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October 24, 2005
Other People's Knitting
This is the beginning of Springtime Shawl by Sharon Miller. It is a swatch knit up by Catherine to test various edgings and pick-up methods. She let me have it to drool over the yarn and gave me permission to post a photo. The yarn is fabby and I purchased a cone of it upon my return to St Louis.
Yes I have been reduced to posting other people's knitting. I tend to think of knitting as cyclic. Not just the summertime knits in summer and the warm woolies in winter. In fact I have a habit of knitting warm woolies mid summer and cool summery pieces in winter. Nor do I mean the vagaries of fashion for classic fine gauge knits vs let the yarn do the talking bulky knits. More like not feeling like knitting. But beyond that. Sometimes in blog land you see people complaining about startitis. I like to think startitis is a disease. It is brought about when we are restless and nothing in our workbasket really appeals to us. Its glorified swatching cause oftentimes as soon as we see how the pattern is developing or the construction is designed we get bored and off to another item. We walk away, hopefully, with a new technique learned or more fully understood so that when we come accross another item with ie a steek or short rows we can grasp what is involved prior to casting on. At least when I started knitting I CO tons of stuff and learned how the fabric was gonna drape and how a certain portion was worked and was happy to move onward to a new thing~ from wool to cotton to alpaca from steeks to lace to faux side seams via purling a few sts vs a different color pattern vs crocheting up every other row. These times serve us well although I feel, and sense others feel, that it is wasteful of resources. Our time, money, yarn.
Lately I find myself CO 6-12" worth of stitches and knitting plain st st. Until the ball runs out or the day is over or a good foot has been knit. Very large swatches. At the end of the evening I dutifully rip them out with a sense of how that particular yarn drapes and reflect light and my personal opinion of ideal st st gauge. These swatches don't even pretend to be sweaters in the making. Something that one day I may return to and finish. Giant swatches that do not fufill the yarns ultimate goal of becoming something useful or beautiful. Now thats a true waste of resources. Still I am beyond spending weeks knitting something that displeases or merely bores me. I find this a strange situation. I am used to taking breaks where I do not knit at all. Or even indulging my need for the habitual knitting by starting something new. This is something new and rather uncomfortable. Am I so boring that I need to knit to feel that I am being productive? Will this funk ever end? Will I ever CO something for me and finish it~ enjoying the process the whole while? Will my critical mind ever stop wondering if I should do something this way vs that way and if the pattern is worthy of the treasured yarn or the yarn worth the pattern or or or.... If you have never suffered from Gaugitis thank your lucky Star titi s
Knit on
Posted by Elka at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)