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I’m surprised over the way people talk about the Interweave knits magazine on some forums and blogs, like the magazine used to contain only brilliant patterns and now doesn’t contain anything of value. I disagree with this, and think that it’s possibly just a shift in the target audience that has happened.
I love a lot of the patterns they produce, like my saiorse shawl, and my current WIP the spidery tank .

I even like their models, and I don’t say this often about a magazine, especially not about knitting magazines. But in this most resent issue (summer 09) at least one of the models is a tattoed girl with stretched lobes. And it looks like the model in the spidery tank pictures has stretched lobes as well.
Any mainstream mag that embraces modded people gets props from me. Also because it to me feels more like real people, not fashion models. It’s nice to see “normal” (for me at least) people wearing the clothes on a street corner instead of overly stylized shots in laughable poses

I’m loving the lace pattern in this as well, it’s one of those that’s very simple to knit, but transforms completely from what you imagine that it’s supposed to look like from the instructions. It’s interesting but simple. Usually I don’t work from the written instructions but prefer to use charts, sometimes I even dismiss projects because the pattern lacks charts. On this project I’m glad I didn’t. I did drew up a chart just to see how the stitches merged on the paper and it’s interesting. It created a slanting chart, showing how knitting isn’t back and forth but a spiral, and this points it out particularly well. It simply wouldn’t have worked I suspect on a flat garment unless it was knit on the bias. This fascinates me.

I think I’ve found out what I need to do to be happy, in the long run at least. Looking at it short term it will suck like nothing I’ve done for years and years :/

A bit cryptic, but this is the beginning of an end.

edit 24 hours later: I’m now officially single, after 3.5 years in the same relationship, this feels weird.

In the process of knitting the Saoirse (with deserved capital letter) I became completely obsessed. It’s a huge undertaking, using the better part of 11 balls of yarn…

But looking at it now, and wearing it, I would say absolutely that I don’t regret it at all.

At one point before the last increase round (with 1500-1600 stitches on the needle) I actually broke the knitpro cable, I got a replacement from the shop, no problems, but they said they hadn’t seen that before. The metal just “slipped” of the cable. Apparently I had something too heavy on the needles. And even with the longes cable the stitches were scrunched up pretty badly, especially after the last increase… when each row took more than 1.5 hours to complete!

The first time I wore it was at a party, and getting compliments on your clothing is especially fun when you get to say “yeah, I made it myself”

And after finishing this monomentus project, instead of starting something small and portable started knitting a sweater..

This handspun yarn has now gone trough it’s third (yes third!) realisation. The reason behind this is the simple fact that it’s handspun and thus I had no idea how much of it I actually had or what to do with this lumpy bumpy spindlespun yarn. It was one of my first things to be spun after all.

The gallery will thus include all of the installations it has gone trough, including it’s roving state

Notes: Roving is “Healthy boobies” by The Dyeing Arts, I got it trough the lime & violet shop a long time ago.

Shawl: a simple garter shawl, too little yarn and too much optimism. Frogged.

Scarf: A so-called scarf but so short that it had to be fastned with a brouch if I wanted to wear it (I’m not a brouch kind of girl). So frogged for a second time.

Hat: from “Spin to Knit“, pattern “Minds eye hat“. Still yarn left over but I’m now at a point where I’ll either just keep it untill I need the scraps, or frame it for later…

Currently I’m knitting what I like to call a “shawl” as it in the interweave pictures is pictured as a skirt, but called a shawl. We’ll see what I end up using it for in the end.

The project is a marriage between a yarn I’ve been drooling over for some time at a LYS (Tjorven garn). Lenpur Linen by Rowan & the yarns ravelry page. It’s a gorgeus yarn with the soft and silky viscose feel but heavier and stronger, like it has more “weight/body” from the linen. But apparantly Lenpur is the eco variant of viscose with even better properties than the usual one. The thing I find interesting is that I like eco-yarns not because they are better for the enviroment, but often as they feel and act better than the normal stuff.

The pattern of Saoirse is from Interweave knits, spring 09 issue (bonus photos). Pattern by the awesome Nora Gaughan

And I had to get a super long circular needle to do this project, so I went with the (only) option, Harmony needles <3 So pretty, so nice to work with and with the added bonus of colours…