Blog move

I've moved the blog over to Posterous - the new address is http://knitfinder.posterous.com. Please update your bookmarks and come on over and visit - you'll see why I've moved. You'll find all old posts there, and the feed and permalinks should continue to work fine without requiring updating.

See you there!

In which I make my yarnbombing debut

Yarnbombing has intrigued me for a long time, but I hadn’t gotten around to trying it myself until yesterday. Headed out for a walk, I stopped to lock my office door and saw a castoff scrap of knitting lying on a shelf. Into my pocket it went – and here’s where it ended up (with my finger in the picture for scale):


Adorning a manzanita tree in the park. This started life as a tiny baby sock – but it was too small and picky and no fun, so I gave up on it.  I hadn’t bound off the live stitches, so I left them as is – I like the way they look:


Kind of like a sea anemone, from this perspective.  I left the yarn tail hanging, thinking some passing human (or bird, even) might be tempted to pull on it. It would be interesting if it were slowly unraveled:


We shall see.  The park gets a lot of use, and I often walk there, so odds are good it will be noticed and I’ll be able to check on it.

Urban yarnbombing is what’s most visible on the web – and probably out in the world too.  (In the Bay Area, I particularly admire the work of Streetcolor. Not only is it beautiful, but the yarn is all handspun – on a drop spindle, at that.)  But I don’t live in the city – I’m surrounded by nature at home, and my most frequent public outings are not to town or city but to local parks, to run, walk, and take pictures. So I thought it would be fun to yarnbomb in natural places – and on a small scale, so that only folks who are really looking at their surroundings will notice.

Inspiration for that sort of yarnbombing came to me from Jan ter Heide and Evelien Verkerk’s Knitted Landscape project, which goes back to 2006. Click here for photos – I especially love this one (the location is Ireland):


This photo suggested to me that it would be fun to knit up a supply of small tubes and/or bags, as the whim takes me, carry one or two with me whenever I’m headed out, and slip them over a stone or stick. I’ll show you a picture when I do.

Don’t call them resolutions

I’m not a believer in resolutions, but when it comes to my knitting, I do like to look back over the year, consider what I did and didn’t knit, and form some – let’s call them intentions for the coming year.

First, the numbers. I started 18 projects last year, and finished 15. Darn, I’d hoped to break even – unfortunately that means the WIP count went up, not down.

Of those 15 finished projects, 6 were shawls. I made a half-hearted attempt at 10 shawls in 2010 (which has now morphed into 11 shawls in 2011) – literally, knitting these 5:

Damson, Brandywine, Miralda’s Triangular Shawl, Citron, Daybreak (Ravelry links).

I also finished Girasole, which was begun in 2009:

Nothing wrong with any of those – I love both the knitting and the wearing of shawls. But here’s the thing – the remaining 9 finished projects were all small: a cowl, three hats, two pairs of mittens, two neckwarmer-scarves, and this tiny thing, possibly my favorite project of the year:

 Sea Lace necklace

I didn’t finish a single sweater (thankfully I started only one). There was no colorwork whatsoever. And looking over it all, there wasn’t much challenging knitting in 2010. I was coasting a little. So here are the intentions:

1. Finish a sweater or two – or more. These two are 80% done so I really should finish those first. Next on the list (unless something changes) are Shalder, the Lite Lopi Pullover, and Bruegel. None of them would require buying yarn.
2. Knit a little for needy strangers – I wrote about that here.
3. Knit some colorwork. I’m close to having yarns collected for a stranded colorwork shawl along the lines of Kaffe Fassett’s Persian Poppies or this one by Christel Seyfarth. This sweater is also calling to me, and I have the perfect yarn for it:
   
   
   
   Joyce Williams’ Olive Branch sweater, from Armenian Knitting. Were I to knit this, it would be the first one on Ravelry – that’s always kind of fun. On the back is a gnarled olive tree. For a more realistic project – the Caller Herrin’ hat is in my plans.
4. Knit some more of my handspun. Miralda’s Triangular Shawl and half a scarf were my only handspun projects last year. It’s satisfying to wear handspun handknits, plus you learn so much about your spinning from knitting with it.
5. Try some new techniques and a complicated design or two, for a challenge. I want to knit a two-end project, my first pair of gloves with fingers, and my Bohus Blue Shimmer cuffs. I'm knitting my first two-color brioche project (the Geveldak scarf) and it's a lot of fun - I'd like to do more of that. Plus there should be at least one complex lace pattern this year.
   
   

Oh my – long list. And I’ve totally ignored the fact that my first grandchild arrives in April, so baby knitting is also on the horizon.