purlsandmurmers

Knitting Day

I took a blog break last week.  I didn't really mention that fact, at least not here, allowing my more unfocused blog to serve as the platform for that announcement.  No matter really, for there was little knitting perhaps, or there was knitting but little progress.

 

I started a new project, a sweater for myself, and it has been the only project I have been working on.  Above is a photo I posted on Instagram about 11 days ago, the same photo used when I recorded the beginning of the project on Ravelry.  The pattern is called Back to the Future and it is a sweater-of-the-month from L'Atelier in Redondo Beach, CA.  The yarn is Classica DK, a lovely cashmere, and I am knitting this on size 8 needles.

I really love the way this is turning out, although it has been a rocky start.  This is no fault of the pattern, or even generally of my knitting skills on average, but perhaps more indicative of my own general state of stress and exhaustion over the past couple of weeks.   I knit and ripped the first six rows six times before I got the rhythm of the pattern and then I thought I was well on my way when I posted that first photo.  At that point I was 26 rows into the sweater, or not quite half way through the second repeat of the 18 row pattern.  So much for optimism.  Rows 27 through 36 took me another week, although I did not knit every day, and I often ended up tinking every third row or so.  Mostly I was just not paying attention as my dog was ill, ultimately fatally so, and I was more interested in cuddles than knitting.

I picked the sweater up again yesterday (Friday) after a bit of a hiatus and finished the 2nd and 3rd pattern repeats at the bottom of the sweater back and moved into the stockinette stitch that makes up the body of the sweater.    It made for a rather happy and healing day of knitting, and I am have now knit about 11 inches of the back.  Hopefully it will be smooth knitting from here on out and I am looking forward to this sweater and wearing it as well, although odds are that there will be few wearing opportunities until next fall.  You can never tell in Tennessee however. 

 

Hopefully I am also back on track with updates as well. 

Pillow Power

(This post was originally posted on Thursday 2/11/21 and severely revised on Friday 2/12/21)

 

I sometimes wonder why I even bothered writing a post last week.  Sometimes I wonder why I bother at all.  It is only February and I am failing in my goal of writing a post a week.  I should not push myself to write when I feel tired, frazzled, stressed, and petulant, however, which means I must also accept that there will be times when intention goes out the window.

 

But the Autumn Vine Pillow is finally finished.  I picked up the pillow insert, and yes I still hate that term, even as I understand the necessity.  After I put the knitted cover on the pillow, I added the buttons.  I am tickled that I had five buttons that were just the right size and right shade of blue.

I probably should have reinforced the button band, (you can see it pulling slightly here) but I was thinking this would be a decorative pillow in a place where it would get little tough use. I may have been mistaken in that assumption.  But at the moment I will leave it as is and simply accept that reinforcement may be necessary.

Here is the cushion on the library sofa.  It looks good there now, and although I have mixed feelings about having all three pillows from Rowan's Seasonal palette AW 19 (seen below) on that sofa, since I have not yet knitted the other two, perhaps it can live here for now.  

 

Admittedly, on Thursday I posted on Instagram that this pillow would not stay on the sofa but move to the bed, which was always an alternate position.  Neither is ideal.  Perhaps I shall present the case for each.

 

Sofa: I love the way the pillow looks on the sofa.  It is soft and comfortable and squishy enough for a nap, as Poncho and I often take a nap on that sofa.  However Poncho also tosses the pillows off the sofa multiple times a day, and since I don't use an extra pillow when sitting and knitting, the sofa can get crowded.  Yesterday I was feeling very petulant about constantly having to pick cushions up off the floor, but realistically I was primarily petulant because I've been struggling with two weeks of internet and equipment woes, and pretty much anything could push me over the edge.

Bed:  Above is Autumn Vine on the bed with a pillow covered in Colinette Point 5 and a needlepoint pillow.  The colors here are good together, and they tie the bed more closely to the rug, which is darker than the bed.  On the other hand they are a tad small, if I want to curl up on the bed with pillows to read a book or take a nap.  Yes I do that, although not so much at the moment, mostly because I nap with Poncho on the sofa.  My bed is very high and Poncho is both blind and willing to leap off anything.  I am worried that he would try to jump off the bed.

The pillows that were on the bed previously were larger, which was useful when I was feeling a bit under the weather sinus-wise.  They don't really work with the decor of the room, they were just left-over from a previous house.  Although I loved the fringed pillow in that house, I don't like it here at all.  

 

I suppose what this is telling me is that I really need to spend some time actually thinking about pillows, rather than just holding on the flotsam and jetsam of previous lives and hoping that it will all work together.

 

A Week of Dithering

I was sitting here, on the loveseat in my studio sorting out a tangle of circular needles, both fixed length and convertible, and I realized that I had intended to write a blog post today.  Oops.  It seems all in keeping however, as I have somehow felt a little bit scattered this past week.  I've worked on lots of things, and that may be part of the problem, I hop from stop to stop, idea to idea, and here I am at the end of the week looking out the window and dithering.  

 

I've actually been puttering with a bunch of things:  garden planning, some basement pantry organization, various sorting and exercises in contemplation in the studio if not that much actual sewing or knitting.  I did work on some kind of needlework every day, but it seems like this week was all set up, or assembly but with no finished objects to show off.

I had hoped to finish the Autumn vine pillow sham in January, and I almost made it.  I finished the knitting, and got it all nicely blocked.  I could have sewn it up on the 31st, but somehow I got distracted.  Wednesday I finally got around to sewing and Thursday I found my button stash and searched for buttons.

 

There was a bit of a miscalculation on my part however, so the sham sits, empty and waiting.  I thought I had an appropriate pillow.  Remember I started this project in a workshop so it really bears no relation to the actual size of pillows in my house.  I knew that I had some large square pillows in my house and I kind of held my knitting up loosely up against one and said to myself "that will work", and forgot about it.  Did I check the actual size of the pillow against the finished dimensions of the sham I was knitting?  No.  It was like my brain and my fingers were in two completely different worlds, oblivious of each other.

So I finished the sham, sewed it together and voila!  It is too small for the pillow I had in mind.  It is too small for the alternate (second choice) plan as well.  The sham is 18" square.  The pillows in question are 22" and 24" square.  You would think I would have noticed this.  You would be wrong.  So above you see a slightly stretched pillow sham, waiting to be whole, waiting to become one with a pillow.  

 

This unification of pillow and sham will happen soon, but not today.  I ordered a feather pillow from Pottery Barn.  It is ready for curbside pickup as I write, but I decided I was already scattered enough this week and the thought of getting in the car and going somewhere was more than I could bear, even to finish a project that I have ended up loving (surprise there, not that long ago I would have said I would never knit a pillow).   Besides I am trying to be conscientious, to not just drop in the car and drive willy-nilly just because I can.  I am trying to consolidate trip and errand days so that I go out fewer days per week.  This might change when the world returns to normal, whatever that new normal may be, but I am finding that this system works for me; I actually get more time to work on things I want to work on.

 

In other knitting-related news, the second camelid blanket is on hold because the dark gray Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande I need is currently out of stock. It is a pretty basic color however, so I assume it will be back in stock one of these days. This is probably a good thing anyway because I have now finished, or almost finished, three projects for the house and I want to knit something for myself.

 

To that end I have sorted through parts of my yarn and project stashes, have even photographed a few things and started thinking about how they should best be cataloged for the future, the idea being that having some kind of photographic accounting means that I will not go into the closet, pull everything out, pile it all up on the floor, and then have to put it all away when I am done. Having chosen a project, the reason I was sitting on the loveseat sorting circular needles becomes evident.  Now I need to determine if I have appropriate needles for the project I wish to knit.

Onward.