Knitters, let's change the world.
Over the last week I have finished a few projects (on their way to the blocking mat) and frogged one fairly major project (story coming later this week). Since everything on the needles is giving me attitude, I decided to start a project I’ve been excited about for a while.
Plus it was my birthday Sunday. What better excuse to cast on a cardigan?
I only started this yesterday and it’s already ten inches deep. It’s a welcome break from troublesome projects!
Once I figured out how easy crochet was I got a bit excited by it all. I began crocheting All The Things. At the time I was working in a large complex of stores all owned by the same people, and when I was in one of the two stores I worked in most often, I had ample time to crochet under the counter.
Yes, the place closed down around the beginning of 2011 due to how quiet it had become. It was my first full-time job and I enjoyed it well enough, but it was mostly sad to see it go because it had been there my whole life.
Anyway. I had plenty of time to crochet secretly at work and to crochet more as soon as I got home. Not to mention the fortnightly Stitch ‘n’ Bitch where I could take a wild break in routine to, you guessed it, crochet some more. I really enjoyed crocheting and I understood it much better than I understood knitting, so it was my default.
Here are a few of my proudest creations.
The star blanket for my nephew. That baby is not my nephew, but a small child who passed out at my nephew’s first birthday. I had permission to post it back then, so I assume it stands.
This was my second attempt at the blanket and I was super proud of the results. It’s very simple to do and looks amazing in variegated yarn, and seeing my small baby nephew in it gave me the warm fuzzies.
Heavily filtered through the glorious iPhone 3g that I loved at the time. You can hardly see the project, what was I thinking? Anyway, this is probably the best thing I made when I was just starting out.
It’s a blood choker. I took the inspiration from a pattern but didn’t like the execution, so I designed it to differ a lot. It was the first time I’d made something that looked exactly how I planned it without following a pattern. Yes, it’s a tad gory, but it made me happy and my Halloween costume for work was badass. (At the time I had shoulder-length hair, and I used most of a can of hairspray to make it stand out in a huge bird’s nest of a mess. I wish I had photos of that.)
Another moment of pride for me. At the time it felt like I had been crocheting forever, but in fact it had only been about four months. Making this little lacy motif made me super happy even if I never got around to finishing the pattern (a choker called Asphyxiation).
It was crocheted with some thread I bought on a trip to Newcastle upon Tyne to visit a friend. Little did I know that a few short years later I would live there for eighteen months while I waited to get my permanent residency in Canada. Funny how life takes us on such wayward routes.
I don’t crochet much any more, but looking back at my Crafter Origin Story has made me wish I did. I’m in the middle of a complicated knitted shawl right now, but once that’s done I think it’s time to crack out the hooks.
Because it’s an escape from reality into infinite possibility.
Because I don’t have to be self-conscious or awkward when I’m typing words on a page or writing in my notebook.
Because writing is the closest I’ll get to real magic, and I’m still waiting for my Hogwarts owl.
Because it is deeply personal and yet we share it and love it and talk about it.
Because I am a writer.
Because it’s like knitting; word after word, stitch after stitch, something new and beautiful (sometimes) comes together.
Because I’ve written over a million words in the last twelve years of doing NaNoWriMo just in the month of November.
Because the process is what matters.
Because I never lost that sense of awe I felt as a child when I realised a pen and paper was all you needed to create a new world.
Because someone thought something well over thousand years ago and I can still read it now.
Because I never figured out to stop, and I don’t want to.
Today’s featured blog is:
Thank you again Belinda for your support, and I’m not just talking monetary. You’ve been a regular commenter here and it always makes me smile to hear your thoughts.
LargeRoomNoLight is Belinda’s blog and you can see right off the bat that she’s a talented and creative person. Her most recent creation on the blog is a beautiful sweater with sleeves that were, as she says, her kryptonite. It’s a good thing she kept going with the project because it’s lovely!
She also takes gorgeous photos, even with her smartphone. That’s talent. I love browsing through her latest images; they’re always a treat.
It’s rare you find a blog that’s not only full of pretty pictures but also written from the brain of an eloquent and thoughtful person. I enjoy that as much as seeing her projects and adventures. You should head over there and check out LargeRoomNoLight as soon as possible.
When I truly discovered Frida Kahlo I was at a dark point in my life. I was sick and it was the latest in a long line of chronic, painful illnesses and I was tired of struggling through it. Though I was fortunate compared to many in that I could still (mostly) function with the things wrong with me most of the time, I longed for a life where I didn’t know any pain. I grew jealous of those who never got seriously ill and I began to get bitter.
I’m sure anyone who has been through chronic illnesses will understand that feeling. It’s not one I’m proud of but when your body is betraying you it’s difficult to keep on smiling.
Though I already knew of Frida Kahlo in an abstract sense I didn’t know much about her. She was that Mexican woman with the awesome sense of style and a huge amount of pride. She was that painter with the eyebrow and the facial hair. She was that woman who painted her pain onto the canvas and transformed it into beauty.
Okay, no, I didn’t know that last part until I was sick. I started reading about her and exploring her art and I discovered just how inspirational she was. She had gone through so much pain and suffering in her life and yet she consistently turned it into timeless art that still inspires people today. She did not shy away from herself or her pain; she painted both with equal honesty.
I realised something from understanding Frida Kahlo’s art: pain could be beauty. It did not have to be hollow and meaningless. Though I had no choice whether or not to go through the pain, I had the choice of what to make of it.
Did I want to sit around and mope like so many before me, or did I want to channel all of what I had seen into something better? Frida Kahlo made the answer clear.
Lately I’ve been going through some relatively mild medical nonsense. It’s nothing huge but it’s persistent and therefore tiring, so I’m revisiting the people who have inspired me through my life to keep going when it’s easier to lie down and stop. Frida Kahlo is a huge part of that and when I picked up a few random skeins of mohair/silk yarn a week ago I thought it appropriate that I’d somehow managed to pick a colourway called ‘Kahlo’ without noticing.
This is not a yarn I would normally pick up. I don’t like pink that much and the mohair/silk yarns scare me. Yet I had a migraine and wasn’t thinking straight (or seeing clearly, literally since half my vision was flickering at the time) when I picked it up, and it worked out just right.
For the last week I’ve been knitting this yarn into a random tube that may or may not end up being a little stop. I don’t like the way the colours fall in the pictures of other people’s projects, so I’m doing short rows to mix it up a bit. It has the added bonus of looking sort of like one of Frida Kahlo’s skirts, though far more muted. I have many things I should be knitting right now but instead I pick up this yarn and I remember how much she inspires me to be a more positive person.
Do you have anyone you look up to in that way?
It took me quite a while to realise that the ‘nupps’ people wrote about on Ravelry were the same as the ‘noops’ one of the my friends talked about occasionally, and even longer to figure out why they are so intimidating. Upon figuring out what they were I made a few attempts to do them but always gave up in frustration. That is… until I started my Damask shawl.
First up, maybe I should talk about what a nupp is. It’s a stitch that comes from Estonian knitting, a gorgeous lace-heavy style. According to Google Translate the word ‘nupp’ means button which is totally adorable and I love it. Basically a nupp is a bunch of knits and yarn overs worked into the same stitch, then on the following row you knit through all the loops in one go, leaving a little bobble-type thing on your object. There are other ways to get similar effects but nupps are smart and neat when they’re done right.
If you’re curious how to do a nupp, check out this video. I think I watched this many years ago and this isn’t how I do my nupps but I’ll come to that.
Okay, so on the video the woman uses the crochet hook for the nupp and the reason I think that I did watch this video years ago is that when I came to the first nupp on the Damask I had the thought that I should use a crochet hook. However instead of doing the whole thing on it like in the video, I did the nupp the normal way on the first row and then on the way back along the wrong side I used my crochet hook to grab the yarn and tug it through all the stitches before purling the resulting stitch. It worked out beautifully.
After the first row.
This was my first attempt and for the first row of the Damask they all look like this. I’m not sure what I did, but I think I may not have purled them and instead carried on as if they were knit, which dragged the yarn across the front. They all look like wrong-side nupps and I was not at all pleased with them but nor was I willing to break my momentum and go back to fix them.
Once I figured out how to do them they turned out much neater and worked well for the rest of the shawl.
Much bubblier, don’t you think?
By the end of the shawl nupps became quite boring which is a sign I’ve come far since the beginning of it. As ever I’ve found that pushing myself past a thing that intimidates me makes me much stronger in the long run.
At one point I dropped the nupp mid-crochet which almost made me burst into spontaneous flames. Thankfully I managed somehow to wrangle the three-inch strand of yarn back into a nupp and it’s only slightly messier than the ones around it.
I’ve still got a way to go before my nupps are as perfect as I want them but I’m still pleased with the progress.
Have you ever tried a nupp? How did it go?
Lately I’ve been asked to do a lot of knitting for other people. That’s not unusual (as any knitter will know) but this time I’ve been paid for it.
As a result, I’m lacking any photos of projects lately. Though I’m the one that’s knitting these items, they’re not mine. I don’t feel comfortable posting pictures of them. They’re a lot of fun to do and it’s always good to get paid to do something you love but it’s creating a bit of a blank spot on my blog.
I have thought about showing partial pictures just as something to fill in the blank spots here – what do you think? Would that be appropriate?
This won’t go on forever. I have some old projects I need to photograph and get up on here, plus I’m about to finish a pair of socks (I forgot to bring the commission project I’m working on with me out of the house today). There will be some photos of my knitting coming soon.
You might not think that a call-centre environment would be the place to find too much creativity. However, the monotonous work and the fact that your hands are free most of the time (yay headsets!) means that a mini knitting group has flourished at my workplace.
Out of nine people in my department, five people are knitters/crocheters. When we started I used to sit with my knitting happily stitching away and it has spread. There’s something about seeing someone else knit that makes everyone with the ability want to join in and it’s a lot of fun to sit in a group with our needles and hooks in hand, chatting away about our projects.
It’s like a knitting group that’s occasionally interrupted by customers. I’m also getting paid whilst knitting which is not quite like being paid to knit but good enough!
I know whenever I see anyone knitting it makes me want to join in. Scratch that – even seeing some nice knitted object makes me want to knit. Thankfully I’m rarely without a project on hand. I think it’s safe to say I’ve got a chronic case of the knitting bug and it’s infectious (just watch my coworkers!).
It turns out that changing my work schedule completely for the first time in months messed with my head. In the last week I have been unable to do anything useful whilst at home beyond walking the dog. I don’t even spend as much time knitting at home as I usually do due to the fact my job has become so quiet all of a sudden that I can get entire hats done in my shifts. I’ve knitted two in the last week plus most of a pair of socks.
The Brandywine Shawl I started a couple of weeks back has been quietly put aside. The mix of the pretty pattern plus the yarn with alpaca content just didn’t mix. It needs a yarn with some stitch definition so when I worked a couple of hours at Kniterary this Saturday I got some Cascade 220 in a lovely autumn orange. Sure, an orange shawl in an odd shape isn’t the most wearable of items but it’s not as though I’m averse to bright colours or weird clothes. I’m about to cast it on.
There’s a lot going on with my sticks and string lately but not much time to blog about it. This week I intend to get the hang of my new shifts and get back to normal service.
In penance (and in the spirit of the month), here’s a picture of some evil alpacas.
They’re watching you.
There is something soothing about linen stitch. When I started knitting I hated anything where you had to switch quickly between knit and purl. I didn’t like moss/seed stitch and I didn’t want to do 1×1 ribbing. Somehow that has changed and now I enjoy the rhythmic movements involved in most of these stitches.
I still hate 1×1 ribbing but that’s more of an aesthetic thing than anything. Give me 2×2 ribbing or give me death!
Linen stitch goes surprisingly quickly once you are used to it. Knit one, hold yarn in front, slip one, knit one, hold yarn in front, slip one. The stitches appear in no time at all despite the fact it’s like knitting half a row at a time.
The fabric you end up with looks almost woven. It doesn’t stretch vertically which makes it perfect for a bag. Knitted in the round (on an odd number of stitches) you don’t even have to pay attention to where you are in the row as it continues on indefinitely. It’s mindless and perfect for the absent-minded knitting you do when reading or watching a movie (or, if you’re me, working at a call centre).
This bag is going to be a gift. I didn’t use a pattern. I might write up how I made it for anyone else trying to figure out how to use that yarn that’s not suitable for next-to-the-skin usage. It would look just as good in a gaudy colourway as it does in this gorgeous green tonal yarn.
Don’t you think it looks like a meadow? I could stitch some sheep on it. Some little flowers. It would be extra adorable.
First I’ll find myself a funky button to sew on the front. What’s a bag without a button?
The Knitter Nerd 
