Then I started seeing other dresses on Ravelry. Oh, man, there’s some sexy stuff out there. I have a serious knitty-boner for this black dress by Gudrun Johnson. (Here’s the Rav link, if you want to lose hours.) Ravelry seems to be groaning with knitters who have made this dress and are deliriously happy with the results. Ludicrously happy. And rightly so: they’re beautiful.

Then I found Sparkle! (Rav link and sorry about the exclamation mark, it’s part of the pattern name), a resurrected Vogue Knitting pattern. I can’t explain my crush on this dress but I LOVE IT. It resembles nothing I own and I can’t imagine picking it off the rack in a shop without anything but a derisive sneer. But it completely arrests me and I want to make it. I think I would probably make it plain. At first.

So the next thing I know I’ve spent an hour comparing reviews, doing maths to calculate yardage, weighing up prices and filling online shopping baskets only to abandon them in online aisles for the online staff to put back on the online shelves (I’m not proud). I haven’t bought yarn in a really long time: a few years ago I took a bit of a look at my stash and thought “yeah, that’s enough to be getting along with”. So I forgot how seductive and slippery online shopping is. One minute you have a clear goal and a budget: the next, you’re dancing on the shredded pieces of your shopping list and singing your credit card number to the tune of “High on the Hill Lived a Lonely Goat Herd”. I got to the checkout and had a “HOW much?” moment, and walked away.

I sat in the yarn cupboard for a while. It started as a “Yeah, this yarn’s okay for now. Maybe when I’ve worked through it I can buy some more yarn…” visit, a sort of gloomy reminder of all my current yarny commitments. Grump grump grump, no new yarn for me. Then I got into the cupboard and it was like meeting old friends. And remembering all the other things I want to knit. YEAH!

I can knit EVERYthing! AHAHAHAHHA! Coffee Tunic! Sexy Vesty! Kilt Hose! Hats! More skirts! Oooh dear. It’s been a while, but I know the Startitis boogie when I feel my heels shuffling. If I didn’t move quick, I’d come to my senses surrounded by half-finished terrible ideas and that would just be annoying. So I grabbed the nearest yarny chum and needles, and cast on the sexy Coffee Tunic in black. That took the edge off. Digging out a couple of socks that are soooo close to being done it’s silly helped, too.

I don’t need to order dress yarn. I don’t need to knit another dress. I am excited about my socks and the Black Coffee tunic. But butter my butt and call me a biscuit if I’m itching to make more dresses.

For a very long time I resisted the urge to explore the possibility of knitting anything other than wintery woolly goods. Jumpers, vests, hats, mitens, etc. All good and proper, wool-appropriate things. Trousers, skirts, shorts and dresses; definitely not knitable. This was reinforced whenever I heard other people rolling their eyes at knitted skirts and dresses (what, you’ve never heard eyes roll? It’s kind of a squishy, scratchy, scraping sound); clearly, skirts and dresses are not to be knitted.

But then along came Intolerable Cruelty and changed everything I know about knitted skirts. Damn sexy. DAMN sexy. Damn SEXY. I’ve made it twice now, and both incarnations are outta-sight-wham-bam-sexy-sam. And talk about comfortable! No, don’t. Just shut up and listen.

Anyway, that kinda broke down some barriers and lead me to question a lot of other presumptions regarding knittery. If knitted skirts can be totally cute, then why not a knitted dress? So I’m using the red cotton recycled from some tank tops that had outstayed their welcome, and I’m making a cute v-neck dress that goes by the alluring name of DROPS tailored dress in ”Safran” with lace pattern and crochet borders. The cotton is kind of tired and not as bright as it was when I first knitted with it, but I thought it worth doing a prototype in a yarn I had close to hand rather than shelling out ninety clams on new yarn. (How do I know it would be about ninety clams? Because I’ve got my eye on my new yarny crush, Kollage Yarns Riveting, in charcoal.)

So let’s see how we go: knit a dress, be awesome; or knit a pile of crap, regret ever mentioning it online. Optional step: give up knitting and take up wicker weaving.

Additional possibility: the dress is so awesome that I order the Kollage Yarn to celebrate, and while making my second dress I discover the magic of knitted leggings, shorts and pants…

…I can definitely see the possibility that this will just traumatise me and reawaken the knitting boundary hangups I previously had to break down. But c’mon, a pair of snug, soft, cotton shorts for sleeping and doing yoga in? I can totally imagine doing that. Can’t you? No? Huh. Just me, then.

Check this high-speed action out:

Holy CABBAGES that went quick.

I finished the patterned hem in a weekend. A weekend, people. To be totally fair, we went down the coast and I was taken off driving duties due to a sore driving leg, so I had two hours of sitting and knitting, followed by an evening of hanging out with chums and knitting, followed by another two hours knitting on the drive home the next day, but seriously, we’re talking…okay, that’s probably about seven or eight solid hours of knitting. That makes it less astonishing, now that I break it down, but no less satisfying! Weekend, yarn, BAM: patterned bit done. A timely reminder of what I can do if I actually, y’know, do it. Instead of knitting four stitches and then going ‘I really should be folding the washing’.

Also, I think I should get some sort of Achievement Unlocked medallion for working that much stranded knitting in the car without puking up everywhere.

Study: Gytha in repose. Not appearing: puking.

I’m kicking arse all about the single-colour contrast (and frankly I don’t know what that means). A lot of the colour combos people are rocking on Ravelry are pretty sweet, but not for me, yannow? I’m not always monochrome, but I’m heavy on the black and less on the polychromatic spree. So I went with black and purple and I’m really glad I did: to keep the strips of stranded colourwork broken up, I threw in a few extra lines of black, which is such a minor mod it’s hardly worth mentioning. I like this very much. The purple is leftover from Corona — which, through a pretty cool coincidence, I am wearing RIGHT NOW — and I am pleased to find an outlet for that lingering three-quarter ball. Once I do the stripes on the sleeves and hood, I’ll have exhausted that remaining purple yarn and I’m getting a huge knitgasm out of that.

It's not a blog post without a macro shot.

I know I’m not the only knitter who feels this way: I get a buzz from using up every scrap of yarn. Is this observable in other arts? Do painters get a purr out of really wrenching the paint tube to squeeze out the last blob of colour? I like using up the last page in a journal, too, and when I’m cooking I use up every scrape of each ingredient, composting only what truly can’t be used. Is it instinctive frugality? Does it emerge from my more general instinct of use it up, waste not, leave only footprints, etc. as I attempt to minimise how many bugs I squish while walking the green and blue planet?  Or is it some sort of smug intellectual conquest: the challenge in finding a use for the apparently un-useable?

I may be overphilosophising here. If it’s worth thinking about, it’s worth overthinking.

Since the above pictures were taken, I’m zooming up the back towards the back neck shaping and it is looking freaking awesome. I can’t wait to start the striped sleeves, and that’s not a sentence I commit to lightly. I am so chuffed that I could swear I feel the icy hand of Irony lovingly stroking my fingers, while Irony’s loving breath whispers “that’s the way, my sweet, let your guard down…just for a second…congratulate yourself just one more time…make it public…” (Irony is about to be slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit, if you ask me.)

While we’re on the topic: whenever I see it, in my head I hear “Gytha, for shame!” from Tony Robinson’s reading of Terry Pratchett’s “Witches Abroad”. For those not in the know, Gytha is Nanny Ogg’s first name, and that line is Granny Weatherwax rebuking her for hunting for a particularly valuable object in the home of a recently deceased sister witch.

I’ve been planning on making Gytha for so long now it’s ridiculous. As a rule, I chew over ideas for a long time. There are some odd exceptions, where the time between conception and beginning execution of an idea is thirty seconds or so, but as a rule, I usually spend more time mulling over options and weighing up alternatives and planning things out than actually doing them. Deciding what to put on a sandwich can be agonising. With Gytha, I had the yarn, I had the pattern (a birthday present from two years ago was a bundle of patterns from Twist Collective), all printed and nice and ready to rock. And for some reason it never showed up. Realising I was actually going to have to do something in order to transform the concept into the reality, I began swatching last night. I’ve decided on a two-colour Gytha. Black overall, with a contrast. Narrowed my choice down to red or purple and, like the big fancy grownup I am, swatched for it (instead of just whining and holding strands of the yarn together and squinting and then whining some more and then complaining when the final product didn’t look right):

Indecision at its finest.

This nearly derailed the whole project. My previous indecision, instead of being resolved, was whipped into a frenzy of dithering. I showed M, who knew what I needed: “that one”. He said, pointing to the purple. “Oh good! Thanks, I was leaning that way myself…” at which he commented that whenever I complain about indecision, it’s not usually completely accurate. If he had pointed to the red and said “that one”, I would have said “really? are you sure? why that one?” and spent some time smoothing the swatch on the couch, turning my head at various angles and thinking “well, it *is* nice in the red…” I already knew where my tastes lay, but for some reason felt like I was unqualified to judge.

Gytha is underway and has turned out to be far more introspection-laden and self-revelatory than I would have thought. I suspect this stuff has been in the mole-addled subterranean kingdom of my mind, and knitting merely provides an outlet or a metaphoric structure with which I can explore it.

My other cherry-topped bowlful of indecision related to what size to cast on. I’m between sizes, as usual, so I can either have one that’s slightly bigger or slightly smaller. Common wisdom points out that slightly bigger is usually better for sweaters, because you wear them over clothes. But I like my clothes snug. I love me that thar negative ease y’all be jawin’ about. So I’m casting on the smaller size. Look at that! Indecision resolved! You saw it here first, folks.

I am indecisive and slow to respond to some stimulus. I wonder if these are related? If I am slow to respond to stimulus, I am unlikely to feel like I have taken on all the data I need to make an informed choice, and therefore am made uneasy when faced with decision-making time. WHOA! Is this an epiphany? Is this what an epiphany feels like? It feels a bit like I’m hungry and my foot’s gone to sleep, but with surprise. Is that what you feel when you have an epiphany?

Asking me to construct a pair of black, fingerless mitts for you is a superlatively sensible request. Especially if you, the requester, are Dadini and you require them for protecting your chilled hands while working in the shed over the winter. God knows why it has taken me so long to get my dags a-rattling in relation to this project and finally cast them on. Well, I say “them”…I mean “it”.

O the drama!

This is half a Knucks from Knitty: a really good standard pattern for gloves without fingertips. (“Fingerless gloves” feels like a misnomer: they sort of have fingers, but those fingers lack tips!) I managed to get the first one done in a matter of hours — knitted while talking with folks and not really paying attention. Then I looked down and realised I was holding a big, soft baseball mitt. Gets away from you.

A tangled end...

Oh, Cleckheaton Merino Supreme. You minx. Is there no end to the variations of cruelty you taunt me with?

So I unravelled and cast on the next size down. Finished it, but…hmm. This mitt is troubling me. My Dadini doesn’t have huge hands, and this seems like a big mitt. But the thicker yarn makes me slightly hesitant to unravel and move to the next size down. Dee.Lemma. So it’s put aside, waiting to be tried on and evaluated further. Meanwhile, in order to stem the foaming tide of indecision that I was quietly lathering up, I unearthed some thinner yarn and finer needles and have begun another prototype. (They’re coming, Dadini! Hang in there!) Indecision is still prompting me to take the finished first draft mitt out of the bag and squint at it periodically, trying to figure out if it’s good or not, but I’m fighting the urge. One day at a time.

I have a theory that the hardest things to make yourself are the fundamentals: good sandwich bread, denim jeans that don’t look weird, plain t-shirts. Plain black fingerless mitts. There is no room for error because you have such a clear idea of what you need, and since they’re all things you turn to again and again, any mistakes you make will be brought to your attention like a stiletto heel grinding into your cheekbone OVER AND OVER. Gotta get these babies right.

Basking

I had a whole draft post typed up on multitasking. It was called ‘Multitasking Mythos’, and there was a poem in rhyming couplets about dispensing with multitasking. I couldn’t post it because I think I might have been fibbing.

Here’s the way I see it: multitasking is a risky business. There aren’t many things I can do at the same time without compromise. Talking while driving, for example. Both suffer in quality. (Which works out well, because my passengers are quickly diverted into silent contemplation of their life leaving me to refocus on the task of operating the vehicle and restoring a comfortable equilibrium.) It’s like I have a fixed level of quality attention to offer a task, and increasing the number of tasks can only happen by reducing the level of quality each task receives.

More and more, I think it’s important to do one thing at a time, and do it well. If you’re already pretty sold on the multitasking thing, then you’re going to get fidgetty at first, because you feel like you’re doing less (i.e. fewer tasks). So you have to be more choosy about what tasks you decide to do, figure out what really deserves your attention. Down with multitasking! Hooray for unitasking!

Like I said, I had a whole post about this ready to roll. But…there are some big fat bleating exceptions to this approach and I realised I’d be telling porkpie lies if I posted it. I couldn’t do that to you. Instead, I assert: I am anti-multitasking…except for knitting.

Knitting opportunities are everywhere: hanging out with peepz, riding in the car, reading online, listening to music or podcasts, watching movies/sports/cockfights. You have to pick your project carefully (yes to plain stockinette, no to entrelac), but even the rich and fancy stuff has a chance. Reading and knitting at the same time is the best thing ever. EVER. Provided I’m not knitting anything distracting, I can absorb pretty intensive words while I’m at it. This makes me incredibly happy. Hanging out with peepz? Talking? Watching movies? Maybe it’s the addiction talking, but there’s not much I can’t do while knitting. Okay, that’s boastful exaggeration. I will rephrase: I am always looking for the chance to knit.

I stick to my assertion that multitasking is (mostly) a myth. My stumpy little reptilian brain is better at doing one thing at a time. Clarinet practice plus just about anything? Forget it. Yoga? Solo. Cooking? Let me tell you about scorched saucepans: the dark underbelly of multitasking.

And writing! Hells bells, I am embarrassed by how long this took to grok. I used to write while holding knitting, listening to podcasts, or surfing the web. I said to myself (and anyone else who cared) “it helps me think”. No wonder my ideas fizzled out before I could really work with them. Have you ever tried knitting and writing at the same time? Have you spotted the flaw in that plan? That’s right: my manifestation in this physical dimension has only two hands. If I’m knitting and get a wordy idea, I have to put the knititng down. The phrase “just one more round” is a cruel and stupid lie, because it only takes a couple of stitches for that idea that showed up begging for shelter to wilt and disappear completely. If I’m knitting when I’m trying to write, I’m slowing myself down too much for any ideas to grow. And that’s cool. There are so many opportunities to knit that I’m not going to lose precious stitch time if I put the needles down to write for a while. So when I catch myself hovering knitting over the keyboard, I will chant my newest mantra: “it does NOT help you think, you gimp, pick one thing and do it, Christ do I have to kick your arse EVERY time?” Snappy.

ah, the soothing glow of the laptop...

PS — That up there is Green Sprite, asking in the multitasking light of my browsing. After a week away, progress is awesome. I’ve got the pattern written out to the end of the body and I’m damned excited. I haven’t tried it on yet, initially because I couldn’t be bothered and now out of some sort of perverse feeling of challenge. Which are frankly the two driving forces behind all my decisions.

Still gets used a lot: I had planned to back it with blue flannellette, to give it some structure, but I prefer how slouchy and stretchy it is. And so does Tawnee:

Don't be deceived: she's actually a brutal grammar freak.

She spent a very cute afternoon snuggled in it on our couch while we were puppysitting, completely happy except for when somebody kept waking her up for photo ops.

Rude interruptions are best treated to a withering glance.

It’s nice to have your knitwork appreciated.

I was not discouraged by her heavy sighs.

I suspect for some time I must had some sort of psychological howl that could only be silenced by the soft, udon-noodle-like, springy loveliness that is Merino Supreme. When that howl was corrected — was it the massive amounts of compost I inhaled while trying to fix the bin? was it the moderate electric shock I received trying to lick the food processor beaters post-pesto-producing (I wasn’t zapped by the beaters: M tasered me for being so dumb)? could it have been that tango with salmonella I enjoyed in late 2008? who can say? — I came to my senses and realised I had let my Merino-Supreme-lust overwhelm the stash. I’ve been working my way through it, mostly through socks and thick woolly hats, scarves, etc., and I’m down to one manageable bag:

SWARM

You’d think this would be the final sprint. But I think the delay is that they’re just so damn pretty together. Something about this particular bundle of olive, purples, navy and black: they’re just beautifully matched. So I have to use them all together. I thought — oh, how I thought — about a blanket of bias-knit garter squares. I imagined it so simple, springy, soft and light, and so, so warm. Oh. Beautiful. But then I got thinking about how Merino Supreme has hurt me in the past: the cruellest thorn is the tiny yardage. Seriously tiny: like 60 metres per ball. I know you need less yarn when it’s thick and springy, compared to, say, laceweight, but 60 metres? Cleckheaton, please. So I regretfully pushed the blanket idea to one side (well, I tried: I am still finding scraps of it in my head, all the bits that say “well, yeah, but if we did it on huge needles, it’d work…” and “it doesn’t need to be a huge blanket…” and writing the above brought me dangerously close to reconsidering my position) and thought about stripes. I love Merino Supreme for socks; it makes thick, cushy boot-socks that I live in all winter. I have several pairs already, but none with stripes…and now, I think, is the time. Thick, toe-up, knee-high socks, with stripes and solid heels/toes. Yes. I can feel it in my bones. And then, finally, the ghost of Merino Supreme will be laid to rest. I grow weary of its taunting; its smug “hah, you’ll never find a project worthy of me” airs — hey, it’s a gorgeous yarn, but I don’t need ‘tood from the stash.

My bag of Merino Supreme is coming on holiday with me, as part of the Finish-the-WIPs campaign I’m on, and when we come back, it will be on the needles.

Motherlovin' Motherlode

How do I love thee? A few years ago I taught a friend to knit: I encouraged her to think of the way knitting patterns are ranked not as a “difficulty” system, but a “fiddly” system. That is, if a project is marked “difficult”, it’s just going to be more time-consuming. The process of creating each stitch doesn’t change, you just might have to do some of them awkwardly. Her first knitted project was a lace beanie, her second: Broad Street Mittens. She did a fantastic job and they were beautiful. I loved them and associate this pattern with her whenever I think of it. She also gave me the word “glittens” (glove-mittens, get it?) which I choose to use with glee. Glee and glittens. All that glittens is not glee! I could go on! I shan’t. (You’re welcome.)

Lovingly used

I love Lorna’s Laces yarn and so should you. This is Lion and Lamb in Motherlode and it’s heaven. From one skein I got these glittens and a pair of wee footlets — and today I found a small leftover ball that will be used to further ornament my Slouchy Sockhead hat with i-cord tentacles. This yarn is the gift that keeps on giving! As you can see in the photo above, they’re starting to pill across the palms. That’s after four winters, and one of those included four weeks’ backpacking in Europe: I think I can forgive a little pilling after that kind of wear. They get scrunched into pockets, stuffed into backpacks and handbags, and generally stomped and abused (it’s nothing personal: that’s how I treat all my stuff), and they still rock.

Scrunched for action

I love this pattern. Glittens are just an awesome idea, and the Broad Street Mittens does them well. Long live the glittens!

Woolly superfluity!

Of course, it all depends how you slice the pie: the white bag on the far left is full of yarns that are promised to specific projects, but I haven’t got around to starting. The mitten at the top right? A finished project that just needs a thumb mended. The long green tube, top-left? That’s my sockhead hat, but I had an idea to give it more tendrilly tails, so it’s kinda in finished-but-still-being-worked-on-limbo-land.

But even if I take those babies out of the equation, there’s…three projects in this picture that are actively on the needles. (And Green Sprite. Hi Green Sprite! Hope you’re reading this! Love you!) So let’s put on our big-girl pants and look this WIPs in the face. (You ever been WIPped in the face? It’s kinda hot.)

These mermaid gloves have easily got the sternest claim on me:

Accusing gloves!

Cast on in 2009, I finished the first and loitered on the second. I’ve been hawing and humming and generally making annoying throaty sounds about these babies ever since. I can’t think why. I did a fantastic job on the first one, and they look great.  Wait — wait, it’s coming — I remember! (I think.) I put them aside because I wasn’t completely sure about the fit! The first one looks awesome, but it’s pretty snug and I was a little worried I needed to go back and restart them with an extra pattern repeat for comfort. But whether I’ve beefed up, lengthened out, shortened up or tapered down, I tried them on this afternoon and they feel pretty good, sir. Feel pretty damn good.

The next project making a “What Have You Got To Say For Yourself, Missy?” face at me: Wintergrey Socks Round 2.

Accusing socks!

I usually get two pairs of socks from one ball of Opal self-patterning; this is the first of the second pair. Its heel is turned and I’m on the home stretch: just up the leg to the cuff, cast off, start the next one. BAM. Socks. So, why has it been wallowing in the knit bag, alone and palely loitering?  Well, there is a reason, but it’s kind of a poxy one…I want to make the next one the same length, and I want them to use up the yarn completely — so how do I know when to finish the first one? With maths! Maths that I haven’t gotten around to doing. If I was totally committed, I’d weigh the lot, weigh a spare set of needles, subtract the weight of the needles from the total, divide that figure by two and work out how much yarn, in grams, I could give to each sock. Then I’d weigh the sock in progress, subtract the weight of the needles, and work out how much I had left to finish with. Then I could work to the finish and cast off, secure in the maths-based certainty that I had enough yarn remaining to complete its partner. As it is, I think I’ll work this one until it’s about the length I want, then put it on a holder and pick up the other end of this ball and cast on its partner. When they’re about the same, I’ll put them on a pair of circs and work them side-by-side until they’re ready to cast off. I think that will work, although I’m not totally sure it’s actually a less involved challenge than the maths-based one. Still, let’s see how we go: now I’ve got a plan in place, I feel like I’ve already faced the biggest challenge.

That top picture also reveals a second sock on the go: on the far right, you will see some lush green wool on light grey needles. These socks are rocking my world. Simple and beautiful: there will be no problem finishing them. In fact, they’re coming on the trip as reward socks when I’ve worked my way through the Wintergrey socks and the Mermaid gloves.

Ooohhhhh, the potential...

This sack is exciting me. (Oh come on, sacks are exciting…Hi Google!) It’s full of various balls of Merino Supreme, my knitterly weakness. It’s so soft, so springy…so machine washable…but you need a bazillion balls to do anything with it, because you only get about four metres of yarn in a ball (this is an exaggeration). But there’s a little knitter in the back of my brain whispering “striped socks…Grumperina’s jogless stripes…striped socks ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION TO ME?…stripes…” and that little voice is getting more insistent. Every day my cold legs remind me that my thick, aran-weight boot socks only go boot-high; the vision of lush, knee-high stripey socks gets a little brighter. There’s also several balls of plain black Merino Supreme, which I am hoping to turn into sturdy fingerless mitts for a certain paternal figure in my life. (Dude’s been waiting a while.)

While rummaging in the knitting waiting room I came across some other paraphernalia.  First, a long-lost friend:

Aha!

This, dearly beloved, is my “better” tape measure. Since I’m working Green Sprite from scratch, I have been in need of a friend like this: one that actually goes all the way around me. My other tape measure, from my “First Sewing Kit”, given by a kindly grandmother, is both ambiguous in its measurements and very very short. Having said that, I’ve come this far with it…maybe I’m not giving it all the credit it deserves…

…I think I’ll stop that train of thought. I’m contemplating the competing merits of my tape measures, and frankly that doesn’t really gel with the kind of person I want to think of myself as.

Secondly, I found the origins of Green Sprite!



Archaeologists can only speculate...

This is the scribbly note page that led me to start writing up the pattern. Also, there’s a cryptic recipe for jam drops, noted so I didn’t have to take my laptop into the kitchen to read it.

So now I’m totally stocked with a load of to-be-completed projects. I’m trying not to murmur things like “the time has come!” and “this ends here!” as I march around the house, trying to figure out how to get all my knitting, novels and notebooks into my wee backpack without taking out my toothpaste or thermals.  I feel productive, progressive, forward-moving; rounding up all these lingering jobs and Taking Care of Business (Is it stuck in your head now? Mine too. Didn’t want to be alone.). I suspect the sincerity of this sentiment is somewhat compromised by an unconscious knowledge that, armed with all these good intentions, I will work only on Green Sprite for the whole week.