And just like that, the week disappeared.
Time is a funny thing – this week has gone by so quickly, and yet, when I look back at my journal, there are things that happened only a few days ago that feel like much further away.
So what has been happening? Different designs have been at various stages; I published my Ice Diamonds Mitts pattern, finished knitting and typing up another shawl design called Llandudno Promenade that I hope to share with you very soon, and I have swatched for the submission call I wrote about last week.
Oh, how I have swatched! I did 11 swatches in the end, having knocked that down from the 15 I initially wanted to try out. These have all been blocked and I’ve whittled them down to three that I think I want to include in my design. The shape of the stitch patterns is suggesting a long rectangular shawl which can be one of the most practical shapes to wear. Whilst swatching I found some more fab uses for washi tape, a thing I didn’t even know about until I started bullet journalling. I mark the sides of the pages in my journal with particular tape for each ongoing project and I used the same tape I assigned for this design to the pages in my stitch dictionaries where the patterns I wanted to try were lurking. Since you can also write on washi tape, I used a plain one to label each of the swatches with their page number, name of stitch pattern, number of stitches in a repeat and the needle size I had used. This has made it so much quicker to refer back to the patterns I have sampled and helped me choose which ones will easily go together.
In the midst of all this design work I kicked against ‘thinking’ knitting and made a hat last night in Rowan Big Wool that only took 150 minutes to make! That sounds shorter than two and a half hours somehow. I did change the pattern a bit as there was no way I was going to present my wife with a chunky hat with an even chunkier seam up the back, so I converted it to in the round. Hurrah for 10mm dpns (that’s double pointed needles).
Time being what it is I didn’t manage to do any gardening this week, although there are courgettes, raspberries and apples that all need harvesting – having written that it is now starting to rain.
I’ve been enjoying more Terry Pratchett audiobooks this week, most recently The Truth. There’s a line in that which says “The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret” – I’m trying not to let it, but it’s not always easy.
Stay warm, stay safe and keep knitting, Kx