While I'm at it: I also started socks - for my dad, as a Christmas present.
I guess I'm blogging about it so that I can't back out of making these for him for Christmas.
This is a bit of a promisary note.
You gotta use every trick in the book to motivate yourself!
On the other hand the red jumper (and no, it's not a Christmas jumper, it's just not) will be finished soon and then I want another project I can quickly pull out and get knitting, round and round and round, while I watch television or something on the Internet.
The plan is to make this plain vanilla socks: just stocking stitch and no pattern. My dad will prefer it, I'm pretty sure of that. He will also appreciate that he'll be able to throw these in the washing machine - I somehow can't see him doing any hand washing. Not even of hand knitted socks. I just don't.
But that means that they're wonderfully quick to make.
And I'm enjoying knitting these!
I haven't worked much with yarn or fabric in red. My favourite colours are pink, royal blue, aqua or turquoise, petrol, purple, black, grey, silver and white. And true red - but it's very difficult to find.
But I suddenly had the urge to get a red yarn to start a jumper with.
This is the result, well I should say the work in progress:
Isn't this just wonderfully colourful? I find it very good for the soul to knit in a colour that works as a pick-me-up, so stimulating, so invigorating. I really feel like this colour provides an energy that is making me feel better in the grey, the darkness and the cold temperatures of November.
I am very glad that I started this project.
It's coming along nicely. Look at that sheen.
The pattern is great: I like the darts shaping the shoulders as well as the lower part at the waistline that form this kind of "envelope" shape as it is referred to.
I am not so enamoured of the satin. I pulled a thread near the bottom somewhere because a bit of rough finger nail got stuck on my precious toile.
I am just glad that this was always meant to be the toile. It would be nice if I had the choice between them at the end (I need to get these two done by 13th December) but I will happily settle for one.
For this version I would still need to cover some buttons with this fabric and also do button holes, four of them. This causes a great amount of anxiety in me: I am pretty terrified that I would completely mess up the whole thing if I tried to do that many button holes. Yikes.
Thinking about it: I'd rather start the bluey-green silk version and see how that goes.
Overall I have to say that it is interesting to work with this fabric and find how it works for me. Or doesn't.
I can see why designers will use satin for designs where a lot of pleats, creases and folds are shaping the design, much more so than seams and darts. A seamline that's out by a tiny fragment of a millimeter can really affect the way the garment looks.
I don't know if I'll ever get good enough to be able to successfully work with satin.
The colour is gorgeous but it's darn difficult to cope with.
