Confession time

I have a confession to make. I love my new Signature Needle Arts DPN's. I've been using my 3.25mm needles to knit a pair of wrist warmers for my Dad, and they are just the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the camel's toe ... I love the way they look, the way they feel when you knit with them, even the sound they make. I am in love.

Which brings me to my second confession. I bought yarn, but it's OK because it was for my Dad's wrist warmers that he asked me to knit, and that's one of the exceptions I allowed myself. It started with his asking me to knit him something to keep his arthritic wrists and thumbs warm in winter. So I hunted out a few free patterns for inspiration, and found one that he liked the look of. It was a World War One vintage pair of wrist warmers, so I re-jiggled the pattern to knit it in the round and eliminate the seam.

For once this modification was not motivated solely by my hatered of sewing up. My Dad has a scar from where he broke his arm and had a plate put in, and a seam would run right over the scar and rub it. So our interests coincided on that issue.

I also re-jigged the pattern to add a "thumblet" to keep his arthritic thumbs warm.

Anyway, naturally I asked him what colour he wanted, and in time-honoured irritating father manner he replied, "Aubergine". This prompted some spirited debate in the yarn shop as to which shade was Aubergine, but in the end I went with a nice squishy 8-ply that was a purple colour called "Luxe" and told my Dad that was as close as I could get to Aubergine in a non-scratchy machine washable wool. It is almost the colour of his favourite football team, so I think he is fine with the selection.

The good thing was that I had a legitimate reason to go and buy yarn, so the sales assistants at the yarn shop had no grounds to suspect I am a woman with a yarn stash so large that I think I can go a year without buying any new stuff.

March hasn't gone to well either

Well where do I start with March? In March, I had a long lost relative turn up. The kind of relative you hope stays long lost. The kind of relative who puts the "dys" into "dysfunctional family". The kind of relative you lock your doors against and, if you are a knitter, prepare to sacrifice a set of double pointed needles to use as weapons against. (Not that I ever needed to use them in anger, I just felt better knowing that I had a means of self-defence at hand.)

Somehow, through all the trauma, I managed not to buy yarn. I bought myself a set of Signature Arts double pointed needles, which I am not prepared to sacrifice as weapons. These needles are way too good to waste on long-lost relatives. In fact, these needles look so beautiful all I have done so far is admire their stiletto pointed, 6 inch long, multi-coloured impressiveness.

I also bought myself a copy of Charlotte Schurch's "Mostly Mittens", and somehow resisted the temptation to run out and buy a whole heap of yarn and cast on about twenty million multi-coloured mittens. Probably because the book arrived just as I was taking Maggie cat to the vets. I met the parcel delivery guy in the driveway on our way out, and stuffed the book into my bag. It came in handy, because we were a little delayed going into our appointment and I got to read it to her while we waited. And I showed her the pictures too. Maggie let out a little "Ow!" at her favourite pictures. (We're still working on the "meow" bit). So I've made a note of Maggie's favourite mittens, but will have a look around my stash when the urge to knit a pair gets overwhelming.

So it's good to know that I have unlearned my main response to crisis and chaos, which was "stuff it down with new wool".

Forget April, February is the cruelest month for me

There hasn't been much blogging lately, because there hasn't been much knitting. The reason is simple: it's February. It's the hottest month, and it's so humid that even if I could touch yarn without sweating profusely, I am so sapped of energy that I cannot concentrate on even the simplest pattern for more than about two seconds.

Which doesn't stop me from looking at knitting, thinking about knitting or reading about knitting. I just don't feel like doing knitting. That is what I mean by the cruelest month.

Reality sinks in

A week ago today, I had a realization that brought everything to a halt. I cannot buy any more yarn for a whole year. And it stopped me in my tracks.

When I decided to take on the challenge of knitting from my stash for a year, I was fine with it. I am big on the "enough" principle. I have enough yarn. I have enough patterns to knit. I was actually looking forward to it. It will be fun to knit a heap of things I have been meaning to get around to.

Then on the actual day the challenge began, I stopped thinking, "Soon I won't be able to buy yarn". And I started thinking, "Now I can't buy any more yarn until this time next year".

I tell you, the realization brought me to a halt. This is it, I have made this commitment and I have to at least try to keep it. For a brief moment I considered begging all my relatives to buy me yarn as presents.

This could be a lot harder than I thought.

Operation Emergency Suck Up

And sometimes the need to start a project is thrust upon you. Like when my rabbit sneaked up on my mother when she was wearing her brand new cardigan, and chewed a cord off it. Personally, I am admiring his sneakiness and cleverness, but my mother seems to think I need to make it up to her with a pair of hand-knitted mittens.

Once I'd chosen my pattern - Somerset vs Norway from Ravelry - I went off to my local yarn shop on my morning tea break on Saturday morning, and bought some yarn. I'm using Filatura di Crosa Zara 8ply, with Midnight blue as the contrast colour and cream as the main colour, so it looks like two white rabbits gazing at the moon. The pattern is for Cascade 220, but a single ball of Zara in each colour seems to be working out fine.

This pattern was a bit of a challenge because my previous pairs have been knitted without thumb increasing and with the thumb stitches picked up later. This patter has thumb shaping in the palm, and you hold about half the stitches, and pick up the other half. It looks ugly on the needles, but once you try the mitten on, it makes so much sense.

I cast on Saturday night after work, and finished the first mitten Tuedsay evening at 10.30 pm. So I am halfway forgiven.

I notice my mother forgave my rabbit before I'd even finished the thumb shaping. He didn't have to knit anything. All he did was jump in her lap and look cute.

Choosing a project

Sometimes it's like falling in love. Everything about your intended is perfect: the pattern, the colour, the yarn ... Everything. You can't wait to cast on, and you resent any interruption that takes you away from your love.

Last time I fell in love that way was with a cardigan. I lugged a ridiculously large cardigan around with me for ages, just so we could snatch a few stolen minutes together on the train. I loved the pattern, I loved the way the yarn felt in my hands as I worked on my cardie. But like most intense and passionate love affairs, it didn't last. When I was nearly at the end, I found out how the 7% angora in my yarn was likely produced. I finished the jumper, but I have never worked with that yarn again. My beloved was not quite as ethical as I had believed.

I still like that cardigan, but these days I think of it more with affection than with passionate attachment. Thank goodness, because such passion can be exhausting.

Some of my projects are chosen with more of the head than the heart. I'll be leafing through a pattern book and come across a pattern, and think: "That is a new technique, I want to try that". Or an new method of construction, or a new stitch pattern I haven't tried before. I'll cast on and knit with a cool intellectual rigour, working and thinking until the lightbulb moment. "Oh, so,this is how you do it!" Often, once I've finished the project, I'll give it away.

The year I leaned to knit socks, I made pairs of socks for nearly everybody in the family until I felt really had a grip on what I was doing. My mother, sister and brother-in-law all got socks for Christmas, and my father got hand-knitted socks for his birthday. I won't be doing that again, since they (are a bunch of ingrates who don't appreciate hand-knitted socks) have enough socks for now.

I also kept a pair or two or three for myself, because I appreciate hand-knitted socks.

Sometimes I'll cast on a project with half an idea, and knit until I get an idea of how it's going to work out. They project either makes it, or it doesn't.

I also knit for other people, on occasion. Mostly people will tell me what they want, mostly specifying the colour, and I knit it. I knitted Jan and Kathy a pair of Western Bulldogs socks each, and Heather a pair of dark green socks in "Dispute Stitch".

The biggest challenge is when I am knitting a gift for someone, with no idea of whether they will like it. I knitted a pair of Cherry Stitch socks for my friend Cherry. They started out as a bit of a "where is this going" experiment, but along the line it felt right that it become a gift for Cherry. I hoped she would like them, and luckily she did. I also knitted a baby jacket for her son, Little C, because I thought it was so cute, and he was the only baby I had to knit for. Again, luckily his Mum and Grandma loved the jacket. Right now I am knitting Cherry a scarf, as a thank you for our friendship. Part of me is anxious about whether she will like it, but my rational brain tells me she will. I have picked a colour that she wears, and anyway Cherry understands that it is knitted with love.

Cherry appreciates hand-knits.

Everyone has their own story ... 2

Or, How Knitting Socks Saved My Life.

So there I was, knitting away to cope with stress. After I was transferred to a new manager and a new round of bullying, I became too sick to go to work. Before the GP wrote me a medical certificate for a week, he asked me if I had something to keep me occupied, because he didn't want me just sitting at home doing nothing.

I immediately thought of the ball of Kureyon sock yarn I had at home, the set of double pointed needles and the free sock pattern. I had always thought I would like to knit a pair of socks, when I had the time to sit down and concentrate. And I told my doctor, "I'll be fine, I have plenty to keep me busy".

So I went home and knitted and knitted and next thing I knew, I was up to the heel. The mysterious and reputedly difficult heel. Halfway through turning the heel I realised two things: it was easier than I'd been led to believe, and it was a lot of fun.

It was three weeks before I was well enough to go back to work, and in that time I had knitted my first pair of socks, dubbed my "Therapy socks", and started my second pair. I was hooked.

So I guess in a way I owe those terrible bosses a debt of gratitude, because without them I would never have learned to knit socks. Hmmm, I'm still working on that.