blinding inspiration

If you squint and turn your head 22 degrees to the left, it kind of looks like a wearable shade of purple. Right? RIGHT? (Please, just humor me.)



That's a sneak peek of the socks I'm currently working on. It's a shade of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in a colorway I believe is entitled "crazy stripes." ah-yup

The yarn was a gift, and I'm very grateful to have it, but still a bit undecided on the colors. I think I'm leaning toward liking the effect I'm getting with the chevron and rib pattern I chose from Sensational Knitted Socks, but time will tell. Alex wanted to know if I was really keeping the socks for myself. Sorry, dear. You'll have to live with looking at crazily striped feet every now and again. (More on what the socks remind me of later, when they're done. Can't use up all my material in one post.)


To counteract the frantic neon stripes, take a peek at this:



It turns out that one of my co-workers is also in the business of dyeing gorgeous yarns, for folks knitting traditional Scandinavian stockings. She found out that I knit, and generously gave me some samples. Wool is on the right, and silk on the left.

This stuff is incredibly thin. I haven't measured wraps per inch yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with cobweb, here. I don't think I'll be knitting stockings out of this. (Even my patience has its limits, and while I'm sure I'd eventually finish them, I'm not yet convinced that it's a project I want to take on.) However, I'm thinking that that silk could make a gorgeous lace shawl or scarf. And Anne doesn't just dye this yarn. She dyes it using natural dyes, some (or all?) of which are grown in her apparently quite expansive garden. So this isn't just pretty yarn; It's yarn with a local connection, which could be dyed by someone I actually know. This is yarn I could get excited about. I wonder if she has the materials to do a nice, deep red for me.

Of course, this is all fantasy at the moment. We haven't really discussed the details of this transaction all that much. There is the potential to barter some knit goods for yarn, as she doesn't knit. Or perhaps I'll just save up, and commission a scarf or shawl's worth of dyed silk this autumn. Pretty much all I know about natural dyes is from a couple of episodes of Cast On, but those have gotten me really excited about the colors. And there's also that whole "sense of place" thing, which was a theme on Cast On a series or two ago, and which has really stuck with me since. I tried to write a sense of place knitting essay, realized that I didn't have a close enough connection to my current hometown, and have been very mindful of such things ever since. Maybe I'll even try to design some lace patterns inspired by Keene, New Hampshire, and New England, for this locally dyed yarn.

I've been feeling kind of blah about knitting lately, and even though I'm sure I won't get to knitting anything but sample swatches with Anne's yarn for months, just thinking about the potential for crafty and personal growth is bringing back my artistic inspiration.