I’ve been fairly caught up with holiday knits and general stress of late, but the knitting part is paying off in the form of a couple more finished pieces. (Stress rarely pays off, but maybe someday I’ll learn that stress is actually the chief ingredient in the Philosopher’s Stone and all my years of being unbearably tense will result in an enormous payoff.) My Cascade Luna has magically become a diagonal herringbone scarf and a skein of Artful Yarns Serenade has turned into Jared Flood’s amazing Koolhaas hat. I love this pattern so much. The yarn on the other hand…well, you remember how I was going on and on some time back about how I’d never met a yarn I didn’t like? That was before I encountered the Serenade.
(Ignore my simpering look in this picture. It turned out strangely.)
I don’t wish to unduly impeach the character of an unoffending yarn. The Serenade is a cotton/angora blend and it is truly lovely and knits up into a very soft, gently haloed fabric. However, I hated every moment I was knitting with it. The angora sheds like mad, as angora is wont to do, and the cotton has that dry, cottony feeling, and together they just drove me nuts. It was not an enjoyable yarn to knit with, though I love the end result, and hope that the recipient of this hat will love it, too. I will never be using Serenade again, though, unless someone specifically requests something knit in it.
I went down to L.A. for Thanksgiving, and while there, made a pilgrimage to Knit Cafe. I have yet to buy the Knit Cafe book, although I’ve checked it out of the library and know I want my own copy. (I need it, anyway, to knit the Daktari skirt with my mess o’ silk tweed.) Knit Cafe is an adorable shop. I found myself wanting giant swatches of noisy wallpaper after spending just a few minutes inside, and I am fairly well convinced that I will be making my own knitting illustrations to hang on the wall near my knitting cabinet.
Knit ornaments!
I bought a risky skein of Colinette Jitterbug to make my mother a Clementine Shawlette. My lovely green one has been a big hit, and I want to make a blue and brown version for Mom. The Jitterbug is very very pretty, but I had strange misgivings about it that I couldn’t quite place until I came back home and looked it up on Ravelry, only then to remember that it is the exact yarn that many people there have complained about. I am hoping, since mine has a stamped date of September 2007, that it is part of the new, better line of Jitterbug, because I am hard pressed to resist a yarn that is called Jitterbug, let alone one that has pictures of adorable little dancing bugs on the label.
I also picked up a copy of Knit Knit. Mr. Kninja flipped through it, and though he is not a knitter himself, he found it fascinating enough to insist that we get a copy to share. Actually, it is currently at work with him, so he can look at it during slow moments. I. Love. This. Book. It brought me back to art school and why I love working with my hands, and reminded me that even though I am not a fine artist right now, art is never far from anything you create.
All of this brings up the issue of art and craft, and the difference between. I’m going to devote a full entry to this soon, because it’s never far from my thoughts these days. I’ve been missing art, and wanting to return to it in a form that isn’t writing alone, and while I love knitting and feel it is very much a part of me these days, I don’t consider my own knitting, even my own creations, to be art. I know I talked about this a little before, but looking at knitting that truly bridges the line between art and craft brought it all up again.
Off to craft some more and think about art.
