Lately I have been in the mood for easy. I don’t want to knit anything complicated or fancy. I want to knit for the pure act of knitting and not to impress. Impress sounds wrong but I think it is the right feeling. My particular favorite form of knitting has always been, and probably always will be, lace. Knitting something that looks impressive, despite being not nearly as hard as it can look technically speaking, means that I get oohs and aahs from my friends and family. A shawl or wrap also is a bit of fancy that doesn’t fit into my daily life of children and cleaning. I once read a story where one of the characters worked in a grocery store in a small town and never did anything of note. Except for own a passport. Lace, tucked away into my drawers, serve as my passport. Not to various knitting traditions~estonian, shetland, orenberg but rather to a time when I won’t tending to sick tummies and picking up scattered toys. Whenever I give somebody a piece of knitting I feel as if I am giving them a part of my imaginary life and this is no where more the case when I gift away a lace scarf or shawl.
All of which sounds rather melancholy. I love my children and I love my life and I love my partner and family and all of that. I aim to live in the now but still there is that piece of me that dreams of solitude or glamour. And clothes do tend to be a method of self-expression so why not of some aspect you cannot realistically display on a daily basis? Speaking of glamour there is a picture of me taken, oh 20 years or so ago, with a large scarf wrapped around my head and wearing shades. I was feeling very Grace Kelly but came off looking ‘like a rich arab dressed warmly’ according to my friend. I suppose that counts as glamour. This picture of my latest FO reminded me of that long ago picture:
She does look a bit sleepy. The pattern is from Victorian Lace Today and uses the called for yarn in a different color. I also ignored the whole wooden bead thing but went for some square beads. The wooden beads and terracotta colored shawl pictured in the book just didn’t seem very glitzy to me. One complaint about the patterns in the book is that most people need more yarn than called for and this is a bit problematic. When the book came out I ordered the yarn for various shawls. According to Amazon I ordered the book Nov 8th, 2006 and I know I ordered the yarn the same month. I was horrified when I realized that I would probably run short of yarn when it came time for me to actually do the knitting. Even this pattern, which is your basic garter stitch shawl knit sidewise, apparently required more yarn. I carefully swatched and then weighed my cone of yarn and put in lifelines the second and first repeat before center just in case. Very baktus of me. Since I had no clue how much the cone weighed I stayed concerned until I cast off. I ended up with a decent sized ball of leftover yarn~12gms and all the worry was for naught. Close up of beads and shadow play for my attempt at artistic photography:
Just lovely and really a super easy way to inject some fancy into the day. It might not keep me warm but it will add just the right touch of ooo-la-la into my winter wardrobe.
~ yarny days and knitterly evenings