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At least it's on brand

I finished it!

I just want to start by saying that, despite it being two weeks since I last posted (more on this below), I finished that infernal blanket about that long ago, too. I wove in the ends and sewed on the accents and practically chucked it at The Pirates. I also warned Claire that if anything on the blanket broke I wasn’t fixing it for at least 12 months. She understands, she has these feelings sometimes too. It’s why we jiive so well. ;o)

Here’s the finished product. It looks more like an albino toucan than a narwahl, in my opinion, but pirates also have birds so it’s still on brand. I’m calling it a win. Remember, I’m not a crocheter, the fact that it looks remotely like an animal, let alone one that I can reasonably argue would fit logically into a pirate family, is a win for me!


I think that crochet project zapped me of any knitting mojo I might have had for anyone else. I have a theory that trying to bend yarn in ways that feel very unintuitive for me  (I say for ME - I am the daughter of a crocheter and I’m the one in the string of First Daughters down my maternal line to not find commune with the art, I know it’s me that’s the problem), but managing to do it somehow, is the fibre fiend’s equivalent to bending one’s luck. At some point all that good karma and aligning of the universe to help a girl out has got to tip the other way and balance out.

Since finishing that blanket I have managed to stuff up three other projects - all knitted ones, by the way - and, well, I just didn’t feel like sharing that rate of defeat with you all. I absolutely trust the knitting community to be supportive when things go poorly with a project for one of us, but I know there’s plenty of other, bigger, things going on in our community right now and I was sure after the first frogging things would turn around.

Well it didn’t, and two more projects followed suit. I have committed back to the stash two pairs of socks and a cardigan. Most of this happened over the course of one evening, about a week ago, while I was participating in an online bookclub meetup. My internet connection was so bad, and my focus so much worse, that the evening ended in three piles of squiggly freshly frogged yarn, my WIP basket from the move (that is currently all the yarn I have access to until the storage container comes back to us) upended on the bed, and my computer - perhaps in solidarity with my crankiness - deciding to have a tantrum about all the heat and the internet’s lack of reliability. I’m sure it all was a sight to see - Liebling came in at one point, looked from me to the bed and back, and slowly backed out of the bedroom, taking the cats with him.

In response I wrapped each pile of yarn carefully in a tea towel (I was already cranky, I didn’t want Future Babs to be more pissed off at having to untangle three project’s worth of yarn) and hid them all away in the back of the wardrobe. I resolved that until I could get out of this funk I’m not knitting for other people.

A couple of days later I couldn’t ignore the itch any longer and I cast on something for myself. It’s colourwork, it’s in delightfully cool autumnal colours (yes apparently Zauberball can make even a brown look like cool damp earth) and I’m contrasting it with a misty grey for a pair of viking runic inspired socks. The color combination and the design remind me so much of my beloved Pacific Northwest I’m finding it very soothing and enjoyable to knit. I managed to get all of the way through a foot in one evening and afternoon at the yarn shop, to give you an idea of how intuitive and quick this pattern is. Here’s a photo taken at Skein Sisters during our Sunday Social Knitting group, as well as a photo from Punch Bowl Falls at Eagle Creek in the Columbia River Gorge, for comparison.

  


Don’t those colours make you think of chilled air laden with the smell of moss and wet earth? Maybe some coffee and frozen pine needles crunching underfoot… 

I guess my dreaming of winter days isn’t so surprising. It’s been bloody hot and humid A.F. here. It’s been so hot that even The Girls don’t give two stitches about my wool. (Flick through this year’s previous posts to see just how much of a fibre fiend Jolie is for comparison, if you’re new here.)



The heat isn’t going to let up, but I’m skipping out of town to Melbourne for the weekend. More to come on that once I’m far enough away from the heat that I can work for longer than 20 minutes at a time without my laptop overheating. ;o)

How’s everyone else’s current WIP selection going? I’d love to see photos!



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