Thursday, September 21, 2006

Knitter's block?

Today's photo is brought to you by YarnThrower:

Thank you so much! The no formatting option worked like a charm!

So, in knitting news...I spent quite a while yesterday knitting and unknitting scarves. Not whole scarves, just enough to realize that that wasn't what I wanted to be knitting. I mentioned that I was making a gift scarf, but I may not have mentioned that it needs to be a bit quick because I need to gift it early next week. I had vague thoughts of an Opera Scarf-like thing, only with different yarn because I'm out of Trendsetter Sunshine. And I'd like it to have one "real" yarn knit together with something sparkly to make it a bit more substantial. Sort of like the Swing Scarf from Exquisite Little Knits. How hard can that be? Urgh. You're going to be sorry you asked :) After digging through my (newly organized! so pretty! actually searchable!) stash and holding up several pairs of yarn balls to my poor husband and asking, "This one or this one?", "Do these go together?" and other questions of that ilk, I settled on Rowan Cashcotton 4-Ply in Seafoam, doubled and held together with Trendsetter Flora in complementary colors. They looked nice together, the Cashcotton is heavenly, and the Flora was perky, yet non-obnoxious. So I cast on and started knitting a scarf. After about four inches, I realized that while it was actually quite nice-looking, it was not what I had pictured. I wanted something brighter for the recipient. So I unknit that and went back to the stash. This time I picked Berocco Softwist in a dark red/burgundy kind of color and KFI Dazzle (this is basically Plymouth Eros, I believe). But the Softwist has some shine to it and it seemed a bit much with the Dazzle. So then it hit me...beads! I got beads to go with the Softwist for something I'm NEVER going to make, so I could knit with beads. How hard could that be? After 45 minutes of TRYING TO THREAD THE BEADING NEEDLE, I gave up on that. But I could thread the beads onto matching thread and knit that together with the Softwist! But that was going to take forever, since I've never knit with beads before, so I ripped that back. I still have no idea what I'm going to use. It seems like such a simple idea: Take one foofy yarn and one "real" yarn and MAKE A SCARF!!! Why can I not manage to commit to yarn choices? I may decide to just use my one ball of Southwest Trading Company Bamboo and do a Branching Out, though I'm not sure how fast I can do that.

Reading: Still on the 6th Stephanie Plum.

Writing: Still on Chapter 7.

Cooking: We had too many leftovers, so no cooking last night. Tonight is samosas, curry, and naan. Ooh, I did have one of my Honeycrisp apples. And I will not be cooking with them. I'm sure they'd make fantastic cobbler, but they are JUST SO GOOD on their own. If you live in a part of the country with Honeycrisps (and I believe they're only in the US...sorry, UKers), which I believe is north of the Mason-Dixon line, go to your farmer's market and get some while you can. Yum.

Day 4 of Sourdough Madness! I think I might pour off the liquid for Ernie next time, as it's much thinner than Bert. Unless that's just a whole-wheat thing. I dunno. They are starting to smell a bit odd, which for sourdough is a good sign, I think. If we were leaving the cats here for the weekend, YarnThrower, we'd have a cat-sitter, so I'd just ask her to feed my starters, but I think they'll just have to travel with us. Hee hee.

4 comments:

Stefaneener said...

Yay for Honeycrisp! I just picked up some of th enew crop yesterday. I am so with you on the knitting ennui -- and with me, it's also a scarf. So easy, but so easy to mess up.

I'm sure it will be lovely.

Anonymous said...

I have so been in that scarf place -- trying one thing after another and nothing working and thinking maybe I should just go back to that previous idea and knitting and ripping and knitting and ripping...usually I just set everything aside and hope I have better scarf mojo the next day.

Marie said...

Ugh...I'm so sorry all those yarns didn't work out! I hate it when that happens with a project...you have something in mind and nothing works to match it. I'm sending lots of good scraf vibes your way! Hope it works out the next time you can bear to pick it back up. :)
By the way, about the photos, have you tried using photobucket or flickr to post the pictures instead? I've switched to them entirely to put up the pictures since blogger was so buggy and the pictures they host show up in bloglines anymore.

Rain said...

I know the feeling with the knitters block. I've been knitting nothing in particular for days. Hope it sorts itself out and you find the perfect yarn for the perfect project tucked away in your stash.