i heart knitting

i have a cold
i have been staying very close to home, drinking lots of tea and smoothies, napping, taking long aromatherapy baths (aromatherapy is my favourite medicine) and watching documentaries about mythology and knitting.

knitting. i heart knitting. i knit all the time. i knit at work, at home, at starbucks, during meetings, at karoke and all through the sunday services at the centre for conscious living. i don’t knit because i’m bored and don’t want to pay attention to what is happening around me. i knit because knitting is a way to slip into the present moment. it’s soothing and meditative.

i also do sure love the beautiful things that come of it.

these are the socks i am wearing today:

nice and long

these are made out of self-striping yarn which i feel is cheating and usually i have a real grudge against them – i like to mix yarn myself and make my own patterns! but i really loved these colours and wanted to give it a try. i probably won’t buy this kind of yarn ever again though.

one of my favourite things i have ever knit:

this was my first attempt at intarsia knitting (a style of knitting where you can have patterns with lots of different colours/yarns). i tend to challenge myself, when i want to learn something new, to go for the really cool projecs and not start with something simple. so it took many tries for me to really get the feel of it, but now that i have done this, i REALLY know how to intarsia!
this is one of kaffe fassett’s most famous knitting patterns, called “foolish virgins” and one of the few things i have knit directly from the pattern. i tend to use patterns only as starting points, but given the complexity of this colour pattern, i stuck to the pattern for this one.

another faourite:

sweet pink angora. it really is as fluffy as it looks! the scarf is finished now and quite long and super snuggly warm. the mitts are no longer… the angora is too delicate for mitts but the hat and scarf are perfect.

lily of the valley opera gloves:

i love the yarn i used for this. hand dyed merino sock yard from tanis fiber arts. i have made tons of socks with their yarn and absolutely love them. the colours are so rich and the yarn really stands up. these gloves are a few years old already, and i wear them a lot, and they still look great.

mermaid socks:

both from tanis fiber arts sock yarn.

and more from that same yarn, fishnet socks:

then i used that lily the valley pattern from the opera gloves on the sleeves of a wrap:

the wrap ties in the back:

yesterday i finished knitting this alpaca lace dress. i still have to get some ribbon to weave through the neckline and finish up the loose ends:

the scalloped hem on the dress:

what i am working on today:

angora wrap. super snuggly!

my favourite patterns are in the books: french girl knits and sensual knits. for socks, i made up my own pattern, which i think is better than any sock pattern i’ve come across… simple to do and creates a very smooth heel. and i sure loved the texture of the pomotomous sock, i used it in my mermaid socks and in the mermaid fingerless gloves i shared here last week.

there are photos of more of my knitting on my flickr page.

do you knit? i’d love to see photos of your work or hear your knitting (or even crochet!) stories.

Tagged as: knitting