Enhanced Colour

I am still on my hat-knitting fad and have been very surprised by the way in which my awareness of colour has become very much enhanced by the whole thing.

If I am knitting with lilac yarn, I seem to see lilac colours all around me in nature, not so much in non-natural settings.

My latest creation is multicoloured, as you can see:

While working on it, I kept seeing similar types of combinations out on my travels. This is one example:

And, I can’t resist yet another fairy door:

Yes, call me a mad hatter, if you want!

A Row of Thoughts

You may remember that I had a yen to knit a hat a good while back and rekindle a former love for knitting.

Well, I achieved my goal and yesterday finished my very first hat on circular needles, which had seemed like a peak too far when all this knitting thing came into my head again.

I have definitely become a bit, no more than a bit, addicted and am rather shocked at how easily I have fallen into happily spending hours just knitting row after row and also gazing at websites with vast arrays of patterns and most of all alluring yarns.

I have always felt that sport, especially tennis, has many lessons for us about life so I guess it was only a matter of time before I got to thinking about life lessons from knitting.

The main point that keeps cropping up relates to unravelling. In knitting, you can so easily rip up a piece and start afresh. Okay, you may well have learned from the mistake or whatever caused you to rip the piece but life seems more complex. It’s very hard to just undo something and start again, especially when it comes to relationships and interactions with other people. Lessons can be learned but starting afresh can still have a lot of baggage attached which can get in the way either consciously or subconsciously. However, knitting shows that sometimes restarting can be the best option or even going back to the point where things went wrong, like the dropped stitch. Is this the equivalent of talking things through and trying to sort out sticking points? I think it probably is.

I have also been haunted in these little projects with thoughts of a tour I took of historic Kikenny Castle and the point made by the guide that there were always mistakes deliberately left in the big tapestries that are so beautiful there. This was to symbolize the fact that humans make mistakes.

I love this idea and am treating the many blemishes in my humble hats as being akin to those in the great tapestries.

Such a way of thinking allows incredible freedom, though I have discovered that untreated dropped stitches are an unmitigated disaster.

Now back to knit 2, purl 2 …..

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Stitch in Time …

I didn’t quite tell the whole story when I wrote recently about wanting to return to knitting.

It all came about when son was talking about hand knitted hats and how he was looking at ordering one online. He is a hat man supreme.

Before I knew it, I heard myself say, ‘Sure I could knit you a hat in a few hours.’

The more I was looking at yarns and needles on Irish knitting sites, the more I was convinced that I would be knitting Aran sweaters in no time.

The parcel arrived with a pair of needles and a big ball of chunky wool. I had a pattern at the ready, thanks to all your help.

I sat down at the kitchen table with Puppy Stan eyeing up the ball of wool and my look of mystification.

I had forgotten how to hold the needles, cast on, follow the most basic pattern. A complete blank.

My boasting screamed at me and this felt like the worst own goal of the season, so far.

I picked up the needles and saw them as daggers – I once fell down the stairs as a child and got stabbed in the tummy by a needle in a sock I was using to turn a heel – yes I could turn heels when I was eight but that’s a lifetime ago.

I could hear son’s jaunty footsteps approaching and put on my most confident face. A stitch cast itself on somehow and became 74.

‘Oh you’ve started? , he said picking up the wool to check its texture.

‘Ah yeah, knitting memory, ‘ I said. ‘Just like riding a bike, you never forget. What was that you said the other day about muscle memory?’

It’s taking shape when there’s no one around and memories are flooding back like an unravelling of every stich I every knitted.

Puppy Stan may end up wearing the hat but I did say the first one would be a warm up!

Crosswords

Just typing in the heading has me leaning in two directions but I will stick with my first thought.

I love crosswords but have never been able to crack cryptic ones. Even when I see the solutions, I can’t even begin to understand how they were arrived at.

I have no doubt that some of you wordy people can whizz through a cryptic crossword like you were singing the alphabet.

What’s the thought process involved and how did you get the hang of it?

One of my many New Year’s hopes or ‘Revolutions’ is to master these.

On such Revolutions, I am also hoping to return to knitting which isn’t entirely different to crosswords, in my view. Just think crossstitch, unravelling and satisfaction.

Thing is I have forgotten how to – and I thought knitting was like riding a bike.

I’ve been scouring the internet for an idiot’s pattern for a colourful hat knitted on straight needles but nothing is idiotic enough. So any help welcome!