Like clockwork

All the way back in July I noticed I had three different yarns that looked as though they were made for each other, and I haven't stopped thinking about them ever since. I even moved two of them off my desk to stop thinking, and it didn't work. I just keep looking for ways to combine them.

Then last week I had a call from Helena - a real live in-person phone call with voice and everything! Which is so amazing, because I almost never get to meet in person friends I've met online. I mean, I've known Kathi for probably 13 years now and we've never so much as Skyped.

The point is, Helena asked me if I'd got my fiber yet from the Twisted fiber club I joined, and I said No, and she said everybody else seemed to be getting it so I would soon, and I did the next day and it is absolutely ooooohhh wow amazing

and I was so distracted by that, it took me about three days to say

wait a minnit. I didn't know Helena joined the fiber club too. And how did she know everybody had their fiber already?

At which point I realized there must be a group on Ravelry for people who love Twisted Fiber Art yarns and fiber. So I found it and joined it and read some posts and

Whoa.

Some extraordinarily wonderful person mentioned in passing that she is knitting Stephen West's Clockwork with two complementary Twisted yarns, in Playful.

Playful being the weight of the graduated stripe in Ember that matches the weight of the matching red Precieux I had tried using in the crazy long scarf I took to my conference last week and was thinking about frogging.

I did take a day or two to think this over - well, maybe I mean hours but it felt like days - before buying the pattern and casting on and getting going, even though there are a lot of things I should be doing instead, not least vacuuming. And even though the point of Clockwork seems to be a good contrast, of which the matchiness of the reds reduces the impact, I am loving how it is coming out.


Knitting this pattern is not unlike sitting within arm's reach of a tin full of freshly-baked shortbread cookies, some with chocolate chips, some without, not that this particular analogy is especially vivid for me in any way, ahem. It's so easy, and each new bit is so satisfying, it is just really really hard to stop and work on something else with an actual deadline.