Knithropology

That’s sort of where I’m at right now. I’ve just entered the second half of my first summer class, and straightforward, relaxing (though maybe not as rewarding) knitting has been on my mental menu. Fulling by hand is a great way to get out tension as well as exercise the arms and shoulders - I’ve got fabulous forearms at the mo.

Of course, it all started with Michaela’s Hurried Sidekick. I promised pictures of it in my last post, so here it is, starting with the pre-fulling view (look at that SWS shine!):

It took two goes to get this to the right size; after the first bout of fulling, it didn’t seem the right size for someone as fast-moving and electric as Michaela, so in it went again and aaaaahhhh, perfect:

I’m happy to say she loved it, and she was even using it on a day she didn’t know she was going to see me, so that’s something. You can see - if you squint a bit - that there’s a snap sewn in; I think that was the most difficult part of the whole bag!

Elated by getting some of my SWS stash out of my house, I went on a mission. Fulled bags. First was the Slice of Sea bag (SWS in Natural Denim):

And that was followed by the slightly different Slice of Slate bag:

I might give this another round in the sink, but here it is at its current fulled state:

I have enough SWS in Natural Earth from old projects so that I could do another Sidekick-esque small bag, but we’ll see. I’m still chugging away on my Razoresque Cami (sigh), though I’m concentrating on another fulled bag at the moment - and eek, I’m doing colourwork!

I was so nervous before starting; my very first attempts at colourwork ended in tears and shouting. This time, after a few false starts, I was on my way. I’m making a new mp3 player bag using the chart from KnitPicks’ Come in from the Cold coaster and cuff set. I’m sort of using the Fake Isle technique - my snowflake is in Noro Kureyon (scraps from my Beige-Fighting Bag) and the rest in Cascade 220 (leftover from my Dashing Aubergines). I’m really chuffed at how well this is going. I’m sure that listening to David Reidy talk to Kaffe Fassett recently helped - I was very impressed (and later calmed) by Kaffe’s comfort with messes. All those bits of string!

But so far so good with my fledgling attempts at colourwork. I got over the puckering quickly enough, and I’m really happy with the results.  I’m definitely going to include colourwork in future projects, though I’ve got a long way before I attempt anything by the ‘messy’ Mr Fassett.

I continue to put up old projects on Ravelry; every time I think I’m finished, I look at something in my house and say to myself, “Hey, that’s [crocheted/knitted]!” I suppose it’s like art on the wall - you forget about it, take it for granted after a while. Oh fibre creations, I still love you, you’ve just lost that sheen of newness. But they’re slowly going up on Ravelry. The Even Better than the Topsy Turvy I put up recently has been getting some attention over there, which is really nice. I may make another one of those soon, but crocheting has been giving my wrists a bit of bother recently. I suppose doing a knitted version isn’t out of the question…but first, the colourwork!

Edited to add: the first half is finished! I like the gradual shift in the blue; I’m going to try and get a similar shade shift in whatever colour I choose for the other side.

Colourwork + me = fabulous.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under Finished Objects, On the Needles.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.