2KCBWDAY1 - Blog Week

Time for the 2nd Annual
Knitting and Crochet Blog Week event.A great idea launched by Eskimimiknits last year. A week of knitters and knotters blogging about a different communal topic a day.

I love to talk, hate to come up with my own subjects and like feeling a part of the community, so I'm in for sure.

I participated last year too. Was a lot of fun. Search the tag knitcroblo2010 or follow this link to the first of my humble offerings for the 1st Annual ...

Wow. Upon review, I was quite a bit peppier last year at this time. Oh well. The posts won't be as long or photo heavy this year, but they'll still probably bedazzle and amaze the casual reader with their meandering gabbiness.

So, to Day One

Day One: 28th March. A Tale of Two Yarns.

Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

Can do.

I spent some time this past year doing a little R&D for a very good customer and a potential new project. The D has stalled out a bit, but the R has forever left it’s mark on me. I have had my hands in the bubbling cauldron of fiber-greater-than-1 mm-in-diameter and I am hooked … so to speak. (Ow and Yikes on that one)

These two lovely little numbers live with me now:

Twinkle Soft Chunky
super bulky, pure virgin wool yarn
Eggplant

And

Plymouth Yarn Confusion
bulky, synthetic mix
Pink and black

Both from WEBS. Soooo convenient and awesome.

Now considering the earthy tone on tone colors my client prefers, I have no idea why I even suggested these particular color options - except maybe that I find them oddly hypnotic for some reason. I’m not usually that into purple but I do love jewel-tones and the color royal blue so the shiny purpleness of the wool found me especially vulnerable to its seductive dance of undulating wavelength of light. The synthetic mix, well I love controlled chaos. “Come to me, my jumbled amalgam of texture and color.”

The wool:

I’ve never crocheted with wool before, or any animal sourced fiber for that matter. Although I deeply dislike the idea of annoying baby animals to get yarn (a separate thought for another time), my wool-less past has less to do with ethical deliberation than with a simple, circumstantially and personality driven issue - I’m broke and cheap to boot. Truly, a deadly combination that has me tractor beamed blindly through the friendly neighborhood crafti-plex and directly into the 99¢ bin of acrylic wonder. But we were working on a vision here, so I held my cheapskate breath and clicked “order now”.

Oooo. This stuff is soft and pretty and just shiny enough without going Vegas and nostalgically like those fuzzy hair ribbons of my Neolithic youth and… and… Freakin’ Huge! What am I supposed to do with this? Besides the obsessive fondling it, I mean. Chain? Huge honking chain? Maybe keep it smooth and purty? Maybe something exotic? Something Zen-adjacent? Smooth flowing yin to rough and tumble yang. Which brings me to -

The synthetic:

Looks so great in the photo. A little more black and pink than the photo may lead one to believe but all in all lovely chaotic fuzziness. Hmm. Actually, it is pretty great in person except for the one tiny detail that I always seem to forget – “bulky” can also mean very thin with butt-loads of texture.

Confusion Strands

Once again, my first thought is chain. But with what hook? One of my steels? Maybe. Lots and lots of drapey little chains sounds like the start of a good fiber neckpiece. Like dreadlocks for the throat and shoulder area. Might lose a lot of the gorgeous texture details in little knotty chains though. How about that big plastic S hook I picked up for another way-way-way-in-the-future project? Oh wait, I detest big open gaping flaccid crochet stitches. How about with multiple strands?

Confusion Chain

Hmmmmmmm. Me like. Still need to play with the logistics. Well, “need” to be read “want very, very, very much”. The disparate textures and harmonized colors go so well together...

Chunky Confusion

... yet I am stuck. I don’t have a lot of fiber neck-piece experience which is pretty obvious from the "uhhh, me wrap big soft around fuzzy wuzzy" styling genius depicted in that picture. I do like fuzzy chaos as an aesthetic, I just don’t know how to think that way and my two beautiful new friends languish in oblivion for my shortcoming.


Individually they are wonderful yarns, but together… oh, so much greater than the sum of the parts. I am inherently drawn to the beauty of duality. So much so that I often collect synergistic elements without any thought of their application. Case in point, while gathering the photos for this post, I stumbled across an even more glorious combination of colors for this duo. Something more in keeping with my obsession with the color blue:

Sapphire Twinkle Chunky

Purple/yellow Plymouth Confusion

I would love to get my hands on these two yarns, but I simply can not justify the expense without a clear idea of my plans. I can only allow myself to collect the photos for now.


Sigh. Flat broke fiber enthusiasm really blows. Oh well. I can still drool over the photos and dream of the possibilities anyway… besides, I do still have the lovely purple and pink/black versions with which to play. Now if I can just learn how to think…


Hook On
C