comfort knitting

After all that lace, something soothing for the hands and mind.


I tell you, it has been deeply refreshing to work on a nice, simple knit. (Once, of course, the tubular cast on had been mastered - what, were you meant to have one stitch less? Where did that extra sneak in from? No, of course I can divide by 2. Ah, no I can't. Oh, and I should have joined it into a circle before I picked up? Well, why didn't you say!) A nice little bit of rib, ktlb and ptbl. (No, no, no, never, ever, ever make me do purl through back of loops on half of 180 stitches. Whose foolish idea was that?) Go back a bit, start again. Go back again, and remember to knit through back of loops. And no, now is not the time to practice knitting backwards. Why? Because you are knitting in the round. Still, a little bit of thought, and then 14 inches of pure, unadulterated knitting-and-nothing-but to come. (I'll ignore the math that I will have to do for the yoke with cable detail, because if I ignore it for a few days, then I'll have forgotten that I can't do math.)

A raglan in jaeger shetland aran, for a friend. In deep winter-rich colours. Makes you forget that some of the windows let in draughts, and that you live in a land of long, low, grey days.

But what's that? Can you hear that gentle, insistent sussuration? Listen, the muffled calling of languishing unfinished objects, being drowned out by the siren sounds of laaace, laaace, laaace, laaace. So instead of knitting on, knitting on, out come the books, and maybe a purchase or two more, and a working theory that 1,000s of yards of really, really thin wool will be just as cosy as a man's raglan.

I may have taken leave of my senses. Still, before they wander off completely, a message for Betty.

You asked about the Jamieson & Smith jumperweight I used for the puzzle wrap. Because it is a Scottish yarn, even though it is down as a 2ply, I was told that 'you people' (I think he meant soft English southerners, but in the most polite way) call it a 4ply. Yarndex (a most wonderful resource) has it down as a worsted weight. About the keeping the decreases in the same direction, weeellll, I would say you should. But, it sounds like you are a combination knitter, and for that, I would go and visit the queen of combination, Annie Modesitt, or pop in on the (she doesn't seem very grumpy at all to me) Grumperina, and check out the very clever combination table she devised.

By the by, do you think, one day, knitting nations will all speak the same language? Or would that spoil the fun? Imagine the goodies we could come up with, playing Chinese whispers as we translate from Norwegian to English to French to American (or Spanish to German to Icelandic to Turkish). Just a thought.