Two Things

Every knitter needs two things:  A personal, at-home, knitting library and people to knit with. My opinion of course.  One can knit without these things, but  if you want to be a 'capital K'  Knitter, you need them.

The idea of needing   people to knit with is  an easy sell   - even a lower-case 'k'  knitter sees that knitting can be a solitary experience.    Who doesn't enjoy spending time  with  like-minded people, learning from them, laughing with them and getting  your knitting done  at the same time? 

Convincing knitters they need a personal,  at-home,  knitting library is more difficult.  "Can I get a copy of that?"   is much   more commonly heard than   " I must buy that book - that pattern - that magazine."

But let me tell you -  when my inspiration button gets stuck,  when my vision fades, when first attempts fail, I turn not only to my knitting friends,

but also to my personal, at-home, knitting library.

 
How much more difficulat would my knitting life be  without the inspiration of expert knitters to guide me, direct me and lead me through the visionary process?  How wonderful to have Sally Melville, Elizabeth Zimmermann, Deb Gemmell, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts,  Wendy Bernard, Stephanie Japel,  and multiple magazines full of other wonderful 'K'nitters to pull onto  my lap as I recline in an easy chair to do 'research'.

Having done just that over the last couple of evenings I am now ready to tackle a creative,  top-down, pattern-free sweater.   It will be successful, I'm sure.  Sally, Deb, Wendy, Stephanie, Priscilla, Elizabeth  'et al' are watching.  What could possible go wrong?

 

One Goal Too Many

I bit off more than I could chew knit.  Anxious to begin my first sweater of the year, I thought I might incorporate some of my 2012 goals - the one about knitting enough top-down sweaters to make top down an intuitive skill and the one about becoming familiar with the Contiguous Method and the one about becoming more creative.  All in the same sweater.  Yep.  My ambition sometimes knows no boundaries.

I would use this lovely yarn that has been languishing on my shelf for more than two years,

 

and maybe trim it out with this - that's the creative part -

and maybe do top-down and maybe even top-down contiguous.   You can see where this is going.  I choked.  The contiguous is not working for me with this yarn.  With the  loft and  hairy fuzz of this yarn, the increase-every-row aspect of the contiguous shoulder made the knitting look matted and tough. 

 
A tough-looking sweater knit with a  soft, lofty yarn was not one of my goals.  Time to start afresh.  Re-starting requires research.  Sunday evening was spent reading.  First these,

 

then these.

 

My vision is now a sweater that  incorporates only two goals - a creative, top-down.  That, I think,  is  manageable.    Especially since I now have a great gauge swatch.

Goal Number Three

In keeping with my 2012 goals, in particular, goal number three which is to be more creative, I have decorated my felted bucket hat.  When knitting the Nikki scarf, I had hat decoration in mind and kept aside a few metres of  the yarn.

Now you should know that creativity does not come naturally  to me.    'I am not very creative , but I copy well'  describes my efforts at creativity.  Copying enables me to achieve a degree of creativity but certainly not   full blown creativity.  But hey - not everyone can be   Debbie New.   Using  knitting magazines, ravelry and knit group, I watch for things that might inspire me, then copy them and with a twist or two,  make them my own. 

So to sit down with a felted hat on my lap and a few yards of thick and thin yarn and nothing to fall back on  but my own brain, - well, it took awhile  all evening.  I braided the yarn and wound it around the hat. Nope.  I crocheted a chain and wound it around the hat.  Nope.  I finger crocheted the yarn very loosely and wound it around the hat.  Nope.  They looked OK, but if the goal was to kick up the creativity quotient a notch, these attemps weren't doing it.

Next up, I tried bunching up a handful of yarn and attaching it to the side of the hat.  Attaching it with friction first, so I could stand back and assess the creativity level.  Of course, not a perfect method, as the 'bunch' of yarn kept slipping.  Now, this is the point,  in my search for creativity,  where I always falter.  I can't decide, at least not without input from other creative people, if what I am seeing looks like a kindergarten finger painting piece, or something worthy of the One Of A Kind show.  The latter being my goal of course. 

Another of my life's mantras is that 'sooner or later, one has to commit' so I eventually settled on a what seemed to be the 'best' bunch of yarn on the side of the hat and tacked it down.  Quite pleased with myself, I  tried it on and showed it to Fred.  Nothing like 45 years of marriage to bring honesty to the situation. 

"Looks like someone threw spaghetti against the side of the hat" said Fred.

"Well, at least we know it's cooked" said I.  Why bother to explain   the creative process to a man. 

Next day at Knit group, the 'spaghetti hat'  got a definite '10' from the knitters.  Nicki suggested a few beads here and there would make it even better.  Since the yarn is Nikki yarn, I felt I could accommodate her suggestion without damaging my artistic ego. (Hah!)

 

And so, I have my first goal-number-three project for 2012 complete.    If I walk with confidence - with my head held high - it looks much more like one-of-a- kind than kindergarten.