Yesterday, while I was doing some cleaning and my brain was wandering god-knows-where, it occurred to me that these two sweaters seem to have been going on FOREVER (I know, I know… it probably feels that way to my readers, too). I really want to get them done, and it feels like a bit of a slog. And I’m sorry if reading about them is a bit of a slog too.
I’d keep myself going with thoughts of what I’m going to knit when I’m free from Christmas gifts, but you know what? I have no idea what I want to knit next. It’s like a big black hole. In fact, it reminds me a little of when I was pregnant with my first child. All my thoughts and fears about the future were in fact focused on my pregnancy and my labour. How painful was labour going to be, would I cope? (The answer, for those interested, was very well. No drugs but an AWFUL amount of swearing. The midwife thought it very educational, and pretty funny.)
But you know what was missing from my thoughts? The baby. I simply could not get my head around how much life was going to change, so I didn’t even try to imagine it. If I tried to think about having all that responsibility for a small person, I just came up with a big old black hole.
Although clearly in not such a big way, it’s a bit like this now. I’m going to make another sweater for Kira. I’m going to make two pairs of socks (and maybe a scarf if I have time) for Hubbo. Then… who knows? Somewhere between Christmas and the end of February I need to finish the textured sweater for my son that’s been on the needles since about July, and I’m thinking a Swallowtail for my step mother’s birthday. But that’s it.
I need to be inspired.
And that, in turn, got me thinking about where my knitting inspiration comes from. I like looking at links to patterns and doing pattern searches on Ravelry, BUT although I think “oh that’s nice I’ll pop it in my queue” it doesn’t often set me on fire with desire.
You want to know why I’m not inspired? I think I’ve realised. It’s because since the weather turned I’ve not been sitting in my conservatory any more. In the summer months, when the weather was lovely and I could sit with the door open and look out over my garden, all my yarn and magazines and books were right there, not two metres away from me. I could pull yarn out, feel it and examine the colours, I could flip through a magazine and read the yarn reviews or search for a pattern that suited the hour. Because YARN is actually what inspires me, not patterns. If I’m not looking at my yarn, I’m not motivated to think of things to do with it.
I renamed the conservatory around October. The Wasp Graveyard became The Fridge. I closed the door on it to keep the heat from the kitchen leaching out, and even the addition of a dehumidifier and portable oil heater hasn’t really brought me back. Just recently it’s not been so much cold as wet and windy, and you don’t feel like sitting there, however warm it is, when it sounds like the wind and rain are going to take the roof off. I’d rather be in front of the crackling fire in my living room. My yarn is a distant thing, closeted away, rather than something I sit looking at from day to day.
The other thing that inspires me is reading other people’s blogs and seeing what yarn they have, rather than what they are specifically making from it. Apart from those ones over there on the right that I check every couple of days, when I’m at work I read my way through particular blogs. Our work computer had to go for repair and when it came back it had mysteriously had it’s DVD driver wiped out, so watching stuff is a past luxury. Instead, now I read. I can happily read for hours, and while books are a little trouble while I’m knitting due to trying to keep the thing open and turning pages, words on a computer screen are perfect. I choose a blog I like the look of and I work my way though it, over days, weeks or even months, from start to finish. So if the blog started in April 2006 I shall start there and work my way through to the present. These are kind of “reserved” blogs that I ONLY read at work. So far I’ve made my way through Stephanie Pearl MacPhee (obviously), Mason Dixon Knitting and Amy Herzog’s blog this way. At the moment I’m working my way up towards Christmas 2006 with Anne Hanson (this requires serious reading as she seems to blog every day without fail, I admire her determination). I enjoy these islands of knittiness, and somehow I find reading other yarn enthusiasts far more inspiring than looking through a book of patterns. Maybe it’s something to do with being very much a process knitter? (I know for sure I am, I wear my socks but I’ve only worn my Shaftesbury sweater twice since finishing it, and scarves and hats are left folorn in the cupboard).
When you use yarn as your inspiration, being on a yarn diet can be hard. I’ve been more than happy on my yarn diet since September because I’ve known for sure what I need to knit and what I’m knitting it from. Now I’m starting to think of new things to knit? I’m starting to think of new yarn. I’d quite like to have another sweater for myself on the go, but I don’t have a sweater’s worth of yarn for myself – only the kids. I’ve allowed for buying the yarn for one sweater for myself while on this diet and although I originally said it would be for Coraline, I’m moving towards Gudrun Johnston’s Moch Cardi instead and making it for the Ravelympics. I’ll get around to making both eventually, but I can only make one before April.
In reading Anne’s blog I’ve liked looking at her plain vanilla socks she makes from Trekking yarns, and I feel the urge to buy Germanic self patterning that I can knit on without thinking. Funny, as I said not a month ago that I was now drawn to solids and stitch patterns…. I dunno. For the first time I’m finding this yarn diet quite hard. Hopefully starting a new project from stash will cure it, as I’m determined to stick to my list and I’m sure being able to cast on something like a Swallowtail or Ishbel (which I can do from stash yarn) will cure me. I think what I actually need to do is get some skeins I’ll be using soon, and my ball winder, and wind them up into lovely cakes. If that doesn;t inspire me to use what I have, I don’t know what will…
So why do I keep looking at websites, looking for the perfect yarn I’ve allowed myself for my cardigan?

















































