January 7, 2005

• Our guest arrived safely from KC. I enjoyed my walk to work through light, fluffy snow. #2 daughter's gingerbread idea was inspired.

  
  

  I was inspired, as I walked, to make a pair of mittens. Nothing like 11 degree weather to create this sort of inspiration. I have not made mittens in several years. My family now mostly chooses to wear gloves. I have made only one pair of gloves in my life, and found the fingers too fiddly to enjoy. Plus, we usually lose gloves, too. I have been buying the $1 stretchy kind at the grocery store, since it isn't so painful when they are lost.

  
  

  However, now that I have a Stash... Well, I was walking along with bare hands in my pockets, comparing the warmth of my wool-swathed head and neck with my cold hands, and I am thinking that a nice pair of heathery blue mittens with cables would be just the ticket. I was tired of cables, having made four cabled projects almost in a row, but Mayflower's lovely cable pictures and #2 daughter's handsome sweater-in-progress have reignited my fondness for them.

  
  

  Thinking about knitting and deciding what to make is almost half the fun. I have another pair or two of slippers to make, and I am thinking I'll do clogs rather than ballet slippers, with some colorwork. I have never felted colorwork before, so that will be a bit of an adventure.

  
  

  Nor have I given up on the variegated sweater. Here it is, with the second pattern begun and the first one completed. It continues to look variegated. However, there is a semblance of pattern and order. I am beginning to like it better. It may turn out to be the sort of sweater that looks better from a distance.

  
  

  I have given it a name. It is taking its shaping from Siv, and its patterns from the Alice Starmore Celtic Collection, using two different ones so far, and it is in Wool-Ease "Autumn' and heather gray. None of these facts is sufficient inspiration for a name -- or rather, there are too many possibilities, none more compelling than another. And yet, I am tired of typing "the variegated sweater" every time I refer to the wretched thing. So I have named it "Hopkins." This is because I rather think it was Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote "Pied Beauty," the poem celebrating variegated stuff. I could go check my facts, but I am already thinking of the sweater as Hopkins, so I'd rather not learn that I am wrong.

  • 7:49 am
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