Sometimes simple is so nice

Last night, instead of working on my sweater or finishing those darn baby booties, I knit this.

Mohair-y Goodness

The Back Story: Years ago when I first started knitting, I purchased two balls of mohair (I can't remember the name of the yarn and the labels are long gone) to knit a scarf for my mother. I had planned to knit a simple garter stitch scarf on large needles. I cast on what I thought was the appropriate number of stitches and proceeded to get uber frustrated. Knitting mohair was hard! I think I ripped the stupid scarf three times before I finally found my groove. The fluffiness of the yarn made the stitches hard to see and I was adding and dropping stitches all over the place. Plus, when you work with what is essentially a fingering-weight yarn on large the needles, the large stitches look rather confusing when you are new to knitting. Thinking there was too much space between the stitches and that I must have dropped one, I would pick up extras. After much frustration and swearing I did manage to complete the scarf. I have no idea if my mother ever wore it or where it is now and I haven't knit with mohair since.

Yesterday when Gub was emptying my yarn drawers she tossed the left over mohair yarn on the floor and I was suddenly overcome with the desire to knit it again. With more years and complicated knits under my belt, I wanted to see how it felt to knit mohair on large needles. So last night I grabbed my size 13 bamboo straight needles and in about an hour I knit up the rest of the yarn. I was gratified to find that this time, it was easy and fun... it makes me feel like I have learned something over these last few years.

Of course, now I have this rectangle of garter stitch mohair fabric and I have no idea what to do with it. One option is to add other random yarn to both ends and make a funky scarf. My only concern with that is that pretty much any yarn I add will be heavier than the mohair and drag it down. Another option is to try to felt it (does mohair felt?) and make some fuzzy coasters for my desk at work. I kind of like this idea but I am not sure how felting is going to work in my new front loading washing machine. What ever I end up doing with the fabric, the act of knitting it was what I really wanted to accomplish. I don't do much in my life without a goal in mind and that gets pretty stressful. Aimless knitting like I did last night is just what I needed to remind myself that not everything needs to have a purpose to be worthwhile.

Cheers!

Creativity

I think there are people in this world who are born creative and those who are not. I have always envied those people who seem to have creativity flowing from them. I was kind of a geek in high school and lots of my friends were the musical type. I was always so jealous of those who could sing or play an instrument or create artsy things. I have just never been that good at it. That's not to say that I don't need a creative outlet. On the contrary, I have always really wanted to excel at something "creative". I feel like I have all these cool ideas in my head that want to get out, but I am just not skilled enough to make it happen... it is actually kind of frustrating. I suppose in some respects, knitting is definitely a creative outlet for me. The thing is that when it comes to knitting patterns, I am great at following directions but not so great at coming up with my own.

To break out of my rut, I have decided to dabble in a little designing. My first idea was a skirt for Gub. I have the design and the swatch but I can't keep the little bugger still long enough to get her measurements so that is on hold for the moment. My other project is a sweater for me. It is cropped with long sleeves and raglan shaping. I am using the proportions from EZ's Kitting Without Tears which is great because it makes the math much more straightforward. I am determined to make something that really fits me, no matter how many times I have to frog my knitting! I doubt that I will be making anything high fashion but if I can design and make a sweater that really fits, I will be very proud of myself (even if it is just to wear around the house). So far, I have about half a sleeve done (and have frogged and restarted once). I will keep you posted on my progress.

Speaking of creative, there is nothing like a child's mind for real creativity. Here is a picture of Gub doing her new favorite thing... taking all the yarn out of my storage bins and sitting in them. In this picture, she is trying like the dickens to open the plastic bag and touch the yarn. She totally cracks me up!

If I just keep trying...

Cheers!