I’m heading out to spend a few days with family in Canada. I was packing yarn for a light-weight travel knitting project and first I thought, “Two balls will be plenty.” But then I remembered that terrible time when I was stranded in an airport hotel in Amsterdam for 24 hours, and I packed all four just in case. You never know, and you can never have too much comfort yarn.

Back next week!

On Sunday I went to the Winter Garden for the opening of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. The project marries craft and mathematics, and brings attention to the ocean’s endangered coral reefs.

The pieces are every shape imaginable, and made from everything from wool to trash.

I got to meet Helle, who has flown in from Australia. Her Rubbish Vortex is hanging in the middle of this snapshot…

It’s made entirely from plastic bags of every color, sent to her from all over the world. I find the piece particularly moving; the real trash vortex in the pacific is large enough to be compared to a land mass and makes this planet seem very small and vulnerable.

There are daffodils blooming at the end of our street and birds keep showing up in my knitting. These guys in the center back of my cardigan…

…and this one on the lower left front.

They make me think of a song by The Be Good Tanyas with the lyric the littlest birds have the prettiest songs. They make me happy. It’s spring.

Once upon a time I was knitting a sweater, and then I had a disappointment, and finally I came to realize that this whole knitting in two colors in the round from the top was completely insane and probably impossible and I should stop. Just walk away from the pointy sticks. No more knitting stupid impossible sweaters.

But then during the plague I couldn’t help myself; a washcloth was not enough, I needed a KNITTING PROJECT. So I frogged the aborted sweater and started over.

This time it’s in manageable pieces, and I have a pattern to follow (Debbie Bliss’s fair isle cardigan in Vogue Knitting Holiday 2007). I am knitting in a different gauge but despite the reawakened frenzy I tried really hard not to just start. I did some calculations and it seems like the stitch count for the small size will turn out my size if knit at this gauge. (Please don’t quote me if I come back in tears.) Of course I’m still insisting on using the flower pattern instead of what the the designer suggested. I cannot follow a pattern to the letter. It’s a disease.

By the time I was well I had knit the right front, and I’m almost done with the back now.

The monster knitting obsession is back.

On day 2 of being sick I was already so completely and utterly bored that I grabbed one of Barbara Walker’s stitch treasuries, picked a stitch pattern with a large repeat, grabbed some cotton and knitting needles that looked like they would probably work, and made this washcloth.

The problem with the project was that it woke up the giant knitting obsession, but more on that later…

Meanwhile another huge sense of accomplishment was achieved by installing hooks being the door in the studio to hang my no-longer-pile of bags.

Little victories.

I reaaaaally want to make something, but all my stuff – beads, yarn, fabric – is in boxes. And that would entail unpacking, which would require moving furniture into place, which is heavy and frustrating and feels like that game where you move the little squares around to make a picture. Pfft. Forget that. I’ll just weave through the piles to get to my computer and read happy crafty blogs all day.

Today’s find was the nerd and the needles, and yummy pictures of traditional Norwegian mittens.

I want to knit those little people soooo bad. Might have to go unpack a box…

This mask was my first assignment when I took a class with Katharine Cobey.

Many of my guests are freaked out by it. I like it.

Packing requires touching everything, visiting a little.
CON: it slows me down. PRO: it entertains me.

There’s really no other word to describe this hunk of manliness:

His head gear is reminiscent of the delicious balaclava helmet, yet so much more modern, and he wears it with a casual, rugged insouciance that makes it hard to look away.

Note that the garment’s small size, combined with the use of a chunky yarn and garter stitch, make it the ideal project for a novice knitter.

I found him on Flickr where Flint Knits has posted gems from her large collection of vintage patterns. Check out selections from the 1940s-50s, 1960s, and the 1980s – a decade all too fresh in my mind.

Ugh. I’ve had to frog my sweater all the way back to the shoulder. I was feeling good, knitting along, when this post over at Brooklyn Tweed made me stop and actually look at my knitting. I had this itchy feeling that maybe my gauge wasn’t working right, and I was gaining too many stitches on the sleeves. Investigation confirmed my fearful suspicions.

Here are the pics of my happy oblivious progress pre-unravelling:

And here’s the proof that I was well on my way to having a floral Star Trek outfit:

Ready to do the damage, I reread the section I’m following in Knitting From the Top – only to discover that in my, shall we say, enthusiasm, I had been increasing every single row, instead of alternate rows. The end result of which would be power shoulders worthy of Dynasty.

I am humbled, and back to this:

I had to take some handwork with me on our recent trip, so the weekend before leaving we rode the bus down to Red Hook to investigate Brooklyn General. Love at first sight! The store is delightful and old-fashioned and I wanted everything. Every. Thing.

Poor M followed me around patiently while I filled his arms with yarn, then asked him to return it to the shelves while I simultaneously shoved more, different yarn in his direction. It was the usual choosing anxiety attack since what I’d pictured in my head doesn’t exist and I had to reevaluate the whole sweater spur-of-the-buying-trip. On the ride home my mood swung wildly between delight and buyer’s remorse. Exhausting.

I had planned to make myself a sweater using the green and red colors and flower pattern of my fingerless mittens but there were no equivalent yarns in a larger gauge. Assisted and emotionally-supported by M and the enthusiastic shopkeeper, I chose a deep cerise Noro on a background of dark gray Morehouse Merino. (As I write this I am still swinging between delight and anxiety at the thought. Jeez.)

I decided to knit from the top down, following Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top. Turns out that while it really does allow you to check your fit as you go, this is not a technique devised with 2-color patterning in mind. Witness the chaos:

But I am nothing if not stubborn; this was taken the night before we flew home:

M refers to it as “your little shrug”.