Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Embassy

After knitting a full 42 of the flowers for Ella's wedding, I got completely exhausted by them and am officially giving up on a full effort (instead leaving it to whenever I need something brainless to knit on). I've only washed and blocked 20 or so of them, and because they have to be sewn up and then attached to buttons, and then attached to pin backs or stems, or something... yeah. It's tedious.

She wanted a Rock Island shawl by Jared Flood, which I started up, and realized that I had absolutely no freakin desire at all to spend that much time, energy and effort on another project for somebody else (sorry El), so I'm putting that one in hibernation for a while. It also took a bit too much mental energy, more than I'm capable of right now. I couldn't memorize the 8 line repeat for the edging, and it was taking a Herculean psychic effort to concentrate on the silly pattern. I'm not saying I'm not going to make it. I'm just saying that when I do make it, I will damn well not be giving it to somebody else.

I realized that the stupid flowers were sucking all of the knitting energy out of me and not really refilling the well, so I moved on to another project. I saw the Embassy Scarf  (rav link) in the Summer 2011 issue of Knitscene and realized that I had two skeins of Malabrigo Lace in Noviembre that I had no idea what to do with, as they were variegated and, well, we all know about my success rate with variegated yarns.

I decided to make the Embassy Scarf with it, as I figured the pattern would lend itself to the yarn. Or vice versa. Whatever. This scarf may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but I'm really enjoying the knit and finding it fairly fun. It looks cool, even if the yarn isn't the prettiest, and if I hate it when it is done, well, then I have plenty of Black Cherry Kool Aid from my Clapotis experiment.

ANYWAY, I started on it last night and I'm about 25% done. It's knitting up quickly (although that may be due to the fact that I've mostly sat around on my butt knitting all day today - my choice for mother's day).

Pictures:



I'm feeling more knitting energy right now and I'm pretty excited about new projects! Yay!

5 comments:

  1. it looks great. glad you got your energy back!

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  2. Sometimes we need to step back and hit the reset button to get going again. Mne was switching to crochet for awhile. Glad you're finding your mojo again. :-)

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  3. I have to admit that I'm relieved that you are not such an unselfish knitter that I'd have to reconsider being your blog friend! You are incredibly generous to knit all those flowers and deserve to keep the shawl, if it materializes, for yourself!

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  4. Back from the seaside :-)
    42 flowers, wow you are amazing!! I had stopped after 5 - that's why I never take on jobs like that :-) Love your cowl, and I DON'T think you should give it a Kool Aid treatment - the colors are lovely!
    Hmm seems like my knitenergy is gone... In April I knitted a cowl and a hat... And I have still not taken a photo for Ravelry... Hope this not will continue - I still have several hundred projects in my Rav queue :-)

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  5. Glad you're getting back into knitting for you. It should be something that refreshes you, not exhausts you!

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