It's funny - when I was growing up I could. Not. Stand. Choir. Music. This posed a challenge for me because in whatever free time he could muster my Dad was a singer, having trained as a boy chorister at the cathedral here in Toronto - when not in actual choirs he was in demand as a soloist for every wedding and funeral in our parish. Not admiring the music my own dad could and did perform was, to say the least, inconvenient. But I just didn't like it. By the time I hit my late twenties though, a few years after he died, it all turned around and now I love it. Sorry Dad.
That story doesn't have a whole lot to do with this cowl beyond the combination of parental resolution, comfy chair, heart-melting voices in harmony, and absolutely the most wonderful yarn/pattern combo you can imagine, all inside on a grey rainy day with the furnace kicking out just the right amount of warm.
Icing on the cake: the stitch marker I threw onto my circular needle after casting on at my desk, when I realized it was that or walking downstairs to find a real one. This is the bulb-shaped safety pin that attached the price tag to a dress I bought last spring, and something about it - the shape? the colour? the metal? - just spells Ahhhh. I think it's a style thing. And this pin with this yarn and those needles and the stitch pattern I threw together - it's just 100% yum.
My only disappointment is that the yarn is DKish and the cowl just knit up so FAST. And I want more. I don't have quite enough of the yarn left to do a whole hat, but I think I will need to rig something up between what I do have and something that can make friends with it.
(by the way, I'm being a bit sneaky with these pictures. There's a trick to this cowl which I'll show you in a few days. stay tuned!)
* * * * *
After my weekend of incredible leisure, I spent today shifting from one transit stop to another for a bunch of different appointments. I didn't get much knitting done on bus or subway, but while on a break for coffee in at a bench in a mall I did spot a very tiny girl wearing handknit leg warmers in her stroller. Brilliant, I thought: totally covered that gap between the blankie bunched up in her fists and her very cute baby shoes.
So of course, I got thinking that knitting baby leggings is absolutely the right thing to do for the two couples whose new babies I want to bring a present to. Because once you're two months late with the gift, it starts to seem logical to take even longer with the gift, if it means more knitting time.
* * * * *
The other thing I noticed from the very same spot was a number of people walking up to the shop doorway in front of me to take an iPhone picture of something over my shoulder. At first I thought this was one of those things that people do with iPhones (I don't have one, so what do I know?) but when I got up to leave I glanced over there myself and discovered they had all been taking pictures of the display in the doorway of Victoria's Secret.
Is that a thing now? Because the underwear in there looked pretty standard-grade Victoria's Secret to me.
* * * * *
A couple of nights ago I wandered through a thread at Ravelry with pictures of the last few club yarns from Knitterly Things. This was an error in judgement.
I have SO many socks knit with Knitterly Things' Vesper Sock (see 'Yarns' tab above), because it was the first club I joined, way back before I even knew how to knit socks, and I kept renewing. It takes me about 2 months to knit a pair of fingering weight socks, and you get 2 skeins of yarn in that time, so it doesn't take a lot of math to figure out I am swimming in Vesper Sock, even though I eventually made myself stop renewing 'until I caught up'. I was doing okay with that plan until I realized I could buy one-off skeins of Vesper Sock from the online shop, and now I'm back up to about a year's supply.
Le sigh. Yesterday, I was early at the dentist's, wearing one pair of Vesper socks and knitting another, and Maria admired them both, and I remembered the yarn pictures I'd just seen, and I thought MAN, I really miss those club shipments. And when I got home I saw the next club is opening up for new memberships (which I guess is me, after all this time) in November.
I wonder how much more Vesper I can work through in two weeks, so I can justify joining?
* * * * *
Okay: time to get on with the day. Mine is looking pretty good even though I'm not quite sure where I'll be working the knitting in, and I hope yours is too!
No comments:
Post a Comment