Wristwarmers inspiring patience

I have been starting a restarting an adorable pair of wrist warmers and am seeing how much patience it takes to follow a pattern exact and use smaller needles. This has been interesting since the pattern has some gaps so it takes some thinking a reworking to decrease as needed and maintain a consistent rib pattern. Each time I restarted I would get further and further, and last night finally got through the section with a uniform rib. This is a pattern that was designed at Wildfiber - one of my favorite yarn stores - and good or bad around the corner from where I work (luckily I am usually not at work with extra time when they are open anymore) and a source of most of my yarn collection. The pattern was originally given out with purchase of a fine cashmere and takes 1 50 gram skein. I over ambitiously tried this as the first pattern I wanted to follow after getting the basics down, and ended up making a lovely scarf with a delicate vintage inspired lace pattern to it. (the scarf also had a lot of re starts and unfortunately got misplaced last year after a holiday card photo shoot).
The pattern fits a lovely Peruvian cotton I decided to make wrist warmers out of and is a much better fit then for the yarn then the easier pattern I have and planned on. Since I am prone to making things without patterns that must be strictly followed, this is definitely full of some lessons, as also really want to get better at wrist warmers and eventually develop the patience for fair aisle and other trickier sweater patterns (with sweaters - have mostly stayed in the safe stockinette) since realizing that can go back and restart something - and if it is worth learning and doing it is also worth starting over.

latest projects

Currently, just completed a scarf inspired by Feng Shui and a lecture last week in a class on Chinese Nutrition. The colors are considered lucky ( bright red and gold) It is a supersoft merino wool with some chunky texture and fine metallic threading - next is the task of trying to embroider characters representing the five elements onto the scarf. Hopefully this will be easier then it sounds since using a simpler form of the characters.

Incomplete projects: What to do with them

In my last post, I wrote about the patience of sitting an unraveling 2 sweaters that did not fit whe they were sewn up. Both had spent years in closets. car trunks and pretty much wherever instead of taking the time to pull them apart and recycle the yarn. Mostly, they took time to create and some pride of the first two completed sweaters was also keeping them intact, and unwearable.

In further cleaning and untangling, I re-read a knitting magazine I had kept for patterns. Someone interviewed talked about having many different projects going at once, and got me thinking, what do other people do with old projects when they find them, especially if parts have become unraveled after many hours of stitching, or whatever it was the made you put the project down in the first place.

Current projects - an exercise in patience

My recent projects involving kniting and yarn are requiring some patience and also bringing up the meditative nature of working with yarn. In some cases, it forces you to turn your mind off and focus only on the project, in others, it can help focus on what you are listening to. In my present project, it seems to require some concentration mixed with a mindfullness I usually find in meditation when caught into the presence required.

So the project is what influenced my blog title: unraveling a bulky and complex sweater, which after dry cleaning does not fit. The stitch is a great open weave and it ws knit on size 36 needles, and in a very big chunky wool. Great sweater, however it does not fit me anymore the way it was, so I decided to give it a fresh start for the new year. I am actually doing this to recycle the yarn all unfinished items dangling of needles or "misknits" in the closet. What I am learning is that its slower to pull all the pieces apart and at times a bit frustrating, yet pretty amazing to see how much beautiful yarn I can put to use in a beter and more usefull way. The above paragraph reflects a period I was unraveling and focused on the sweater and somehow 2 hours flew by before I knew it that were truly being present as result of patience.

Ok, so this might sound a bit out there for some for a knitting blog, so I will also add my personal new years resolution is to be more present and look at things in a new and more open way. Before the yarn was in a sweater, hanging in the closet for 5-6 years, a piece needed cut out from stain, and it took about 8 balls of slightly expensive yarn to make (while housebound with a broken foot). I thought it had to stay that way and would be too hard to pull apart yet liked and wanted the yarn to change into something better. It is currently transforming and finding the unwinding and re rolling much more enjoyable then I thought and also a simple way to recycle and change something that isnt working into something that will.

A new year of beginnings

This is a first official blog post and is a start of a new beginning of sharing my hobby and interest in knitting with others. Currently, knitting related I am working wit the technicalities of trying to take pictures that reflect a design colors and texture accurately. Coincidentally I ended up online during a pause from knitting a scarf and needing to untangle parts of the ball that unraveled and tangled, hence part of the title as well as idea of unplugged refers to music that more uncut, a knitting project has many stages in which it could be considered unraveled as well as different reasons for it so just seemed like fun name. Future posts wil likely be more interesting yet figured best way to kick of a new blog was to at least make an entry.