might be that I will  just wind yarn today.  There is lots of that to do from the yarns for projects that I really want to do.  

The more I think of it, the more that sounds like fun.  Playing with yarn but not adding to the pile of WIPs on the go.  Interesting.  

Working on the Blue

Somewhere in the week, this happened.

Suddenly, it's a sweater.  The underarm length is 8 inches now and it is time for some decisions. 

Split hem?  I think so.  This is a Basic Tolsta, which is a brilliant design by Rebecca Clow but part of the design mastery is that it is made to be modified.  She encourages you to turn it into your own sweater.  This gorgeous blue is mine and I want it to be something utterly comfortable to wear.  

I have a couple of things I made where the side split is perfect.  I am going to follow those for where this split ought to be.  A vest that I really love has a split starting at 8 inches from the underarm.  The vest is always worn with something under it.  Any lower back chill is stopped by that.  On a sweater, it might be a good idea to knit just a tiny bit more.  I think I will knit an inch more and then split. 

I want to add a bit of a detail where that split happens.  Often splits look stringy, like a suddenly loose stitch with a long leg.  I want something to make that separation more reinforced.  I think doing a stitch similar to the way a stitch wraps a group of stitches in Mrs. Hunter's pattern. Some kind of wrapped stitch is what I am aiming for.  

After the split I am following just what I did on the vest.  The front will be an additional 7 inches and the back, 9, some of which will be ribbing.  

And then sleeves.  I think, these will be my preferred 3/4 length.  For a change, I am not concerned about running out of yarn.  

Plenty of yarn left on the cones.  There is another sweater there, possibly a sweater and a vest.  

I'm just happy I get this one.  And satisfied.  There is nothing like making and wearing  clothing you have made yourself.    

Today's work will be socks.  I am finding my way with this process of giving myself a day to work on small things.  It feels comfortable and right.  

Flea Dreaming

Talking about the Flea sweater yesterday with my sister makes me want to knit another Flea.  I will be more careful with my gauge this time and will check it frequently.  I find myself doing that a lot more often these days.  Which reminds me I need to do a check on the blue sweater today.  

Getting off track there.  

I want to knit another Flea sweater.  As I chatted with my sister, I remembered how much fun it was to knit.  I remembered the sheer joy of it and I wanted that again.  I went looking at yarn.  Specifically, I went looking for yarn lines that had a lot of colours.  

I did check in my stash.  My most colourful yarn collection is Knit Picks Pallette.  That bin is pretty picked over now.  There are not a lot of good contrasts left in the box.  Lots of greens though which is good.  Besides the Pallette, I don't have many yarns with a good bright colour range.  

I was feeling pretty free with with my budget.  I had not bought myself anything at Christmas and I totally skipped my birthday, so I felt I deserved a little gander through yarns.  I looked very hard at my local shops for something nice.  I looked at local mill shops online.  I searched several other Canadian yarn choices.  I searched other Canadian yarn stores to see what I might want to work with.  It was fun.  Serious fun.  It's been a while since I shopped with intent.  

In the end I decided to go with Cascade 220.  It's such a good yarn.  It wears hard and I can see the wall of Cascade 220 that RCY had at the Southside store.  The wall of colours seared itself on my soul.  I know exactly what I am getting with it.  

So I played with colour and goofed around and built the sweater I wanted.  

And then I bought some sock yarn.  Because I needed some. NOT.  Oh well.  

I found a really interesting YouTube channel this morning.  She is American, an unusual choice for me but she has a wonderfully real voice. Too many podcasts are over curated, over planned, over processed.  I like ones that are sometimes chaotic, sometimes calm but where the love of knitting and yarn shines through.  Check her out:  ktbl a knitting podcast on youtube.  I spent a lovely morning with her.

Back to Blue

It was Monday.  I picked up the blue sweater and went back to work on that.

I am back in love with it.  It's fussy to work.  The fine strands made finer with the weaving oil in the yarn and the general scritchiness that it gives the yarn, makes it a pain.  Each stitch needs watching to be certain you have both strands.  Each increase  needs care.  It's just fussy knitting.  

That fussing could so easily defeat me.  It could make me set it aside and forget it in a corner.  The thing that keeps me going back is the little, twice washed swatch.  

It is so incredibly fluffy and soft.  I.  Want.  To.  Wear. This.

Compare that swatch to this.  As it is being knit.  It even looks crisp.

I will love knitting this this week and I am really hopeful that I get close to the end ofvthe body.  

I had a message from my sister, the now owner of my impossibly joyful Flea sweater.  She wore it out last night and had many compliments and questions about it.  I am so happy it had good results in public.  It is renewing my desire for one of my own.  It may happen sooner than I think.

A good day ahead.

It was a good weekend.  Some family came to do a few chores for me so there was lots of fun but there was also lots of good knitting time.  

I spent a day on socks.  Go me!  

Well into the cuff now.  I decided to do a 2 x 2  ribbed cuff.  I think it's just a bit of a ploy to keep me going.  I don't do a lot of patterns in my socks but lately, I have been thinking a lot about the basic farmer socks, the socks of sock monkeys.  If I didn't have so many socks on the go, I would be knitting a pair of them.  I think this decision is  my inner compulsive self needing the ribbed bit so I can feel as if I am there rather than three socks from farmer socks.  

And yes.  I am thinking hard about knitting another Sock Monkey Cabin blanket.  Stop me, please.

I also spent a day working on the London Fog sweater.  

It's an underarm!  I'm completely thrilled to be here. 

Sweater knitting always feels speedy as soon as I get to this part of a sweater.  It also feels like this because suddenly, you are only knitting on body stitches. Sleeves have a lot of stitches and separating those out is such a relief.  

I hope to get to a try on later today.  

It doesn't look like much yet but it's getting there.  

It's also going to be a laundry and baking day.  We are having chili for supper so I want some fresh buns.  Nothing goes with chili better than some nice fresh buns slathered with butter.  It is also going to be a good knitting day.  I feel it.  A good day is in the air.

Curmudgeonly

You know how sometimes you do things that bug you but you don't seem to change it?   You just sort of work and are bugged by it?  No?  Well I do.

See that ball of yarn?  Harumphhhhhh.  It happens when I frog and restart and don't do the sensible thing and get my ball winder.  I never minded when I had a yarn bowl.  You could pop it into it and just let it roll.  Without a bowl, the darn thing just rolls around and defeats you.  As you can see, I have adapted.  I just need a holder and I roll off as bit when I need to.  But it bugs the heck out of me.  

Sensible people would go get a kitchen bowl and stop whining.  I am not sensible.  I think I must like whining.  Curmudgeonly.  I have gone curmudgeonly.  
 

My knitting

When I rose yesterday, my hands did not feel like knitting the blue yarn.  It's as if all the things I find special about it, suddenly overwhelmed me.  I tried knitting a couple times but my heart wasn't in it.

Time to change projects.

I picked up my London Fog sweater and gave that a go.  Much better.  

Isn't that gorgeous?

It's starting to look like something.  A sweater I hope.  There are only a couple inches to go till the armhole split.  I love the rustic feel of the blue yarns but I also love the cozy soft of this yarn.  I am going to have to do some dishcloth knitting or weaving very shortly and I am looking forward to knitting with the cotton again.  I already have some linen ready to knit a summer top.  There aren't and yarns I don't like, corded fibres that I dont think about knitting with.  If I thought that Keith would put it up I would absolutely knit a fence.  If my hands could take it that is.  

I simply love the feel of string things running through my hands. It fills me and feeds my soul in ways that nothing else ever has.  Someone once said that they supposed it was a decent past time.  I remember how angry I felt that they would say that and think that.  I felt deeply insulted and indescribably hurt that what was like breathing to me was passed off as a 'past time'.    

My knitting is so much more.  The way an artist needs to paint or sculpt or make.  It's the way a musician has music spilling out of them even when music is the farthest thing from their minds.  It's the burning need to do whatever it is.   

I have to knit.  Even when I am not knitting it fills my head and soul.  It lives in every little corner of me, even the dark ones.  I wish I had found it sooner in my life, but I don't regret that I didn't.  I am just glad that I found it.  

In the Heat of the Night?

I got up early today.  It was warm and my usually cozy morning bed was uncomfortable.i went to shower and as I prepped, I thought wow, it's warm in here.  The furnace started up and I felt that it was too hot to breathe.  I texted Keith and asked if it was just me having a hot flash.  He was just noticing the heat too.  The heat was verging into holy batman territory and the shower I took was a very cool one.  Meanwhile Keith got up to find that the front door had popped open just a crack.  There was a nice little ridge of snow standing where the door ought to have been so Keith felt it couldn't have been open for too long.  No snow had come inside.  This house shifts a lot, so our front door is locked day and night. We had a delivery midday and Keith forgot to lock it after that and at some point, the wind popped it open.  As for me, I am finally feeling comfortable.  But that was how my morning started.  

I spent the day knitting yesterday and made good progress.

I've been using a progress keeper lately, particularly at this point in garments.  This part can feel as if no matter how many hours I knit it never gets any longer.  It was getting me down.  Sometime last fall, I put in a progress keeper on a garment and it helped.  If I can do an inch a day, I will be satisfied.  It isn't the several and more inches I used to be able to do but then, my hands are older now.  This will do.

More blue knitting today.  All of it good.  

Gee whiz.  I am starting to feel chilly now.  I need a heavier sweater.

Looking Towards a Great Day

Friday was not sweater day really.  As I was writing I forgot that I had planned to trick myself into knitting small things by making Friday a small things day.  I did knit on a sock in the afternoon Friday.  It was lovely to do that.  

I like this particular Kroy colour.  Plain stripes are not often found in commercial sock yarn.  At least not the ones in my sock yarn bin.  This sock won't be as long as I ended up making my Advent socks.  Those were 12 inches long between toe and cuff and that is just too long with my stubby feet.  The cuffs are too long.  I think I must have done 10 inches from toe to cuff on afterthought heel socks before rather than 12.  Oh well.  This pair will be my usual, which happens when I get tired of it rather than being a certain number of inches.

I have been giving myself the weekends to knit on something else but I found myself just wanting to keep knitting on the blue.   So, blue knitting it was.

I am pleased.  It's coming along nicely.  Sure it is just a plain stockinette raglan sweater but this colour is so good.  It raises my spirits to no end.  I did a try on yesterday.  It was perfect.  

I am also at the place where I should be thinking about adding the pockets from the Mayhemma sweater.  I love that idea but I am no longer as certain that I want to do them in this sweater.  I really love this as it is.  I can do that another time.  

So, more blue knitting today. It's going to be a great day.

The Time has Come

The time has come.  

For what?  Shoes my friend. Shoes.

It has been years since I needed to think about Shoes but, sadly, the sort I have been wearing are no longer available at a reasonable price, ie, a price I can afford.  Plus, since I started wearing shoes like this, they have been new and improved to  their detriment.

These are a pretty basic little shoe.  Nothing fancy.  No anything but a soft stretchable top and a good grippy rubber sole.  There is nothing fashionable about them.  I found them a couple years before my medical event that sorted out most of my health troubles.  They fit my very swollen feet and there was fantastic grip on the floor.  Having that good grip was a revelation in feeling plus, and this was a very big thing for me, I could feel the floor with my feet.  

Most of the shoes we wear, sneakers and the like, divorce us from the reality of the information that we get from our feet.  A thin flexible grippy sole is the number one thing I need from a shoe. Grippy thin soles are a rare thing.  Okay, grippy thin soled shoes I can afford are a rare thing.  

A very long time ago, I came across Sophie and Me on Ravelry.  The designer had Oxford shoe looking tops and a series of sole configurations depending on the materials you were using.  

At first, I just liked the idea of making shoes. I was gathering materials and then along came my first pair of little cheapie shoes and I didn't think about making them any longer.

Now, need is driving me.  I can't find what I am looking for in the places I have access to.  What I could find, was grippy sole material exactly like I have on my current soles.  I was just going to repair the soles but I started thinking about fit and the things I don't like about the fit.  I wear a 6 1/2 and like many shoes, particularly cheap shoes, they do not do half sizes.  The last pairs I had were 7s so they were a bit long.  This pair is a 6 and I find that a wee bit more room for my toes would be nice, necessary really particularly when I am wearing thicker socks.  

So here we are.  Ready to make shoes.  I have everything ready to make a test pair.  The yarn was picked when I was on the big dig.  Though I don't have any flip flops I have some foam that will work for a test.  Pair one is not going to get the good grippy soles.  It is simply a try out, a toilet if you will, a mockup.  I am not starting them today but they may well be my weekend project.  

Today is a sweater day. It's going well and I am focusing on wearing delicious yarn.

Looking for the Magic

As I have been chatting the last few days, there has been a good amount of knitting.   Since Christmas  I'd been working on my London Fog sweater, but I really needed to get back to the Blue Coned yarn Sweater.

 I had not touched it since before Christmas.  November, I think.  It was put away because from the cones the doubled yarns are fine and thus fussy to knit with.  It is not a project to work on when you have a lot of other things going on.  As a fussy sort of project, it had the potential to sit in the corner forever. This week, I decided to pull it out and make it my weekday knitting.  

As of yesterday evening, I have split the sleeves.  Go me!  Even in its partial state, it has great sweater vibes. 

What I am looking forward to with this sweater is the feel of the yarn.  I am still under the spell of the swatch I made many months ago. When I wash this very thin stiff coned yarn, it becomes something magical.  I want that magic.  

Accepting what is

The other thing I did on the weekend was a repair job on my Myrtle sweater,  a Kate Davies pattern that I love to wear.  It's been on the repair pile for quite a while now.  I have debated about repairing it for many months.  

Myrtle in her glory.

Myrtle"s problem.  I debated about doing a proper lace repair and then it sat.  For months.  I missed it in spring and I missed it through summer on the chilly days.  

I came across it again when I was getting ready for Christmas, in a bag in my WIPs pile with the yarn it needed for the repair.  I thought very seriously about getting rid of it but I really love to wear it.

I decided on Sunday morning that my repair did not have to meet any body's idea of swellness but my own.  It is on the side and higher up.  And even if someone noticed it, phfttttt.  If I was worried about it, I could change if someone came.  I am not that worried about it.  

I gave it a good plain patch.

Not pretty but very workable.  

Hardly noticeable.  Good enough for me.

Many might feel I did not do it justice, but I have so many things I want to do, things I have been looking forward to.  A perfectly blended repair feels to me like going backwards.  This sweater has been worn and used and loved.  I don't mind it showing its scars.  That is part of its story, just like grey hair and wrinkles are part of mine.  Accepting what is gives me great peace and in this case, my sweater.

Update:  The damage came from a dishwasher incident.  The sweater got caught on the tray of the dishwasher.  It did not appear to be fatal, but I wore it as usual and washed it and that is when I noticed the trouble.  

Time to knit

Waving at Sigrun.  Yes.  Still here, still knitting!  At the far end of town, across from the two ball diamonds and community center aka the grey barn.  Second last house in town!  Stop for coffee any time.  That goes for all of you.  Stop by anytime.  

I had a busy weekend, though to the world looking on, I am certain it looked very, very quiet.  My head was so full of finishing things and putting them away.  Not knitted item finishing but tasks that I started the week before.  

Like the big dig.  I sorted and ordered and put and stirred in the yarn to my complete and utter joy.  I shopped my stash and took out just a few things.  And that meant I had to bag them up and get them ready for knitting.  

 I pulled out some Briggs and Little Sport.  

 I have two possible patterns that this yarn might become.  One is a variation on Andrea Mowry's Traveller.  I would knit it from the top down because I can.  Or the very interesting POV pullover by OlaLa Knitworks.  I do have an alternate set of yarns to use for the second pattern so we shall see what happens.

I pulled out my Plotulopi.  I love, love, love the Mountain Forest sweater from the last Knitty.  I knew I would knit it the moment I saw it.  I debated getting a few more colours so I could follow the pattern exactly.  That colour blend is just completely perfect.  But I have so much and I just could not buy more. (Whodda thunk it)  I do have two gradients of colours that I am going to make work.  I have lots of the body colour as well.  This is a knit I am looking forward to.  Working with Plotulopi will be interesting.

The other thing I pulled out is some of the lovely heathered brown Tove.  It will be used with my planned Kauni sweater a la the blue and white cowl.  I already had some lovely toasty oatmeal Tove out for it, but see what you think.

 This is my original choice but the more I looked at it, the more I doubted.

This soft heathered brown matches the soft dusty purples and blues and greens of the Kauni.  It blends rather than contrasting.  I usually go for a strong contrast, but I think this will be better, gentler.

I also did some patching of garments but I'm  going to talk about that tomorrow.  It's time to knit.  

Playing

The inspiration cabinet is empty and has become space to store sweaters.  It is getting moved over beside the sweater chest and will store sweaters that don't fit in the chest.  The inspiration cabinet yarn needs to go into storage boxes and will join its compatriot stash in the closet.  This is sad only because I am adding three more boxes to the stash closet.  Maybe two depending how much space there is in various existing bins.  

Besides moving and playing with yarn, there has been a decent amount of knitting.

  

I am so in love with this wonderfully mottled colourway.  Midknit Cravings in their London Fog colourway.  I have the other two sweater quantities that I have right behind me. (Steam Trunk and Storm Chaser)  These are deeply sophisticated, erudite colourways.  They teach that the depth of a colour is not always what stands out on the surface, but what  is hiding inside.  They urge you to look deeper.  They seduce you and still are exactly the right thing for beside a summer campfire or a winter evening in a cozy corner. 

I know erudite should not to be used this way but I apologize to the word police but these yarns teach me so...

Is it possible that I have been playing in the yarn just a bit too long?  Maybe.  I have more to go.  The closet is up next.

The inspiration cabinet

Working this big dig is taking longer than I thought.  And I am only working on the inspiration cabinet so far.  Putzing around is what I am actually doing.

The inspiration cabinet is a particular problem.  It stored the yarns I was planning on knitting shortly, as well as yarns I dream of working with but have no specific project in mind for.  It helps keep them in my head so I end up with the right design.  

My immediate plans are these.

A Staffin sweater using this gorgeous Ultra Alpaca.  It is a deeper cherry red than shows here.  

This is going to be a sweater knit in the manner of the little cowl I made before Christmas.  I love Kauni and I plan on using some of my precious Tove stash.  They are an excellent match of texture and weight.  I am still deciding if the shoulders will be raglan or contiguous.  Using one of these two constructions will help make the colours flow evenly across the whole sweater.  

And then there is this Kauni.  This was supposed to be a shawl using the original colours for the design.  I am going to make a two or three row striped sweater instead.  I love the interplay between these two colours.  

This is some very superior BFL 2/8 from Fleece Artist.  

I bought this in a destash a few years ago and I am going to make a really nice vest.  Simple, striped, nothing fancy.  There are two photos because I couldn't get the lovely soft colours to show without doing this.

And this.  

This is going to be another Shalom sweater.  Or vest.  Not sure which it will be yet.  But I have a need for some more sweaters that can take heavy use around the house.  Not all yarns can do this.  (See yesterday's post.)  The navy yarn here is good old Cascade 220 which is a real work horse yarn.  It goes perfectly with the hand dye from Three Irish girls in an really nice worsted.  There ought to be enough of the Cascade 220 for a second project.  If so, it will be a textured sweater of some kind that I will knit sometime.

That is not all that was in the cabinet.  

These are some of the other yarns in the cabinet.  Some I have shown but many were only shown back in the dawn of time.  All of these have been in my stash for years and years.  All of them are yarns I really want to knit with.  

I need more hours and hands that can knit longer.  Oh well.  It is what it is.

  

 

On dear

I wore my Lusk sweater yesterday.  I cannot say enough about the fit of this sweater.  

The back of the neck sits perfectly to block the chill that I always feel on the back of my neck.  It stays there and I don't need to tug it down through the day.  I even like the way the sleeves turned out for my stubby arms!  It is the perfect fit across my shoulders. The neck is just the right width.  It is as if it is designed just for my body.  Rebecca Clow.  The Creabea.  I highly recommend her designs.  

What I am deeply unhappy with is this.

I have worn this sweater only three and a half days and while the white yarn is fine, the blue is a real mess.  The is a fine flush of blue fuzz across everything along my sides where there is more wear friction.  I made a wrap in the blue Alpaca Peru and I do not remember it being this fuzzy.  It is NOT a sweater yarn. 

The big dig continues.  The day will be full of joy.  Because I say so.