I'm Back

     I'm back both in both the literal and figurative sense  I'm "back"writing a blog post and I feel "back" to my old self again.  The wonders of modern medicine and talk therapy!

     It feels wonderful to be enjoying knitting again.  Since I last posted, I finished that scrappy linen stitch scarf as well as a shawl (shown above) called Areas by Martina Behm.  Areas was a very simple and soothing knit with no purling at all.  Because I didn't do a gauge swatch (I know, I know, bad Ann.) it came out smaller in length measuring only 72 inches instead of the patterns stated 84 inches. I am a tight knitter by nature and should have gone up a needle size, but in the end the shawl turned out to be perfectly fine for how I would like to wear it come cold weather.

     The yarn I used I've had in my stash since Mother's Day of  2015, so it's high time I used it up.  It's called Charlemont by Valley Yarns and consists of a blend of Merino Wool, Silk and Nylon.  I used their colorsways natural and navy blue as these two colors represent about 80 % of my wardrobe and as I mentioned earlier they were already in my stash.  I enjoyed the feel of the yarn while knitting and adore the sheen when it catches the light, but it is rather a splitty yarn.  That said, I am already planning to use it again as it's such an excellent value for the yardage and fiber content.  Of course, there is the fact that I still have 2 more skeins of the navy blue left in my stash.

     Yes, I am already off planning a new project.  Yay!  I love the planning stage.  My wardrobe lacks any summer short sleeve sweaters or dressier tops so my plan is to next knit Tegna by Caitlin Hunter to fill that gap. Tegna is a swingy oversized short sleeved sweater which consists of a lacework hem, stockinette body, dropped shoulders (I been seeing these everywhere on knitting patterns lately) and snug short sleeves.  My 2 skeins of navy blue yarn will not be enough to complete the pattern, but then I thought of adding stripes to the stockinette sections and I think it will work out.  I landed on the colorway called fawn which is a warm light brown shade.  The lace, neck edging and sleeve edges will be knit solely in fawn and the rest of the sweater will consist of narrow 2 row stripes of navy and fawn.  I think it will look smashing!  So, I have purchased two more skeins of Charlemont from WEBS and now am anxiously awaiting the mail.  After having downsized my stash I was a bit loathe to buy more, but it will help lessen my stash in the long run.

     This method of first accessing my wardrobe to see where there are gaps, second to view my stash to see if I can make what yarn I have on hand work, then third picking out a pattern is how I plan to go about my knitting in the future.  In this way I am hoping to only make what I feel I need and not just getting pulled in by a the latest patterns excellent photography/model/yarn and making something that doesn't suit me or my lifestyle.  I'm hoping to slow down my knitting and I think this method will help me do just that.  Why am I wanting to slow down my knitting you ask?  Well, I've decided to get off the producing treadmill and focus more on the enjoyment of the project in and of itself.  Because really, what's the rush?  I'm not a designer with deadlines to meet.  I've gifted so much to my mother that she has told me to stop knitting her sweaters.  My own closet is already pretty full so I don't need much more.  Why speed through the knitting simply to have something new to photograph?

     This documenting of knitted products I find good in that it's enjoyable to see your past knits and your progression as a knitter, but I think it can cause stress too.  As much as I enjoy Instagram I feel it is one of the culprits of this stress to produce more so you can share new photos of what your working on and thus feel part of the knitting community.  It's this feeling of more, more, more that I want to rid myself of , instead focusing on that I have enough already and I'm only refining my wardrobe here there.  Do you know what I mean?

     To keep myself in check of accumulating endless amounts of yarn for endless amounts of projects I found that I have to miss out on going to fiber fairs, knitting shops, knitting retreats and classes.  This leaves me sometimes feeling like I'm missing out, but I know myself too well that I can't just view.  If I view, I want, and if I want, I buy.  Then I feel the push to knit faster and faster in order to get through all that yarn.  It's time to stop the madness.

Some Knitting

 

     Hey there.  I thought I'd pop back in for another entry to tell you how things are going.  Basically, it's better, not great yet, but waaaayyyy better than where I was in early Spring.  I believe we found the right mix of medication and certainly having a wave of beautiful sunny days which had me walking my dog around the neighborhood is helping too.  Getting out and moving my body has been really wonderful after our long snowy winter when people just gave up shoveling their sidewalks as we continued to have snow until the end of April. 

     The question then is - is my creativity coming back along with my better mood?  Well, yes albeit much slower.  I did purchase this lovely skein of naturally dyed yarn to tempt me into knitting, hoping to turn it into a lightweight summer scarf with this pattern, but it is not what's calling me back to knit.  What is speaking to me, oddly enough, is my bag of sock yarn scraps.  The rather clean slate I accomplished by selling off most of my stash was not enough for me.  So, I decided to knit up my sock yarn scraps, leaving only a small bag of bits and bobs for sock darning, to shrink my stash even more.

     Over the years I've started and stopped a lot of scrappy knitting projects.  Do you remember when "hexipuffs" were all the rage as well as the mitered square blanket?  In the past I've started both of those patterns, but lost interest and drive along the way.  They were basically too epic.  Having a penchant for scarves, I decided to try this very simple linen stitch scarf as the way to use up all my sock yarn.  The means with which the slipped stitches blend all the colors really appealed to me.  There was the hurtle though, of the humongous amount, 500 in total, of cast on stitches (this scarf is knit lengthwise instead of the usual widthwise.) It took me a few days to complete casting on all those stitches, as well as a kind husband to check on my counting skills.  Finally, I got to the fun part of trying to blend the yarns in some aesthetically pleasing manner.  In my first attempt, I switched yarn every two rows picking a contrasting colorway each time.  This method turned out a bit muddy looking.  So, I switched over to grouping the yarns in like colors i.e. there might be 10 rows of blue, then 8 rows of yellow etc., this method made the colors stand out and shine much better.

     I'm knitting a bit each day, but only for short stretches.  There is no hurry.  After all, it's now Spring and the weather is warm.  I might not even keep this scarf for myself as I have enough cozy scarves for Winter already.  Luckily, my local knitting guild takes donations for charities each year so it will find a home with someone who needs it.

     This brings up an interesting topic which I think about often:  how do creatives create with out amassing huge amounts of knitting, clothing or whatever your end product my be?  Now, I believe creating is vastly important.  For me, it's an actual need and I feel a hole when I go long stretches without making something.  But, when does it become too much?  Have a bit of a think on this and I'll talk about it more in my next post. 

Not Knitting

     Hi lovely people!  I've been vacationing on Instagram, but felt like to coming back to blogging as I miss this space for simply writing.
 
     There has been a struggle within me these last few months with my depression and my creative life.  I've been sailing along quite well for many years with my regime of medication, counseling, exercising, using a SAD light, seeing friends and trying to eat healthy.   Then I was derailed this past February.  It was a subtle shift.  A slow decline that I did not notice was happening until I was no longer interested in knitting.  Not interested at all.  I was not physically knitting, planning new knitting, reading about knitting or listening to knitting podcasts.  It all seemed so pointless to me and when I felt that, I knew something was truly amiss.

     Now, my depression is pretty severe and not of the situational type, but I'm really, really good at pretending everything is fine, even to myself.  My doctor had no answers as to the "why" this was happening to me, but I am of an age of hormonal changes, and she said frankly it just happens.  So, on to dealing with it.  New meds were ordered, then rejected and yet a different medication tried.  It's like being a rat in a lab, doctors truly cannot predict what is going to happen. You need to try the drug out yourself and wait and see.  As your mother always told you - everyone is different.

     Meanwhile, it felt like the end of who I was as I so heavy defined myself as being a knitter.  If I wasn't a knitter than who was I?  Where was my personal identity?  I had no idea.  I started going though all my knitting accoutrements hoping to jog myself out of this rut.  When I got to my stash, it felt wrong to own so much yarn if I wasn't going to knit with it.  Thus began the great selling off of my stash.  Now, stashes vary quite a bit so to give you a sense of the size of mine it was stored in ten Rubbermaid plastic bins. At first it was hard to take in all that I had, list it on sites such as Ravelry and Craigslist, putting a price to my precious stores but, then I started to feel good about what I was doing.  It was like shedding a old skin, an old life.  Currently, my stash consists of only a one gallon sized Ziploc bag of sock yarn scraps and two smaller bins of full skeins.

     Sitting with what yarn I had left I realized how much more comfortable I felt.  There wasn't the crushing weight of years of knitting waiting in the wings.  It was a fresh start.  I kept those last bits of yarn hoping I'd find my way back to the knitting world and my old life.

     Yet, I knew I could not go completely back to my old life of knitting all the time.  The cycle of acquire and consuming at such a fast rate.  Being now unbalanced emotionally I could see how unbalanced I was in my day to day life.  So, I started to remedy this imbalance by watching movies with no knitting in my hands, reading instead of listening to books that kept my hands free to knit, walking in the garden I started so many years ago before knitting entered my life.  I observed there was more to my life than only knitting and there was more to me than just being a knitter.

     I'm making my way out of my hole both emotionally as well as creatively.  I have high hopes for the future, which for me is big thing.  My future with knitting, but also including the other things I enjoyed and sadly forgot about along the way.