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March 27, 2006
Feeling Better
My elbow is feeling better. That was way scary. It's one thing to lay off keyboarding for awhile but KNITTING! My hands were itching for a project. Interestingly enough, it got almost immediately better after I placed a heating pad between my shoulder blades.
So I finished the second handspun Odessa. It's just as beautiful without beads, especially with colors like these.
Then I started a project I've been afraid of for sometime now. It's called Barnegenser i Kattemonster or Child's Sweater with a Cat Pattern by Kari Haugen...
...from Norsk Strikkedesign - A Collection From Norway's Foremost Knitting Designers.
I bought the kit (on super sale) at Yarns by Design last year. This is the least intimidating sweater in the collection. Each one is an opus. It's such a lovely pattern though and it's for a child and it was on sale so I went for it. Even though I've done color knitting, I wasn't sure I was good enough to do it justice. So after the ribbing it rested. It rested alot. I was stuck between stranded - won't a kid's fingers get caught? and non-stranded - won't the cream show through the charcoal and vice versa? Then I read Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears. She gave me the confidence to forge ahead - stranded no more than 5 stitches and trust your instincts. So I did. It is crazy fun.
Lessons Learned: First it must be really cold in Norway because the fabric is dense. So dense I keep checking the needle gauge conversion. Second, Knitting Without Tears is a great confidence builder. Third, after I'm done I want one for myself. And I don't even like cats.