WWKIP Day, Fiber Frustrations and Perpetual Inundation...It Must Be Love

World Wide Knit in Public Day, Manchester

My knit and natter buddy, Kate, organized a KIP for the knitters of greater Manchester last weekend. Everyone was in prime form, the weather was cooperating and we made the world a little more aware that knitting is alive and kicking. Everyone brought some kind of goodie to share. Cake and cookies abounded. We were approached by who we assume to be an LYS owner with a voucher for 10% off our next yarn purchase. New friends were made. I got to know 3 other Yank expats. We dished on our knitting groups, yarn shops and favorite threads. Here are the ladies who stitched:

     

Fiber Frustrations and Perpetual Inundation
This part of today's post is more along a personal note. Once and a while posts have to be. I have been having these strange feelings over the last 6 months or so. They have been growing steadily and emerging slowly over the last six months. I don't know what is coming over me. It is tormenting. It is titillating. It is absolutely consuming. It is knitting.

I started my first big, intermediate project about two and a half months ago. I have posted about the Cap Sleeved Sweater aka the misshapen Frankenstein sweater. I frogged the back panel after I had knit the front and produced two lovely little sleevelets. It was then I realized that I had misread the pattern and the sleeves came out like everyone's favorite Victorian monster. The third time was the charm and the sleeves came out stunningly and I am confident this time that I interpreted the pattern correctly. But, to my dismay, I didn't quite get the decrease right on the front panel. So, I guess we will be frogging again, this time the top of the front panel. Hopefully my husband is available to roll the wool and there is some schmaltzy documentary on British monarchs on the tube.

 I will not be frogging as much as an entire panel, it really seems like this is the never ending project. I have thought about doing some smaller instant gratification jobs like scarves for girlfriends and sisters-in-law, but I can't bring myself to find a pattern, let alone begin knitting one other than my beloved sweater. 

Working this sweater is a taste of mothering an insolent child. I am so infuriated by it and the whole process of forming it. And at the same time, I house an inexplicable love that conflicts with all the frustrations I experience. Sometimes gladly, sometimes spartanically, I deny myself the joys of other odysseys and adventures, just so I can bring this sweater to full fruition. What is a girl to do? Keep knitting, sister.

The good news is that the universe has brought me an abundance of new ideas, passions and friends, so that I am perpetually inundated my new mags, websites, blogs, and all the fibery, yarny stimuli a girl could ask for. I was luck to find a dress form at a charity shop. It was a steal! It is wonderful, but often accompanied with feelings around lack of time. I have a stack of 6 new magazines I want to devour every inch of. There are six books novels collecting dust on my night stand because I can only read so fast before I fall asleep.  I have a mental queue of projects, yarns and other crafty projects I want to do, but I can't. Not until I finish what I have started.

Above is a peek at the marvelous sweater baby I love to hate upon reaching the end of its adolescence.  I will be back soon with a few more of my web knitting finds. Until then: Knit well. Knit often.