Where am I going without shoes, anyway?

You know what that means? (I can go up stairs! I can casually pose in the kitchen!)

Oh, yeah, just hanging out in the kitchen. In my new skirt. And no shoes.

I’m on the mend. I held off finishing this skirt because I cast it on the day I got sick and then I kept being sick; and then I stuffed up the sewing-over of the elastic casing so many times while sick that I began to weave an aura of superstition about the whole thing. I decided that, when I was well enough to successfully complete the finishing to the standard required (i.e. folding over a flap and sewing it down, honestly, WHERE IS MY BRAIN and WHEN CAN I HAVE IT BACK) then, and only then, would I know I was All Better and ready to go back to work.

And so it came to pass.  Yesterday was my best day since I got sick: I am completely ready to go back to work — so I fished it out of the to-do-bag and stitched down the last struggling stitch last night.  Then I wove the corset-style ribbon up the back with an air of grateful satisfaction: I did not quite shed a womanly, happy tear, but it was a near thing.  Despite how long this has dragged out, and it’s been a while now, I’m really happy with it. Intolerable Cruelty is a fantastic pattern: really flattering and very easy, provided you’re ready to accept all the stockinette. And, frankly, when you’re sick and sulking in bed, stockinette is about the biggest challenge you (oh, all right, I) can manage — and it’s kind of good to have something constructive come out of this, since I’ve been sick for aaaaaages, as my few (any?) remaining blog readers will attest. Yarn is an inherited, random, 50/50 cotton/linen blend that I had originally packed to send off to the op shop, since I’ve been carrying it around with me for years and I figured I was never going to get around to making anything with it — but rescued it in the nick of time and turned it into this sexy skirt.  (And, uh, some shopping bags.)

Check out this corsetry at the back. Not a great photo, but it shows the colour of the dark green ribbon against the silver-grey yarn:

Laced like a sexy shoe.

I’ll be wearing this to work on Monday, with a swish and a swing and a glad-to-be-alive-and-wearing-a-new-skirt sashay.  And maybe some black leggings, because I have managed to finish a light, knee-length, cotton skirt just as the weather did its magical thing and transformed into autumn.

Indicative Case One: Intolerable Cruelty 2.  She’s cast-off, she’s woven in, she’s waiting for that last step of sewing up the elastic casing without completely arseing it up. Beloved, distant, teasing: when I sew up that elastic casing, dogs will sing happy songs and I will step down from this tree of Feeling Like Crap, a queen. In a knitted skirt.  It’s getting closer: I harbour a secret wish to succeed over Easter.

Indicative Case Two: The Everlasting Bagstopper.  This is not really a spectator-knit.  This is not even slightly a spectator-knit: this is perhaps the dullest thing I have ever photographed and blogged about, and it thrills my heart with such tender joy that makes me a little embarrassed.  I like this photo: the bag has a plain bottom and then miles of simple lace which gives the bag its, well, give.  In this shot, the lace is all scrunched-up and complicated-looking, when it was actually just easy-peasy basic YO/k2tog alternated with plain knit rounds.

That garter stitch bottom made me feel calm and soothed in a way I never expected, and the complete lack of a need to make it perfect was really relaxing — after all, it’s a shopping bag. Provided there aren’t any holes fruit can fall through, I’ve succeeded and made something useful and cool that wasn’t there before. Knitting this bag has been surprisingly therapeutic and I have plans for more.

It came as a significant shock to me (I am quite serious about the level of surprise here) when I realised I have knit nothing but grey this month, with one small, ill-thought-out exception I’ll get to shortly.

Indicative Case Three: Silver Sands is back on the scene.  This is a really lovely, soft yarn; this is an easily-memorised pattern; this is a scarf that I have no urgency to finish apart from a wish to complete a few of the UFOs cluttering up this pup tent.  The yarn is so, so, so soft, and has a kind of dreamy, hazy feel to the colour changes that is charming me.

Indicative Case Four: Weird freak of cast-on that, if anything, only confirms the need for Recovery Knitting: a baby’s hat in Watermelon Sock Yarn. (Well, it was a baby’s hat. Now it’s yarn again.)

Vivid! Bold! Dynamic! What the hell was I thinking? This yarn rocks, but I don’t know any babies who need a woolly hat, however awesome, and I don’t know anybody who has plans for a baby — and, y’know what? I’m pretty sure that someday I’m not going to be sick anymore and dammit, when that happens, I think I can get a pair of Watermelon sockettes out of this yarn.  The hat is ripped: this yarn is being put away until I can be trusted to use colourful yarns without getting all zesty in the faculties, if you catch my drift.

So, you made it to the end of the post, huh? Well, in that case, dedicated and faithful peruser, I have to confess that now you have faced the bitter truth about me. The cold reality is that I am a very, very boring knitter right now — maybe I always have been and its just that I can no longer shut my eyes to the mounting evidence. I am sailing a sea of grey garter stitch, and instead of it making me want to bite violent and colourful mouthfuls out of passing parrots, it is making me feel curiously serene. Peace out.

I finished knitting my second Intolerable Cruelty, but it is not done. I have woven in my ends, I have crocheted the corset-lacing loops up the back, but I cannot apparently fold the elastic casing over the elastic and sew it down without ballsing things up in a fashion that can only be described as spectacular. Nevermind that I have done this once before on another Intolerable Cruelty.  Nevermind that there is a handy-dandy purled turning row to ensure that folding the elastic casing folds neatly and easily and in a very straightforward fashion. Nevermind that sewing a flap down is perhaps the easiest thing I can possibly do with a darning needle and length of yarn. It is not happening. I have tried three times now, and each time has resulted in a course of surprise, swearing, frustration and unpicking. I mentioned in an earlier post that I have a deep superstition woven into every stitch of that skirt now: I cast it on at the same time I got sick, and I am convinced it will be done the day I am completely better.  At first I thought this would be through some miraculous coincidence of spirit and yarn or some beautiful synchronicity — but now I realise that Intolerable Cruelty is a hurdle track, and only when I am well enough will have the mental capacity to jump over that final hurdle (i.e. sewing a freaking flap shut). So I’ll use it as a litmus test: every so often, I’ll have another go at executing this very simple (VERY simple) final step, and when I am successful, when I am feeling bold and clear-headed and can successfully sew the flap shut, I’ll know I’m back on top. A consummation devoutly to be wish’d, I gotta tell ya.

So, for now, I’m paring things back.  A smarter person would have done this sooner, but let’s leave such discussion to the experts. I am sitting quietly in bed, reading and knitting, knitting and reading. (I am so glad I can do both at the same time.) I’m going to leave a decoy knitting bethini at strategic locations around the house so that the Knitting Fates can have their sport with them and not me; I’m going to cast on the garter stitch bottom of Knitty’s Everlasting Bagstopper and move quietly and cautiously. Surely I can’t stuff up a garter stitch bag bottom? There’s no gauge to worry about, since there’s no sizing issues really, and I’m sure that even I with my currently diminished faculties, can manage a little garter stitch? Right?

As the series of posts last week on the theme of Nourish would have suggested to your more alert breed of reader, I’ve been unwell. Being unwell sucks arse anyway, but being unwell when you’ve got Addison’s disease has the extra thrills and spills of trying to manage that condition on top of whatever virus it is that has knocked you for six. Once the viral symptoms have subsided, you’re left to get through a recovery period that involves getting exhausted at the slightest thing and trying to keep on top of meds so that you don’t dissolve like a tissue in a thunderstorm.  It’s baby steps, but I’ve managed to get through two days at work without crying at my desk out of frustration OR calling anybody anything prefixed with “fuck-” or suffixed with “-tard”, so I think we should chalk that up as progress.

I’m knitting.  Quietly and peacefully and very happily.

I really wanted to capture my evening here: I’m sitting on a pillow, my back against M’s armchair, with my laptop on the floor in front of me, knitting by silhouette. This is one of the most soothing, quiet and relaxing ways I have found of knitting.

As soon as I finished my first Intolerable Cruelty, I cast on another. I have discovered I love knitting skirts and want another one as soon as possible. This one has felt like it is slower to come along, because sleeping and grumbling all day long tends to slow down your knitting progress.  But: I cast on this baby on the 10th of March, today’s the 23rd, and I’m only three inches, a sewn elastic casing and a series of crocheted loops to hold the ribbon in place away from the finishing line.  That’s actually some pretty sturdy work right there: some 19 inches of stockinette worked in just shy of a fortnight.  I have found it incredibly relaxing, too.  Just round and round and round and round, stockinette nearly all the way, and some moderately-spaced increases and decreases.  Definitely the kind of thing I can manage when wallowing in bed bitching about how sick I am of being sick.

Knitting brings so much to me. When I’m feeling well, it enriches my life and makes me feel clever and creative (even on days I am neither). When I’m sick, it’s a security blanket.  Knit, knit, knit: slower but just as smooth and steady as when I’m well, it’s a gentle reminder that not only am I not dying, but that part of me lingers under all the fatigue and weariness and frustration with my body.  That there’s a mind in here that remembers how to make wee stitches, how to wrap the yarn just so and if I do it enough times, I’ll end up with socks or a skirt or a teddy or something bizarre that I have to unravel, but something nonetheless. And that is incredibly reassuring when you feel like your life has been suddenly stripped away from you because sickness has whisked everything out of your control.

This skirt has been my constant companion while I’ve been sick; I am beginning to weave a lot of superstition around it.  Somewhere in the back of my pulpy head, I’m sure that when I finish this skirt, I will finish being sick.  Somehow, the act of snipping the last thread and weaving in the last end will coincide with the last of the virus being hoovered up by my immune system and all will be well with the world of bethini.  The chances of this actually coinciding are…well, silly.  It’s a nice idea, though.

Tawnee, pictured here eating leftovers she found in the grass, suspected, but didn’t say anything.

This is a seriously awesome pattern.

Having droolingly admired this pattern on Ravelry a few times, I realised the only thing holding me back from possessing such an awesome garment was — what? My own prejudice? I guess so. I don’t know many people with knitted skirts, and my Mumini has a thing against them that lead me to assume everyone did, and that my own sneaking like for them was a peculiar quirk that shouldn’t be expressed any further.  Then I realised I had my head up my arse, and that such a position could only be made more comfortable by a knitted skirt, so off I went.

Talk about quick, too!  Took me three weeks, from snout to tail, to get this baby from swatching to dancing in the garden.  Three weeks!  And! And! This is the heretofore ill-fated South West Trading Company Bamboo yarn: I have made this into three garments (I think I got as far as three, although there were so many false starts I lost track) and the yarn was starting to look a bit used, but on this skirt? In this colour? Seriously awesome, sexy, and I feel like I’ve found the proper home for it.  I love it to pieces, and I can’t wait to sashay all over work in it tomorrow.

Quick stats!

Pattern: Intolerable Cruelty, by Ashley Moncrieff who, if her skirt patterns are anything to go by, is a clear-headed damsel of taste and sass.

Yarn: South West Trading Company Bamboo in Plum

Mods: None none none!  Just got gauge (on the second try, thank you) and off I went, round and round and round, to the end.  When I make the next one, however, I will make smaller loops along the back (through which you thread the corset-lacing ribbon), because these ones are a little too big, and the ribbon I have for the next skirt is quite thin.

I’ve begun swatching for another one, in a funny, flecky, light silver linen yarn I’ve been carting about pointlessly for years — this is that yarn’s last chance. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll know it’s time that it was set free for another knitter to stumble upon.

UFOs! (bold text to indicate sub-heading!)

Silver sands scarf: not wild about the striping, but I’ve decided it’s not for me anyway.  Hoping to whip up a matching pair of simple cuffs or mitts to accompany it.  Plans briefly thwarted when I thought I had reached the last ball of yarn, and much energy was expended spluttering about how such poor yardage was downright criminal (since the scarf was only about 40cm long and I thought I had used three balls) and then much delight ensued when the other two balls were discovered in the bottom of the knitting basket.  Hooray for small delights and also forgetfulness!

Mermaid gloves: finished the first while driving around NZ, cast on the second while drinking in NZ (not as dangerous as it sounds) and am now carrying on, plod plod plod, through the second.  I might have made it a little snug around the top of the arm, but it’s not so snug as to put me off wearing it (I think).  Also, I shouldn’t say ‘plod plod plod’, because frankly the Pomatomus stitch pattern is an utter delight and I’m really enjoying making it.

Gone but not forgotten!

Also, while you weren’t looking, I finished a pair of socks.  Plain vanilla, toe-up, short-row heel socks: they were quite seriously the best socks I have ever made, largely because I took the time to increase before the heel, in order to incorporate a wee gusset before I turned the heel.  That made such a big difference to the fit and also the pull-on-ability of the socks that I have now completely converted to doing all toe-up socks in this fashion.  Sadly, no photos, because these were a birthday gift for my lovely Mumini, and they are now comfortably nestled in her deserving sock drawer.  Probably with a cat on them. I like that.

Probably over-thinking the matter!

One of the things I thought a lot about while travelling is why I choose to do or not do things: I’m surprised to discover how many times I’ve deferred decision-making to other people, assuming that differences in taste amounted to superior judgment.  I don’t like to think I am really as wussy as that sentence makes me sound.  Take knitted skirts.  For a long time, I put off knitting a skirt.  Specifically, Intolerable Cruelty, the gorgeous skirt from Knitty.  I remember seeing that pattern when it first came out, and thinking “that’s awesome; that’s gorgeous: I would totally knit that, except, y’know, it’s a skirt“.  See, my Mumini isn’t mad about knitted skirts, and since she has good taste in most other avenues, I assumed it was Good Taste to not like knitted skirts.  That liking a knitted skirt was a peculiar kink of mine, best left unindulged.  Of course, the idea that liking a garment is some sort of defect or mistake is a peculiar one, now that I hold it up to the light.  Which is a roundabout way of saying I have cast on Intolerable Cruelty in purple bamboo.  This is another thing I can thank Ravelry for, too: checking out all the Intolerable Cruelties knitted up and flaunted all over Ravelry, plus all the people raving about how sexy it made them feel, was enough to make me start to think perhaps I wasn’t so odd for wanting to make it.  Got gauge on the second try, and the gauge is nice and tight, too.  Me like.

(Note my sexy macro shot to distract from an essentially dull picture.)

And, oy, if you’ve got the time, let’s talk about that purple bamboo.  I have lost count of the number of projects I have cast on with that stuff, only to frog it back and restart it.  I’m sincerely hoping that Intolerable Cruelty ends up being the most flawless, flattering, comfortable and sexy skirt ever, because that would at least make me feel that I’d been saving the bamboo for just such a garment.  The thing is, bamboo is gorgeous and slinky and nice to handle, but has zero spring and zero memory.  It’s also a little on the weighty side — not as heavy as cotton, but heavier than, say, silk — so drapey garments made out of it really tend to drape, but with the effect of sagging and pulling out of shape, as I discovered when I made a Simple Knitted Bodice out of it.  (Fantastic pattern, by the way, and my bamboo version looked great, but the sleeves got all dangly and saggy and kept pulling it off me, which bugged me after a while.)

Also new!

The Knitty winter surprises came out yesterday, including the fantastic sock pattern Skew.  This arrived just at the critical psychological moment for me: I had unearthed a skein of multi-toned/semi-solid sock yarn in browns and autumnal blues that I had completely forgotten I had bought (hooray again for forgetfulness!).  I don’t wear much brown and I don’t usually like browns and blues together, but this yarn kinda tempted me, nudging me with a raised eyebrow and saying “what are ya, chicken?”.  Then when I rediscovered it the other day, I decided that an out-of-the-ordinary-for-me yarn really deserved a pattern that challenged me, or sparked me, or was just somehow different and quirky.  Behold: Skew.  (Second link there for those of you who didn’t bother clicking the first time.)  I offer a tentative thank you to designer Lana Holden — tentative because (a) I haven’t gotten any further than the sixth round or so, so there’s still a lot of room for disaster to strike; and (b) I’d quite like to know how she read my mind and the contents of the yarn basket to such a perfect degree, and until she explains herself, she only gets a tentative thank you.  Ya hear me, Holden?  Tentative.  (But thanks nonetheless.)

It’s been a brain-dead day.  I’m going to say it’s because it’s been so blissfully rainy: part of me is responding instinctively to the relaxing rain swooshing around.  Which is fine.  Except insofar as it relates to knitting.

So I cast on Intolerable Cruelty on Friday night.  Successfully completed the cast on, the nine rounds of st st, purled the turning round, then another couple of rounds of st st before I realised my gauge was off.  I cursed a little, but since I hadn’t taken the time to do a gauge swatch anyhow, I knew I only had myself to blame, so rallied, unraveled, re-cast on. I got gauge with the second needle, spot on.  Proceeded merrily along, congratulating myself on my maturity at identifying and correcting the problem so early on, and then wondered why I kept getting the yarn tangled around the needle.  I was about halfway through the morning, just past that purled turning round, when I realised it was because…I’m embarrassed to even type this…I twisted the cast-on.  Oy, rank beginner mistake: you have reminded me that none may escape Knitter’s Hubris. Unraveled Part 2.  Then I cast on again (third time, but who’s counting?) and counted the stitches.  I had too many stitches, so I slid the extras off the tip of the needle…but from the wrong end. I slid off the starting slipknot and the first dozen stitches or so.  Without the slipknot, the rest of the cast on is pretty compromised, so…yeah. Unraveled Part 3.  Then I decided to take a little break, have some lunch, listen to the rain some more…cast on again.  Fourth cast on.  So far, so good, but it does mean I’ve been knitting on this skirt all weekend and have very little to show for it.

Mind you, this skirt is mostly stockinette.  I’m not so skilled a photographer that I know how to make this interesting. Imagine a circular needle, with maybe eight rounds of stockinette on it.  Yup, that’s it. That’s my knitting progress for this rainy weekend. (Try and make it exciting, too, while you’re imagining it.  I’d appreciate it.)