Still working on a project. I’ll have more to say after the weekend, when I have more time to work on this.
I was over deleting my projects and stash from Ravelry yesterday. I had some thoughts about it. To be honest, I was a bit embarrassed by what I had up. Most of it was “popcorn” knitting. That’s the simple, mindless stuff you to when you don’t want to have to think too much about what you are doing. And I know how that happened. I sometimes get into a cycle where I’m interested in new commercial yarns. In this case, I was fascinated by chainette yarns. So I did a lot of projects in commercial yarns. Now, commercial yarns are designed, for the most part, to make the yarn the centerpiece. They don’t lend themselves to complicated patterns. Look at projects with cables done in hand dyed yarns. The yarn design overwhelms the pattern. I had a lot of commercial yarns, so I wound up doing simple stuff. What happens next is that I get bored with commercial yarns and want to knit with handspun. And that’s where I am today. There is a liveliness to handspun that you don’t get with commercial yarns. And I can create simple, single colored yarns that let the design stand out. And one last note, I am really disappointed in how badly some of those commercial yarns held up. I’m not going to name company names, but I really should not have a hole in the sleeve of a sweater I’ve worn less than a year.
If you pack away my craft books, I will simply buy more! I recently picked up Deborah Newton’s “Finishing School”.
I liked her book on design, although I didn’t do any of the projects. If you want to get better at something, the best way to do it is to treat it like a class in school. Get textbooks, study it and test yourself.
And there’s this one:
Reading Sarah Swett’s blog has made me want a backstrap loom. I saw this book and found it interesting. Reviews were good too. The loom she recommends is inexpensive. I am holding off on this for now, but I may play around with it next month. Bands like these can be used on Norwegian style sweaters. And that’s one of the styles I’ve wanted to knit for some time now.
Back to work on the baby sweater. Gotta get it done this weekend as his birthday is the 3rd.
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