Green silk, vintage buttons and a grand final

…well… silk and wool. I made Cazzy a pair of slippers out of this stuff too, such a pretty colour and really warm. Yes, it’s yet another neckwarmer but this time really only a moss stitch, rectangular mini-scarf with a buttonhole knitted into it. I like the way it looks like a big collar but I’m quite bored with looking at my own head. I must start making things to actually flog and then I can justify nagging my friends into being stunt necks for photos.

Check out that button though! I’ve been carrying around that Bambi button for years but I never really make anything that calls for buttons so small. In the end I took a leaf out of the books of those gels who make button-y jewellery and just stacked up a few all together. Nice huh?

Trivia fact: I know 4 individuals – all women, all sensible stand-up gals and all adorable – who have a phobia of buttons. Dear ladies – I mention this not because I think you are freaks (we all have our phobias – as it turns out I have a gazillion of my own) but because I find those odds so bloody remarkable.

I knitted the bulk of this during the Grand Final yesterday, propped up with pillows on the bed with a kir royale to one side of me, texting game critique back and forth with my fellow Hawks fan, Susie (in Perth) as Hawthorn came galloping home and Roy and HG shouted from my wee radio, urging Geelong (the Cats) to ‘Get off the kitty litter!’ and referring to my own victorious team colours of brown and gold as ‘the poo and the wee’. I’ve supported Hawthorn (limply – only really tuning in towards the end of the season every year) since I was a child and have never ceased to be mortified by their colour scheme.

I must confess that the Hawks didn’t really win through sheer sporting brilliance but because for a large part of the game, Geelong couldn’t kick a goal for quids. Hawthorn players seemed to keep being sent off to have their feet glued back on and sure enough they must have used 5-minute aryldite because pretty much all but one made it back onto the field at some point. The one who didn’t behaved like an arse, hooting and hollering on his crutches when he got his premiership medal too. I say – if you didn’t touch the ball, keep it down a bit, eh? But ne’er the less – good on you lads, good on you.

There was a confusing moment during the half-time sprints when I looked up at the telly from my knitting to see a rep from every team running away from a giant disposable razor. Turns out the sprints were sponsored by Gillette. Huh.

Warning: Knitting update.

I haven’t posted my knitting for a while… for some time there was none, too busy over-living life and sending myself rocketing towards what my brother Chris suggests we now refer to as the ‘NervyBeeDown’.

Sidebar: Chris, this makes me think something about bumblebee striped MC Hammer pants but it’s unresolved.

Then I was too weird to post so now I shall record backwards – only photos and briefest of descriptions after this I promise – no pfaffing about. I have to make a record because I give most of it away.

If you hate this then just don’t read on when you see the word KNIT.

My friend Pip of bits of a broken something picked me up some lovely vintage plastic needles in their original paper wraps from Glenorchy market. Lovely colours, just lovely. Having just completed slippers for Matt, I picked up the green DPNs and sat down to make something for me – something quick and hopefully simple – tubular neck warmer. Like a scarf but doesn’t fall off – an independant turtleneck.

I rocketed along in feather and fan stich which was much easier and jollier than I had anticipated but had trouble casting off because I couldn’t get it stretchy enough to pull over my (trust me on this) unfeasably large coconut. Web research, web research and 4 cast off attempts later we have the suitably ruffly * K1, YO, Slip K1 over YO, K1, Slip YO over K1* and repeat between the *s.

It does double duty to protect your identity should you choose to do a burg in Elizabethan times but perhaps you would also need a fellow crim to throw a cape over any puddles as you make good your escape.

OK this is officially too long for a post about knitting. The end.

Except for thanks Pip – love ‘em.

name my shop, PLEASE!

Look! I knitted socks for me. Apparantly out of clown vomit, although Caz assures me they are more like micro-thermal imaging of my feet. That wasn’t how luddite Cazzy put it but that’s what she meant. I think her words were ‘hot-camera thing only more detailed’.

I also made that skirt. It is an awesome skirt even if I do say so myself and strangers stop me in shops and ask where it came from. I enjoyed drafting the pattern and sewing it so much I am thinking of using up my vintage fabric collection to make a few to put up for sale in an Etsy store to see if I can pad out the coffers a bit in this next weird unemployed art year.

I am also making softies (no socks – too long to make, too much a love labour) and some brooches. Some brooches of guppies. Yes, the fish. I am filling the market void of guppy jewellery. They’re gonna be really cute actually… here’s a sneaky peek before they hit the scroll saw.

I WAS going to call this shop SKIRT but then I started making other things so the name feels a little defunct. I now desperately need a name for my shop and if anyone comes up with a good one before I do, I will give them a prize.

The prize will probably be shaped like a fish.

slippers for monica

The other ones I made for her didn’t fit so I gave them to my nephew, Marcus instead who fit them perfectly. These ones are much girlier (and more springtime) and knit in an aqua coloured silk/wool blend with pretty sparkly/pearly buttons. I am VERY proud of these. These are princess slippers. Monica is a princess (I know you don’t feel like one Mon, but you are anyway. Deal.).

never leave a project unfinished

so… I had to put a halt to the knitting for a while as I was starting to use it as a fairly unhealthy form of escapism. Not as unhealthy as a smack-habit I suppose but not ‘rock solid’ ne’er the less…

HOWEVER – I am now feeling a little more stable and was able to FINISH PHILLIP’S SOCKS!

Look aren’t they beauties? Now Pippy has much skinnier legs and bigger feet than me so the fact that they look tight in the legs and baggy in the feet is how they are supposed to be OK?

I gave them to him on Friday and we are suffering a bit of a cold snap this weekend so I hope their completion is as timely as it seems.

The impetus for this step is that all my favourite socks seem to be full of holes and dying and I have needles and a bumper basket of glorified string so I have now started a pair for ME!

Hooray for me, I say.

The knit and the purl of it

I’m in a rut.

In my job I feel useless and cumbersome which makes me unhappy which in turn makes me feel like a tool and an ungrateful wretch because it’s actually a great job. I’ve probably sat in there hanging on for grim death for way longer than any other employee previously. Some young thing should have had the opportunity to get their start in there a long time ago.

My confidence is at an all-time low which makes looking for something else torture. I’ve never in my life gotten a job I’ve applied for. I just kinda ‘fall into’ stuff historically. There’s a feeling in the air that I must go but that no-one else will hire me. I’ve always feared this to be true.

This all spills over into my studio as well. My ego can’t take completing any work just in case it turns out to be shite. I know the advice that I would give to others – that you have to risk making shite to make anything good and who would know if this next work is shite ’cause you just kick the shites under the rug in the privacy of your own studio space, learn from your mistakes and move on to the next one, which -odds are- will be a winner.

So that’s what’s up with the knitting. Weaving glorified string around two sticks in a fashion that belongs to the ages is a guaranteed winner. Who doesn’t love a sock? A scarf? Something made just for them, invested with time and care? What’s more there are patterns to follow – records that are proof of prior successes. These objects are guaranteed to be worth my time and crows-feet…

There is a strange substitution too – What are knitted stitches if not just physical pixels? The equivalence of the frames of film or video or one of a thousand girls dressed up as a violin in a Busby Berkley sequence. I worry over each tiny part in turn to make an object that is (without a doubt) the sum of it’s parts. If you freeze any frame of a Hitchcock film it is composed as if for a photograph.

I hope I never use any filler. But right now I’m too scared to find out.

knitty knit-knit