Obsessions R Me
I am not a fast knitter, especially once gardening season starts up. Stiff fingers and sore shoulders mean my evenings are generally spent watching a movie and tending to the Perfect Princess, who is also starting to feel her years. However, just because I'm not churning out knitting projects, that doesn't mean I don't spend way too much time on Ravelry. During the last four years, that administration and then the pandemic made me look for things to ease my stress. Ravelry turned out to be the place to be. People making things, people talking about making things, pretty photos to smile over, and projects to plan. One of the best parts of this website is that people post their project photos. That gives me a chance to see what a particular sweater looks like on tiny people and big people. I am in the latter category. If I'm going to spend months working on a project, I want to look decent while wearing it.
I fall in and out love with particular patterns. They get the little red favorite heart and Ravelry keeps track of them for me. I use my favorites page as a shopping list. Whenever I feel the need for retail therapy, I can splurge on a seven buck pattern and feel the combined pleasure of supporting a designer and planning a new project. Usually, that's as far as I get.
Yarn is problematic when you only know about it from online images. Does it feel as nice as it looks in that professional photo? Does it itch when you wear it? What happens when you wash that fiber combination? My area has only one knitting store, so I'm only acquainted with so many brands. It's a lot easier to page by yarn, until that One True Yarn flashes by and you need it.
I've been promising myself a SQ (sweater quantity) of yarn since the last time we went to Scotland, which seems like an age ago. Then, I thought maybe for my birthday last year, then Christmas, but without a pattern, the best I could do was buy my guess for what the most yarn required for a sweater, around 2000 yards. Harrisville Designs has a line harrisville.com/products/nightshades that kept stopping me. It's a "nice" yarn, which translates to expensive. After decades of costuming, I have two large rolling shelving units of "spec" fabric that I make myself go out and look at occasionally, just to remember that I get a little obsessive about collecting things. Before I allowed myself to get serious about the pretty Nightshades, there had to be a pattern. It's a difficult yarn to place. The colorways are so dark that cables are likely to disappear. Luckily, Ravelry will let you search on a particular yarn's projects. After two hours or so of doing nothing else but looking and clicking and discarding, I finally found a pattern www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mae-pullover that will work for me. I'd promised myself something frivolous for the stimmy, and eight skeins of this sexy stuff is it.
No bets as to how long it will take me to get around to casting on. Cross-posted from dreamwidth.org
I fall in and out love with particular patterns. They get the little red favorite heart and Ravelry keeps track of them for me. I use my favorites page as a shopping list. Whenever I feel the need for retail therapy, I can splurge on a seven buck pattern and feel the combined pleasure of supporting a designer and planning a new project. Usually, that's as far as I get.
Yarn is problematic when you only know about it from online images. Does it feel as nice as it looks in that professional photo? Does it itch when you wear it? What happens when you wash that fiber combination? My area has only one knitting store, so I'm only acquainted with so many brands. It's a lot easier to page by yarn, until that One True Yarn flashes by and you need it.
I've been promising myself a SQ (sweater quantity) of yarn since the last time we went to Scotland, which seems like an age ago. Then, I thought maybe for my birthday last year, then Christmas, but without a pattern, the best I could do was buy my guess for what the most yarn required for a sweater, around 2000 yards. Harrisville Designs has a line harrisville.com/products/nightshades that kept stopping me. It's a "nice" yarn, which translates to expensive. After decades of costuming, I have two large rolling shelving units of "spec" fabric that I make myself go out and look at occasionally, just to remember that I get a little obsessive about collecting things. Before I allowed myself to get serious about the pretty Nightshades, there had to be a pattern. It's a difficult yarn to place. The colorways are so dark that cables are likely to disappear. Luckily, Ravelry will let you search on a particular yarn's projects. After two hours or so of doing nothing else but looking and clicking and discarding, I finally found a pattern www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mae-pullover that will work for me. I'd promised myself something frivolous for the stimmy, and eight skeins of this sexy stuff is it.
No bets as to how long it will take me to get around to casting on. Cross-posted from dreamwidth.org