Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Excitements and and the Knit Bridge

I read a fleeting reference to the Cambridge Knit Bridge on Ravelry just before the Knitter's Fair, and since Cambridge is not so very far away of course I just had to engineer a detour to see it.

Cambridge is one of those towns with a super adorable old part and a hugely expansive new part; the bridge in question is in the old part.

Stage: set.


I have to admit, I welled up when I first caught sight of it. It's pretty moving, seeing that many stitches in one place and thinking about all the people who contributed them.

There were some pretty cool colour combinations and stitches.


And a lot of people were taking pictures - can you blame them?

Other excitements: Tom came by this week. Tom delivers the Canada Post parcels in my neck of the woods so basically if I'm getting really good mail - something too big to fit in the mailbox - I get it from Tom.

This time he brought an unexpected and very heavy box that turned out to contain this:

It's true that any book about hats is going to appeal to me but this particular book has an added bonus:

I still can't quite believe that out of 1000+ hat submissions, mine was selected to be among the top ten and had its pattern included.

(It's worth saying, I think, that there are in fact only ten patterns in this book and the rest is tons of pictures of people's hats. There are a number of Amazon reviews complaining about this fact, and pointing out that one can be equally inspired for free by looking at pictures of hats on Ravelry. It's a fair point, but having done both, and considering that hat patterns tend to run between $4-6 when purchased individually, I would still buy the book. Even if I never knit any of the other 9 patterns, and there are some I'd like to very much, it's just nice to leaf through real pages. Also it's clear a lot of thought went into how these photographs were grouped.)

The bad news: though the pattern in the book is totally workable in any yarn that gives you gauge, the gorgeous stuff I used to make it was a short-run artisanal batch.

The good news: I was able to source very similar colours in a widely available Debbie Bliss yarn of slightly less similar weight.


I know - in these pictures, the colours don't look similar at all. But in person, they are really, really close.

I'm working on some different sizes for this version of the hat, and then I'll ask my technical editor to go over it for errors, and hopefully in the next month or two I'll be able to make it available here.

And now I must go hyperventilate about an entirely different sort of crafty excitement I can hopefully tell you all about tomorrow.

5 comments:

heklica said...

Congratulations!!! I love your hat, I bet it's the best in the book!

binnie said...

WHEEEEE!!!!!!!! It's beautiful. Made my day!

Unknown said...

AWESOME! I'm so excited for you. I don't knit a lot of hats, but must order this book right away. I'll bet you are so excited. Oh, by the way, the Knit Bridge is beautiful. I love all the colors. It's incredible that so many people participated. I'll bet in person it really takes your breath away.

Congratulations - off to Amazon.com!!

Mary Keenan said...

Awww, thanks, guys!!

Isis said...

The Bridge was neat wasn't it! And congrats on the hat :D